Nominee Summary
Lauren Houstoun (nee Mutch) grew up on a family farm in Aberdeenshire, where she was a Turriff Young Farmer. When she left school, Lauren went to Robert Gordon University to study adult nursing. On completion of her degree, she worked within NHS Grampian up to senior staff nurse level in Medical High Dependency. In 2016 Lauren met Andrew Houstoun at a young farmers dance through a mutual friend and within 6 months she had moved to Andrew’s family farm at Glenkilrie in Glenshee. Since then she and Andrew have built a successful farm diversification all whilst advocating for Scottish Agriculture.
Nominee – Qualities
Lauren met Andrew in February 2016 they were engaged 15 months later, married, put red deer on the farm, had their first son Alasdair, started Glenkilrie Larder and went on to have another two children Ellen and Duncan, all in 8 years! A graduate of the Scottish Rural Leader Programme, Lauren built Glenkilrie Larder in 2019 armed only with social media and not only survived then the Coronavirus pandemic which hit the very next year but thrived driving sales growth exponentially as people turned to local producers for their food. Lauren did this whilst still nursing. Deliveries were personally undertaken across Perthshire, Angus and Aberdeenshire and Lauren built a brand and a narrative reinforced by their quality red meat products which reinforced the provenience of their livestock and the farm’s sustainable practices. In 2021 Andrew and Lauren won a Silver British Farming award for Diversification Innovator of the Year (Small). Lauren decided to take a break from her nursing career after her third child and further expanded the farm’s diversification with the Cook School where she invites guests to her demo and dine, unique culinary experience, all while juggling life as a young Mum to three. Her passion, drive and commitment to Scotland’s farming and rural land management is evident across her business activity and community engagement demonstrating a fearless ambition to champion not only her own family farm and rural business but take to a wide audience a strong message in promoting our home-grown food and Scotland’s natural larder.
Nominee - Sectoral Impact
Lauren and Andrew are driven by a deep passion to produce high quality red meat and are on a joint mission to bridge the gap between the consumer and the producer. Through Glenkilrie Larder and her social media presence Lauren has been able to highlight the positive impact, the farm animals they lovingly rear have on nutrition, the resident wildlife and the surrounding environment. The Larder was created to directly market their meat products and they have since gone onto partner with the Cairngorms National Park in operating the first Community Deer Larder through which wild deer across the park will be butchered and benefit food banks and schools through the donation of prepared, protein rich wild venison. “We are focused on creating a strong network to allow schools across Scotland access to this delicious, high protein, low fat meat. We’re currently donating the venison for use in home economics classes and ultimately hope it can be used on school menus in future.” Lauren states. She adds, “We are passionate in our efforts to make sure children know where their food comes from.” Lauren herself is part of that educational delivery program visiting schools across the region with the meat products, raising awareness of the value of Scottish produce with local children. Lauren supports the DYW Hill to Grill program giving pupils a hands on experience of the full journey from field to fork, from wildlife management to food production, marketing, and sales and the associated diverse career opportunities.
Nominee - Going the extra mile
Given Lauren’s background and business, it is no surprise her strong reaction when she learned about Tayside Contracts school meals which included days with no real protein option or worse, only highly processed substitutes. Lauren decided to investigate further and discovered significant disparity between the provision delivered in schools in Aberdeenshire and in Perthshire and her course of action to address this was ultimately to raise awareness in the area and create a petition against the school menu which very quickly gained local support. However, further investigation undertaken by Lauren unearthed a worrying new piece of information; that Tayside Contracts and PKC had entered into a partnership with ProVeg International – an independent non-profit organisation whose stated goal is to reduce global consumption of animal products by 50% by 2040. Tayside Contract’s school menu has been awarded bronze level accreditation by ProVeg for meeting specific plant-based food criteria, the practices for which include some very worrying subliminal nudges intended to rebalance menus away from real food to unhealthy, unsustainable ultra processed alternatives. Lauren has taken this information to Scotland’s First Minister with support from QMS and NFUS in order to secure reasons for this course of action by Perth & Kinross council which has not been undertaken in consultation with parents and also conflicts directly with Scottish Governments own statements through policies such as Good Food Nation. Lauren is a local champion for our locally produced food and a local hero to our health.