Royal Highland Show 2019

On Thursday afternoon, the Fund attended the M&S Select Farm awards, and we were delighted to present Hazel and Kenneth Mackenzie as the winners of the M&S Farm Resilience Award for Scotland. This was especially exciting for the Fund as the Mackenzies were part of the Nourish Scotland Programme, which received a grant from us in 2016. The father and son team, Jim and Jordie Orr were runners up of the award. Congratulations to all of them.

Following the awards, the Fund attended the Cultivating Leaders reception which is run as part of Scottish Young Farmers. This was led by Andrew McGregor, who is one of our 2018 Land Rover Bursary winners.

On Friday, the Fund held a breakfast event, kindly hosted by NFU Mutual, to celebrate The Prince’s Farm Resilience Programme. After breakfast, there was a Q&A led by Jim McLaren, Non-Executive Director of the NFU Mutual. The speakers, Stephen Varwell, and his son John and Gerry O’Connor, who took part in the Programme last year were hugely engaging. We were delighted to have Gerry’s mum there, who had never visited the Royal Highland Show before.

Stephen said: “The Programme gave me the opportunity to look at what we are doing and see how we could do it differently. You are so much better to step back and spend a few hours assessing the business, it gives you breathing space and is more valuable than that time spent on the land.”