…the blog and website of Andy Wightman
The Scottish Tenant Farmers Association issued the following media release today. WITHOUT ACTION, FARM EVICTIONS WILL BECOME SCOTLAND’S SHAME The Scottish Tenant Farmers Association has welcomed the focus given to land and tenancy reform at last week’s SNP conference and
Continue readingThe Scottish Government has today published the Final Report of its Review of Agricultural Holdings Legislation.
Continue readingGuest Blog by Morten Nielsen, Aarhus University, Denmark (1) Associate professor Morten Nielsen is a Danish anthropologist currently in the Department of Culture and Society at Aarhus University. Based on empirical research carried out in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and
Continue readingGuest Blog by Ruth Cape Ruth works for Community Land Scotland although she writes here in a personal capacity. During the summer of 2009, she spent six weeks volunteering at the Tent of Nations farm in the West Bank, Palestine. “We
Continue readingImage: The unassuming entrance to the HQ of the UK’s largest farm The largest farm in the UK is popularly understood to be that owned by the Co-operative Group which extends to 17,808 acres across the country and is currently
Continue readingMy previous blog on Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) farming subsidies attracted a bit of interest in The Herald today and a number of people have been in touch to ask what can be done to ensure a fair distribution of
Continue readingImage: Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum wins the 2012 St James’ Palace Stakes, Royal Ascot It’s hard to imagine the Government devising a new system of Jobseeker’s Allowance or Housing Benefit where the claimant is told they that their
Continue readingOn 22 January, the Scottish Government published an interesting map showing the density of tenanted agricultural land per parish (1162kb pdf here). What struck me about the map was the apparent coincidence of those parishes with >75% of the land
Continue readingA report was published today by Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) entitled Family Estates and Rural Resiliance. It contains the findings from a series of 23 interviews with landowners of so-called “family estates”. The report contains a few interesting observations but
Continue readingImage: Abandoned farm on a Deeside estate. Should tenant farmers in Scotland be given the legal right to convert their tenancies into ownership of the farm that they and their descendants have occupied and worked in some cases for over
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