Nominee Summary
Turriff Young Farmer, Lauren Houstoun, grew up on her family farm in Aberdeenshire. She pursued a successful career in adult nursing however; upon the arrival of her third child, Lauren opted to focus on building a successful business together with her husband, Andrew, at his family farm at Glenkilrie in Glenshee, advocating passionately for Scottish Agriculture. Through successful farm diversification and direct marketing of the farm's produce, Lauren has worked tirelessly to bridge the gap between producer and consumer and in 2024, the couple partnered with the Cairngorms National Park on the country’s first Community Deer Larder.
Nominee – Qualities
While working in Medical High Dependency within NHS Grampian, Lauren built Glenkilrie Larder in 2019 armed only with social media. Her energy and determination saw her business not only survive the Coronavirus pandemic which hit the very next year, but thrive through driving sales growth exponentially as people turned to local producers for their food. Lauren personally organised and delivered orders across Aberdeenshire, Angus and Perthshire, and her passion built the Glenkilrie Larder brand with a strong narrative underpinned by their quality meat products, provenance of their livestock and the farm’s sustainable practices. Lauren achieved this whilst still nursing throughout this particularly extraordinary period, and with a young family. In 2021, Andrew and Lauren won a Silver British Farming award for Diversification Innovator of the Year (small). A graduate of the Scottish Rural Leadership Programme, Lauren has further expanded the farm’s diversification with the creation of The Glenkilrie Larder Cook School through which she delivers bespoke Land to Larder experiences, right from her family kitchen and has driven forward the successful outcomes of the Community Deer Larder, seeing already over 1800kg of wild venison to the community since January 2025.
Nominee - Sectoral Impact
Lauren’s 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 also to take to a wide audience a strong message in promoting Scotland’s home-grown food and natural larder. 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 has expanded to support the processing of wild deer, which comes through the community larder for the benefit of Scotland’s schools. Lauren states, “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.” She adds, “We are passionate in our efforts to make sure children know where their food comes from.” Lauren herself is going into schools across the region with the meat products, raising awareness of the value of Scottish produce with local children. Lauren is giving pupils hands-on experience of the full journey from 'field to fork', teaching them about deer management, the positive impact on the environment and cooking with venison.
Nominee - Going the extra mile
Given Lauren’s background and business, it is no surprise that she had a 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 investigated further and discovered significant disparity in the provision delivered in schools in other areas and decided to use her platform to raise awareness and create a petition against the school menu. However, as her campaign developed, Lauren unearthed the terms of a partnership which Tayside Contracts and PKC had entered into with ProVeg International – an independent non-profit organisation whose stated goal is to reduce global consumption of animal products by 50% by 2040. Tayside Contracts' school menu has been awarded bronze level accreditation by ProVeg for meeting specific plant-based food criteria, the practices for which include worrying subliminal nudges intended to rebalance menus away from real food to unhealthy, unsustainable ultra-processed alternatives. Lauren presented this information to Scotland’s First Minister with support from QMS, NFUS, BASC, CNPA and SLE in order to secure reasons for this course of action which directly conflicts with Scottish Government's own statements and Good Food Nation policies. Perth & Kinross council had undertaken no consultation with parents, for whom Lauren quickly established herself as a local hero by taking up the case for their children’s health and nutrition in the school menu, and this has resulted in Tayside Contracts removing the menu bias and also now withdrawing their affiliation with ProVeg. Lauren is a true Scottish champion.
