The Dourie Farming Diaries

Day two in early June I was off to do my off-farm job which is as Vice Chair of SAOS (the Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society).  I have been on a Director of the board of SAOS now for three or four years and previously I was on the council. SAOS are the organisation in Scotland who help enable cooperation among farmers and among anybody in the food supply chain. In fact, they solve lots of problems for our industry.

They are now a multi subsidiary business so they the run Scot EID, which is the animal tracking system for Scotland. They have FIA (Food Integrity Assurance), which is their quality assurance assessment providing business.  They have Smart Rural, which deals in sensor technology and wifi or internet connection deals, basically an Internet of Things and connecting far flung places up to give farming the best opportunity to use new technology.  And then they also have the regular project management and consultancy and the real core business, cooperating and doing more of it. So, as Vice Chair of that to John Hutcheson, who is the Chair keeps me pretty busy. We had our council meeting up in Perth.

We met at Crieff Hydro where there were also representatives from the cooperative sector and I had to chair the meeting. And on that day, we were learning about SAOS's new training packages and the project managers within SAOS were actually looking for feedback to see what more could be done for the coop members, what their training needs were, what they thought their future needs might be. We also talked about how we would use the training to enable more capable people in farming and food to drive our industry forward.

That meeting finished about lunchtime, which meant I had a spare afternoon, so I then moved on to go to the James Hutton Institute up at Dundee and there I met Dr Jonathan Snape who is Chief Executive. He took me for a tour around the facilities and I saw the building work in progress for the Barley Hub and the new advanced Plant Research Building which was really exciting seeing investment in research in crop science. I was then lucky enough to be taken down to the vertical farm that is owned by Intelligent Growth Solutions and operated in partnership with JHI.  I got a tour of that facility which is pretty amazing. It’s what you call a vertical farm and they are growing leafy green crops inside in purified air. Under LED lighting, they are able to grow from seedlings, things like a basil at an alarmingly high rate, they use very little water which is recycled, they use minimal nutrients which are precision fed into the water and any that is not utilised for crop is recycled.  This was a fascinating glimpse into the futuristic way of farming.  I'm not sure if it will be used in Scotland widely but I certainly think it will be used for, for example, growing strawberry seedlings and broccoli seedlings. I also think that for countries like Saudi Arabia, which obviously have the ability to use renewable energy from the sun, as well as a real shortage of water, it would be a great way for them to grow their own green leafy vegetables on scale without having to import. So, as I say, a great insight into futuristic agriculture.

It is, of course, a pretty expensive way to farm and it's heavy on power use - hence the need for it to be done by renewable. But there are no pesticides, there are very few artificial nutrients used no fungicides (because the air is purified) and it just shows what's possible. If we get to Mars, that is the way we will have to grow our food!!