Land Managers and Rural businesses help Scotland thrive
“We‘ll do it the way we aye done it”, is an old epithet which was spectacularly caste into the waste bin last Wednesday night during the Helping it Happen Awards 2022 at the Sheraton Grand Hotel & Spa, Edinburgh. At the event, anyone who believed that the current structure of land owning and land businesses in Scotland impedes the economy would have been wholly disabused of the idea.
Gathered in the hotel for the annual Helping it Happen Awards were some of the great unsung, but as successful rural enterprises, you would be pushed to find better examples anywhere in the world. Not only were they successful, but each one was forward looking and breaking new boundaries, with some using new methods to produce food whilst at the same time increasing biodiversity. In short they were delivering the Scottish Government’s stated goals
The awards were divided into a highly diverse set of categories. From Enhancing Our Environment Through Good Land Management, to Innovation in Farming, and Combatting Climate Change.
But two categories stood out. The Rural Housing Award was won by Stracathro Estates, which has built eleven houses all for let to young, local, working families at affordable rents of around 40 per cent less than open market - an incredibly important market-leading achievement helping to provide affordable homes for local communities, but running contrary to current polemic which suggest that landowners are not providing affordable housing.
The second was the Conservation Award, won by the South of Scotland Golden Eagle Project, an exciting, ambitious, and collaborative project between land managers and conservationists working together to increase the breeding population and range of golden eagles in southern Scotland. The success of the project shows how land managers and conservationists can work together over large areas of ground, something that would have proved far more difficult if the land ownership had been fragmented.
The overall message of the night was that the land ownership, land management and rural business sectors are not just thriving, but that they are at the forefront of new thinking and innovation in our rural areas. We face a very difficult few years ahead when tampering with the structure and ownership of the rural economy threatens to divert resources at a critical time away from innovation and project delivery, towards an arid debate on the structure of landowning in Scotland.
I would like to congratulate all the competitors who took part in this year’s Helping it Happen awards. They are a shining light in the current economic gloom.
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