Former monitor farmer hails legacy

The potential of monitor farms to generate far-reaching legacies has been highlighted by former monitor farmer John Scott.

Mr Scott farms at Fearn near Tain which was a monitor farm from 20062009. During that time the Scotts made significant changes to their business.

However, according to Mr Scott, the benefits his business has derived from the monitor farm experience go much further than that three-year period.

“Certainly the changes we introduced, many of them small with cumulative benefits, have continued to deliver improvements to our bottom line,” he said.

“However, a key long-term benefit was the discipline we learned during the process in terms of basing our decisions on data and bench-marking our performance against others.

“That has ensured that every part of our business is now regularly scrutinised to quickly identify any areas of underperformance.”

Fearn extends to just over 600 hectares, two-thirds of which is grass, however the family run a total of 2,600 hectares between Easter Ross and Sutherland in a mixture of owned, contracted and tenanted farms.

From carrying 1,000 ewes and 120 cows at the start of the programme, the business now has 5,500 ewes, 1,500 hoggs and 250 breeding cows.

The Scott family have invested in genetics and improved their grazing management, steadily improving the grass by reseeding, developing rotational grazing systems for both their sheep and cattle and setting up an outwintering system for the cows on stubble turnips.

Mr Scott believes the next few years will be challenging for livestock farmers and they will be forced to make changes to their businesses to improve efficiency and margins.

“Knowledge transfer is more important than ever in this scenario and the monitor farm programme is a real opportunity to access new and different techniques and ideas,” he added.

Knowledge transfer is more important than ever. JOHN SCOTT