Women continue to play vital role

It’s a fair bet the majority of Scottish farmers tuned in to the latest series of the BBC’s This Farming Life on Tuesday evening. More importantly for the reputation of British food and farming, viewing figures confirm that hundreds of thousands of consumers were also glued to their screens as the fly-on-thewall documentary introduced them to charismatic families across the country.

It takes time and trust on both sides to get people to open up about their emotional attachment to their land or animals and be natural in front of a microphone – believe me, I know! – and this series looks like a winner, with the passion and pride of farmers like our columnist Joyce Campbell striking an instant chord with viewers.

If you follow her on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll see how openly she shares the detail of her life on the north coast, but also how robustly she responds to the inevitable criticism of livestock farming. It’s a winning balance.

However, Joyce wasn’t the only woman to be flying the flag for Scottish agriculture this week.

Amy Geddes, from Arbroath, has been in control of the @ FarmersoftheUK Twitter account and has offered a great insight into life on her arable family farm during harvest.

She has shared easy explanations of this year’s complex malting barley market, for example, alongside personal details and weather frustrations – and even a shout-out for Arbroath Smokies.

Next week, June Geyer, from Fife, who set up the first Scottish Women in Agriculture group in 2015, and still chairs it, will lead a webinar where she’ll describe her family’s resilience over the last few months, and Perthshire organic grower Debs Roberts will share details of the female support group she established on Facebook during the pandemic – the story is on page 5.

Less than 12 months after a Scottish Government report called for more opportunities for women in agriculture, this week has demonstrated precisely why such talent must be harnessed for the benefit of the entire industry.