The cold weather is biting hard into the country and the pandemic is far from over, causing huge upheavals and misery for people, the economy and jobs.
We hope spring will emerge soon and vaccinations and weather will lift the nation’s mood.
On the farming front, the NFU Scotland (NFUS) presidential elections are upon us in their new (carbon-free) format of Zoom.
Our current president Andrew McCornick, stands down after his four-year reign.
We all owe Andrew a lot of thanks for his successful steering of the NFUS during this very turbulent period.
He has had to deal with the delayed Brexit and therefore second-guessing “deal or no deal” scenarios and trying to chart positive agricultural policies for the devolved Scottish Government.
The very capable man who will be filling his boots is Martin Kennedy, who holds the role of vice-president up until election day and then takes on his new role.
Our other vice-president at present is Charlie Adam, a local farmer from Strathdon who is bowing out after many years of hard work in several roles for the union.
His enthusiasm and work ethic has been outstanding during that period and we are all grateful for the time he donated to the cause.
As I mentioned earlier, the Zoom hustings were held online.
Each of the four candidates gave a presentation, followed by questions from the audience at home.
All four candidates would make great vice-presidents.
That list comprises Willie Harper, George Milne and Robin Traquair and our own regional chairman of this corner of Scotland Andrew Connon, who has thrown his hat into the ring for the job. Good luck to you.
On a similar vein, Scotland’s farming voices have never had a better time to shape our industry’s future than now.
As the Scottish Government has devolved powers over agriculture in the new post-Brexit era, we can now hope for a bright, exciting time ahead.
Firstly, we have the highest welfare and food production standards of anywhere in the world.
This must be the catalyst to provide more manufacturing and processing facilities to enhance the quality and value of our food and drink industry, provide more jobs and become ambassadors of quality throughout our trading partner nations.
Innovation and investment are the way forward.
Helping us along, we have Opportunity North East, an incentive organisation led by Sir Ian Wood, that will encourage and nurture new ideas and entrepreneurs from the food and drink industry.
A new food hub is to be built at Craibstone to help this cause and hopefully, soon, we shall reap the rewards.
Meanwhile, one of the more recent animal welfare controversies coming out of Whitehall is a consultation on the future of the live transportation of animals.
It suggests transporting live animals, by lorry or ferry under 5˚C should be looked at unfavourably and possibly banned.
This under-researched white paper is surely written by someone who has never travelled up north of the border and never seen a Highland cow standing in a snowdrift as happy as Larry. Good welfare is a very important part of farming, but this is absurd.
Let’s get common sense into this policy and have the issue addressed by people who understand their subjects.
If it passed, our shelves would be empty of Scotch meat for three months of the year. You can only eat so many neeps and tatties.
- Hamish Garland is NFU Scotland regional vice-chairman for the north-east. He farms at Upper Ardgrain near Ellon.
