Born in 1946 and brought up in Cupar, Fife, I was educated at the local school - The traditional view that many have of the Young Farmers Association is either that it is a marriage bureau or an offshoot of the Tory Party.
If the meeting I spoke at in Kinross last week is anything to go by, neither is now true.
A room full of young businessmen and women were representative of the concerns of rural Scotland. And rather depressed and worried about their futures.
It would be fair to suggest that these farmers were not fans of the supermarkets. I found it easy to share many of their concerns.
The advantage of the supermarket is fairly well understood – a one-stop shop, a wide variety of food from around the world, many cheap goods. And people have taken to shopping in supermarkets with relish. Now we have over 80% of the £53 million spent in the UK on food each year being spent in just four companies’ shops.
But UK supermarkets make profits four times higher than their American counterparts. That is why US firm Wal-Mart was so keen to buy ASDA a couple of years ago. For them it was a way of delivering more for their shareholders.
The price farmers get for their milk is falling – it was 25p per litre in 1996 and now it is 19p. But the price in the supermarket remains around 50p per litre and the profits of the big chains continues to rise.
So, when like other businesses, farmers have seen costs rise significantly, they feel controlled by large buyers who control the market.
With health high up the public agenda beyond the farm, it was no surprise that they wanted to discuss the link between what we eat and what we are.
Scotland is clearly not going to compete with low cost countries in producing basic products. My involvement recently in some issues surrounding the import of Scottish seed potatoes into Thailand illustrates that.
The Scots seed-stock will grow in Thailand and then return to be converted into Walkers crisps.
So the future for our farmers, as with our fishermen, is to produce food of outstanding quality – good beef, fine lamb, excellent cereals.
But if supermarkets sell purely on price and create an impression of quality largely through packaging, how do farmers get their quality, and more expensive goods, on the shelves.
One place to start is with the public sector taking the lead.
If schools, hospitals, even prisons, show an example and source fine local produce, they can demonstrate the benefits.
In the West of Scotland in particular, the appalling health of many of our citizens is down to three things – smoking, lack of exercise and poor diet.
Poor diet means too much fat, little fruit and vegetables and too much salt and sugar.
Smoking are about to make substantial progress with. Exercise remains a challenge. But for the health service, in particular, an across the board investment in good food will pay back that money many times in reduced demand for health care and longer, happier, productive working lives for many people currently blighted by ill-health.
So the pressure on health boards to cut even further their budgets for patients’ meals is disgraceful.
One thing we should be considering is ensuring that our local shops have a fair opportunity to compete. Because they are much more likely to stock healthy local food.
And that means looking again at the system that sees large supermarkets paying only one or two percent of their turnover in local rates to our councils. Downtown the local high retailers are paying nearly twenty percent in some cases.
Time for a real level playing at last.
Slopping Out
Our prisons contain the 7,000 or so people who are least prepared to behave as members of society. Instead they are there because they prey on others who are making a contribution.
But locking up convicts presents an opportunity to re-direct at least some of these people into more socially acceptable activities when they come out after their sentence. And experience has taught that humane conditions help that process.
Ending slopping out, either by toilets in cells or through a system that allows prisoners out to the toilet, is an essential part of the process.
We now see 41 advocates in court, paid for by our taxes, representing prisoners who have been denied access to proper toilet facilities.
A waste of money and wholly avoidable.
When this government took many millions away from the prisons budget some years ago, they created today’s problem.
How much better it would have been to spend the money on a new prison at Peterhead and avoid today’s court battle.
There is still time and the time for that move forward is now.
