The hunt is on to find the best business-minded young farmer or agricultural student in Scotland.
Entries are now open for the AgriScot business skills award, which offers a £1,000 prize to a young farmer who demonstrates exemplary practical and business skills.
The award is organised by the AgriScot event in conjunction with SRUC and the Scottish Association of Young Farmers’ Clubs, with sponsorship from Biocell Agri.
It is open to anyone aged between 18 and 25 at the time of AgriScot, which takes place on Wednesday, November 16.
Entrants must submit their CV and a written statement of between 200 and 400 words long outlining the importance of business skills to the progressive agri-business manager following the latest reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (Cap).
All entries must be submitted by e-mail to caroline.daniel@sruc.ac.uk by 4pm on Friday, October 7.
Finalists will then be selected and notified on Friday, October 14. They will be asked to attend heats – one will run in the north and one will run in the south – on Saturday, October 29, and two semi-finalists will be selected from each region.
The four will then attend Ingliston, Edinburgh, the day before the AgriScot event for the final of the competition. They will be given a new product being launched at the show, which they will be asked to assess and evaluate.
The following day at the AgriScot event they will be interviewed by a panel of judges and asked to present their evaluation of the new product. The winner will then be selected and announced at the show.
AgriScot chairman Andrew Moir said: “The competition is open to anyone – they might be a student studying a non-agricultural course, someone studying outwith Scotland, or perhaps a young person who is already in-work on the farm or in another ancillary career.”
Alec Ross, of Biocell Agri, said: “Entry is straightforward, the information is all on the AgriScot website. Really it’s just a case of submitting a CV and writing a short answer to a question pertaining to the industry. From there, regional entrants will be invited on to a farm to spend a few hours with the host farmer and a judge discussing various aspects of the farm business. Ultimately we whittle entrants down across the regions to four finalists who compete at AgriScot for the award and its £1,000 cash prize.”
He said previous winners of the competition have gone on to succeed in their career path. For example, the first winner of the competition, Ian Christie, went on to secure a tenancy near Lumphanan, while the runner-up that year, David Hurst, secured a job managing 1,000 acres of cereals and three suckler beef herds.
