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Linklater's Scotland:
Could we be on the verge of losing
another British industry?
Magnus Linklater
Columnist, Scotland on Sunday
Filed 21 Mar 06
©Magnus Linklater
This article, which was originally
published in the Spectrum Magazine of Scotland on Sunday
on 19th March 2006, is reproduced on Land-Care with the kind
permission of the author and the newspaper
THE favourite object of my life," said
the great agricultural reformer Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster, "is
the collecting of useful information." He revolutionised farming
in Scotland in the 18th century, by compiling his famous Statistical
Account of Scotland - a detailed survey of every farm and croft
in the land. It took seven years, from 1790 to 1797, to complete,
and came in a bound volume, as valuable and comprehensive a work
as England's Domesday Book.
Agricultural Sir John, as he was known,
was a practical man, a farmer himself, who understood how the land
was being tended, how badly it was generally done, and how it could
be improved. We could do with him around today. A revolution, at
least as far-reaching as the one he set in motion, is changing the
whole face of farming in Scotland. Whether it is to survive as an
industry is in the balance.
Unlike Sir John, however, the people who are driving it are regulators,
not farmers. They are past masters at interpreting rules, they churn
out more paperwork in seven hours than the Statistical Account did
in seven years. Whether they understand what they are doing is another
matter altogether.
James Irvine has his doubts. From his 520-acre
farm near the village of Comrie in Perthshire, where he breeds high-quality
Aberdeen Angus and Limousin suckler cows, he views the change of
direction in agriculture with the gravest concern. No longer are
Scottish farmers being encouraged to improve their fields in order
to produce more and better wheat, barley, cattle or sheep; these
days the emphasis is on 'land management', with farmers paid to
sustain the environment rather than rewarded for increasing their
output. Subsidies are being reduced and new schemes for diversification
are being introduced.
For small farms like Irvine's, the prospects
look bleak. High costs, a shortage of labour, the relentless squeezing
of prices by the supermarket chains and the reduction of government
support means steady financial decline. The family holding is beginning
to disappear, and that, says Irvine, is bad news for anyone who
loves the countryside. "It is a fundamental mistake to take
subsidies away from production," he tells me as we look out
over the rain-swept fields and the tumbling waters of the River
Ruchil.
"There has been a huge overemphasis
on the environment, which may sound good in principle, but which
seriously disturbs the balance of agriculture. Given our geography
and climate, there is only a limited range of things we can do on
the land. It's a bit sad, really. There's damn all wrong with the
landscape here, but that has nothing to do with the conservationists.
"It came about because farming was reasonably profitable, highly
efficient, and it kept the land in shape. Those qualities are no
longer valued or encouraged. The only people who will be able to
afford to farm in future are the big-money concerns, and big money
can be withdrawn just as easily as it is invested. We seem to be
on the verge of losing yet another British industry."
Irvine is not just a farmer, he is a scientist,
a former medical researcher who worked at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary
under some of the great names in Scottish medicine. He cares deeply
about the science of farming as well as its practice. What he regrets
most about the present trend is the erosion of the research skills
and expertise that once made Scottish farmers the most successful
in the world.
He points to the low standing that agriculture
now has at universities; to the brain-drain of top-level veterinary
scientists; to the lack of innovation from government departments,
which means that we are no longer in the front line when it comes
to developing new vaccines; and to the loss of control over the
recording of basic data - the kind of thing Sir John Sinclair once
set such store by.
He claims that the Meat and Livestock Commission
has failed to keep up with modern requirements in terms of cattle
breeding genetics, especially in maintaining the quality of the
meat that consumers demand. This has meant transferring data to
Australia rather than keeping it in Britain. In order to stay ahead
of the competition, breed societies such as the Aberdeen Angus,
based in Perth, have opted to join the programme and data-recording
facility developed by the Agricultural Business Research Institute
in Australia. "What the Australians have achieved is first-class
co-operation between their beef industry and researchers in their
academic institutions," says Irvine.
"Unless the UK, and Scotland in particular,
maintains its quality beef production, more beef imports will come
from outside Europe. For an island to lose its security in terms
of food production seems crazy, but it will have a far wider impact
- on tourism, rural industries and, of course, our ability to protect
our animals against disease."
A staunch campaigner in favour of vaccination
during the foot-and-mouth crisis of 2001, he is dismayed at how
little progress has been made since then in developing effective
vaccines and rapid diagnostic tests that might prevent the spread
of any future epidemic. With avian flu now just across the Channel,
in France, he believes that the government's approach is still hamstrung
by the same misguided attitudes that led to the unnecessary slaughter
of millions of animals, and the resulting damage to the rural economy.
"What's coming out of Defra [the Whitehall department for rural
affairs] is partially correct, but it has got the overall picture
wrong, and it's ignoring the latest scientific papers," he
says. "It says that available vaccines are not good enough,
and that these mask the symptoms, which means the virus may spread
undetected. This is not so."
The latest reports on the outbreak of avian
flu in Hong Kong, he says, show that the vaccines used against the
H5N2 strain have provided "very useful immunity", and
have interrupted the spread of the more deadly H5N1 disease thanks
to the crossover that forms part of the immune response (both strains
having a common core structure).
An added bonus provided by this vaccine
is that antibodies to the individual strains can be identified,
making it possible to distinguish between a vaccinated beast and
one that has been infected with H5N1. It is this same vaccine that
is currently being used in France and Holland to protect poultry.
"The UK has only belatedly ordered some of the vaccine, principally
to protect birds in zoos," he says. "There is no sign
that it is going to be used more widely here. I am very disappointed
by what is coming out of Defra."
He is hoping to interest the Royal Society
of Edinburgh, of which he is a fellow, to convene a working party
to provide balanced scientific advice.
To help spread the word about farming in
general, and the importance of science to its future, Irvine has
set up Land-Care, an organisation that has its own website (www.land-care.org.uk)
carrying articles from all over the world about veterinary science,
agriculture and the protection of the countryside. Launched after
the foot-and-mouth crisis, it now records an average of 1,800 hits
a day. It deals in the latest cutting-edge research on farming and
science, together with one ingredient that is in short supply these
days: solid, good sense.
It is just the kind of thing Sir John Sinclair
of Ulbster would have relished. If the internet had existed in his
day, he would have embraced it. His statistical account, after all,
could well be described as an 18th-century website.
©Magnus Linklater
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