Transcript

viewing after limiting. Is the recording commenced, thank you. Members joining from home activate their cameras where possible and can all attend these mute their microphones when not speaking. Can those in attendance in the council chamber please use the desktop microphones and speak directly into them. Please do not come in during the items unless I invite you to do so. If members wish to speak at any point with a joining in person or via teams please notify the chair by using the raise hand function. Now I have to be careful with that because I only have one screen unless you actually have three screen or a split screen so it's difficult for me to keep an eye on things. So if I could ask Michael if you could just make sure that we pay attention to the raise hand, thank you. If any members lose connection or have any technical issues during the meeting please elect the committee officer Michael on the left. I also intend to take a comfort break part way through your meeting and will schedule that at the appropriate time. In the committee officer please take us through the sediment of all Councillors present by ROCOM. Good morning members, we have received no apologies for today's meeting and good members please indicate you are present when I call your name. Councillor Goodall. Present. Councillor Blackhead. Yes, I'm here, good morning. Good morning, Councillor Turvey. Councillor Evesant. I'm present. Thank you, Councillor Joji. Morning present. Good morning, Councillor Owen. Thank you, thank you, Councillor Taylor. Present. Thank you so much and then Aberdeen City Council, Councillor Walker, Councillor Clark. Present. Morning, Councillor Crockett, Councillor Farquhart, Councillor MacGregor. So present. Good morning, Councillor Sweden. And Sweden, present. Apologies and thank you. Councillor Bell. Present. Good morning. Thank you. Good morning, Councillor Bress. Councillor Devine. Divine. Divine Apologies and thank you. Thank you, Councillor Gull. Present. Councillor Robertson. I'm assuming we're on to Marino, but yes, I'm here and present. Thank you. Thank you, yes, we are on to Murray and Councillor Van der Horn. Here. And thank you. Chair, we have 14 Councillors present. Thank you. We have other members here present online and in the chamber, but we'll not, in this occasion, ask you to identify yourselves because you can get the last time we've been missing. Do members have any interest to declare if so indicate now using the race hand function and I will bring you in? Members are requested to agree to the equality statement. If you do not agree, please indicate I have the race hand function now and I will bring you in. Item three on the agenda. Members are asked to approve the minute of 29th December, or sorry, November 2023 as a correct record of proceedings. Does anyone have any comments to make on the minute? I take it the minute is there for approved. Item four, matters arising, kiss white. Thank you, Chair. No matter's arising, I was tasked with finding some further information about women agriculture and women in forestry, which I have done and will circulate to committee. Unfortunately, a lot of the funding, I suppose, the funding channels have closed at the moment, so there's nothing ongoing for people to come into, but these things are open later on in the year, depending on the scope of policy, so we'll keep a rest of that situation. We are currently looking on some other speakers for various topics, for future meetings and again, we encourage MD who does want some particular to come in to approach myself or yourself, Chair, with some ideas and just to keep things relevant and topical, appreciate that. And that's, there's nothing else arising at the moment, thank you. Thank you, Keith. Item five, Scotland's rural college, as you see, update and presentation, Dr. Richard Hermitage. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning, everybody, hopefully you can hear me, let's help if I shared my slides, wouldn't it, apologies. There we go. Thank you for this opportunity to come and provide an update. We've had some fascinating conversations in previous meetings of the group around the education skills and training piece, so I hope this fits very well into that area. So just by ways of introduction, my name is Richard Hermitage, I run the Department of Rural Land Use, which is one of the academic departments that makes up SIUC and the one that's based up in the north of Scotland. What I wanted to do in this presentation was provide a little bit of a background on SIUC itself. I'm sure many members of the group already know about us, but I thought it would be worth starting at that point in a bit of a refresh of some of our latest strategic thinking and direction. And then I wanted to focus on activities that are going on in the area covered by our group, and then end with some future directions that SIUC is moving in as sort of things to come, so to speak. So SIUC, as you may be aware, was created in 2012 by the merger of a number of agricultural institutions across Scotland. We're now based on a number of campuses identified in the map you can see here. So we have activities in Venice, here in Aberdeen, down in Cooper in Fife, in Edinburgh, Oak Ridge, and then down in the border countries at Barony. So that's where our main activities occur, but many of you will know that SIUC also comprises SAC consulting, and that has a further 28 offices across the breadth of Scotland and down into Northern England now as well. The institution's vision is to be Scotland's enterprising university to be at the heart of our sustainable natural economy. And we aim to do that by creating and mobilizing knowledge and talent, partnering locally and globally to benefit Scotland's natural economy. And this is really built around three pillars. One, that we're a tertiary institution, so we, in education terms, cover both further education and higher education across Scotland. Place is very important, so the map, I should have said, by original training I was a geographer so I like maps, so the map is just to emphasize that we are across the breadth of Scotland. We operate out of these campuses, not every campus runs the same suite of programs, but there are some common themes that run out of most of the campuses. And finally, our principal likes to talk about the Green Triple Helix, which is this link between education, government, local government, national government, and industry and business, and the fact that to move forward we need the three to be interacting. So, if you like that's our mission and strategy as an institution. Just a few sort of highlights of our latest strategic plan, so the commitment from the organisation is to remain rooted regionally, so there's few interesting facts which you may not be able to read too well there, but when the slides are circulated. But for example, we're in the top 10 of the UK, young universities, so that's the ones that have come into existence sort of in the last 10 to 20 years. In terms of knowledge, I always find this one an interesting one that people always tend to think about SIUC and consulting and our teaching and education, but we also have a very strong research presence, so in the last analysis of research in the UK which was something called REF, we were ranked first in the unit of assessment that we went into, which is the Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine one. Industry impacts, we can see that we have, try to read my slides, excuse me. It was a slide I borrowed because it was very good, but it doesn't always show up to, but to date since the creation of the SRUC, we're standing at something around £1.1 billion of involvement, so that's not necessarily done by the college, but what we've helped to generate. On a global scale, we're having an impact as well, we're in the sort of top 25% in the university ranking, so it gives you a bit of a global perspective on where we sit and the strategy moving forward for the organisation is around retaining and enhancing that local impact that we have, but also to continue to grow those global links. So I thought I would start my presentation and update on education, training and skills because clearly that's something that SIUC is renowned for and rightly so I would say. So starting with sort of the more fluid situation that as an organisation, we undertake both as SIUC and SAC consulting, a range of bespoke training and skills development opportunities. One that has been running recently is around carbon and we've had a range of internal employees as well as external colleagues doing that particular course. We've also had a peak restoration course run out of our Barony campus, which was at the instigation of various stakeholders. That's now potentially going to be turned into a full academic programme. We obviously also run education programmes and as I said, we engage in FE and HE, but we also have a schools provision which currently covers levels 5, 6 and 7 of the SCQF framework, so very much sort of nationals up to hires and additional hires and I'll say a little bit more about that later on. We obviously also do further education programmes. We do have some level 4 programmes, but when I was creating this, I was thinking Aberdeen and the North and so in the North, particularly in Aberdeen, we run 5 and 6 programmes. We have higher education programmes right across the piece, so we run HNC programmes in various subject areas, HMD. We have obviously degree offerings, so the general degree and the honours degree. We do taught masters degrees. We also are creating something new called micro-credential, so this is where you can take effectively a component of a masters programme, so a module from a masters programme. You can do it as you might have done in the past as a CPD activity, but now you will get credits from that and the idea is that there's an agreed framework which allows you to pull these micro-credentials from various places and once you've got enough credits, you're eligible for a degree, so very much around that widening participation. Obviously, we do research level education as well through PhD programmes. So in essence, we run pretty much across the whole range from sort of the nationals level and certainly higher level right through to sort of research PhDs, which makes it a very interesting place to work, certainly from my perspective. In terms of the sort of subject areas that we offer, so I focused on my department, but I'll say a little bit more about other areas as well, so the key areas run out of our Aberdeen campus at Crapeston are agriculture, rural business management, wildlife and conservation management. We also have horticulture and food and drink which we run as apprenticeships and I'll say a little bit more about that shortly. We also have running out of Aberdeen animal care and many of you will be aware of the new veterinary medicine school that we have developing and actually he's already developed. I'll always talk to my colleagues about, well, actually you're open for business because a number of programmes within veterinary medicine are running currently. The programme that will start shortly will be the full vet medicine degree. We have other areas which run out of other campuses, so engineering and forgery, environmental management, forestry and then, as you might expect, particularly golf course management, which is one of our biggest programmes and runs out of the 5th part of my department. These subjects appear in different guises and I've got a bit of a breakdown later on. We'll talk about the different delivery methods and the different approaches, but that's the breadth of areas. Within that, obviously, there's a range of different topic areas within rural business. We look at everything from entrepreneurship through to marketing, through to land management. Our rural business management full honours degree is recognised by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, so students who complete that get a sort of associate membership level with Rix, which helps them with a whole range of careers. We have had people obviously going into where you might expect into state management, but we've also had in recent years a lot going to the utilities, which is very pleasing and particularly some of the electrical and water companies. Horticulture and food and drink are two new deliveries out of Aberdeen, so both of these are apprenticeship level, so we heard a lot about apprenticeships from the talk, was it in the last meeting or the one before, from Lantra, so I will say a bit more about that, but we offer apprenticeships in those areas. Horticulture, we've talked a lot about in the meetings previously and what training is available, so we have started a trial of running our apprenticeship out of the Aberdeen campus, so my Horticulture team, who are based down on the campus in Cooper, come up to deliver block release elements of that programme, and some of obviously apprenticeship approaches is to work in the business that employs the students. So what I thought I'd also talk about was a little bit about the flexibility in the approach to training and delivery in education, so we basically offer our programmes in a number of different ways, so the vast majority are what I might call the traditional on-campus delivery, increasingly we're using a phrase called blended learning, which means it's not just about sitting in the classroom, traditionally I think many of our subject areas have been very practically based, agriculture for example, the students spend quite a long time in the fields in the engineering worksheds, dealing with the sorts of things that they would do once they graduate and work on farms and in the industry, but perhaps some of our other subject areas haven't been as interactive, so we are very much splitting that on-campus experience into classrooms, workshops, outdoors, in the community, and also an element is delivered online as well. Second method of delivery is distance learning, and I'll probably get on my soapbox at this part because I think the term distance learning became a bit of a dirty word during Covid when we were all coping with a very stressful situation, many people probably have done home teaching and other things which is not easy, but what I'm referring to here is what I call proper distance learning, so these are programs that have been designed from the very inception to be delivered at a distance, nowadays that's online, and we have a range of those programs available, we run an HNC in wildlife conservation, which is distance learning, we have a suite of MSCs which we also run via distance learning, and they've been hugely successful, they're a very good way of addressing widening participation, flexibility of learners because obviously the learning is done outside of normal working hours, so it increases the range of students who are able to engage with those programs. We add a bit of a blend into most of those programs by bringing the students on-campus, usually two to three times a year to do some of the more practical training elements, and that we find has worked really well. And finally, we have work-based learning, so these are the apprenticeships that we've talked about previously, we run our apprenticeships in two forms, we have what we call block release, and that's where the student works with a company, with an industry partner, and then they're released sometimes on a one day a week or one day a fortnight basis, or for a number of weeks, usually something up to about four weeks a year to do learning on-campus with staff. The other form which is becoming very popular and perhaps predominating now is the truly work-based learning approach, this is where the student is in industry, and we send out colleagues as assessors to go and assess them in the workplace, and so in this there's a combination of input from ourselves and from the business that the person is working in to deliver the learning for the student, and just to throw out some numbers, we have something like 130 apprentices on our turf management, which in brackets you read golf course management, but the official qualification is turf management currently, and they come from across the whole of Scotland. It begins to show you the power of the potential off-campus learning to increase accessibility to the learning opportunity. So moving swiftly on, S.I.U.C. over about the last four years has been doing a refresh of our approach to teaching pedagogy, if we use the correct phraseology, and our centre for excellence in learning and teaching is devised a framework called seedable, and seedable is about, as it says on the slide, embedding sustainability in enterprise, equality in diversity, and by enabling active and blended learning. So what we're about is turning out students who are sustainable, appreciate approaches to sustainability, are entrepreneurial, because let's be honest, a lot of the opportunity, certainly in the rural sector, potentially are through someone developing their own enterprise, so we think it's important to develop those skills. We're looking at equality in diversity, we're aware of some of the quality issues, certainly around gender, in a lot of the rural industries, and so there are elements within this strategy for us to look to address that, and then we want to make the teaching more up-to-date, so to get away from sitting in classrooms and have more of an active learning environment and use the best delivery methods and going back to online, there are certain things which can be delivered very efficiently and very effectively online, so we should deliver those online, there's other things that students need to be in the classroom, so we should put them in the classroom. So seedable is being rolled out, as we renew our programs, they have to be seedable compliant, and so we're probably at somewhere around about a 50% mark in going through all of our programs to get them to sit against this framework. What's nice is, we don't just think that this is a good approach to teaching and learning, the 2023 Green Gown Award, so this is a set of awards made across the UK, including Ireland, for sustainability. Green approaches to teaching, learning, there's everything from how you manage your campus, you manage it in a green way through to education pieces, and we won the Tomorrow's Employees Award, which was basically a reflection of how the panel had looked at this thought that we were developing, the employees, the students to work in industry in the future. Okay, so I wanted to go on to the activities that we're doing in the area covered by the advisory group, so I wanted to just start with the programs, and I'm not going to go through these in detail, but it was just to put something in to give you the breadth of the sort of programs that we are delivering, so we deliver at a further education level in Aberdeen, around agriculture and animal care. We have a whole range of apprenticeships for agriculture, horticulture, food and drink, and turf management, and I think I've missed off equine there, so apologies. Undergraduate, so we have agriculture, we've already been through these, animal care, vet medicine, we have rural animal health, which is one of the pathways into the vet medicine degree, and I'll say a bit more about that later. We have a number of online courses, so obviously students can take those wherever they're based, and then you'll see a couple of things in sort of a slight grey colour hopefully. So one of these is the technical apprenticeships, so at the moment what we run are called modern apprenticeships which are further education based, but in the future we want there to be a pathway of development for students who are on a work based approach to learning, and so we're in the process of developing frameworks to give the official terminology around technical apprenticeships, and these will result in a qualification at HMD level. So the first one that's been developed is around agriculture, we're moving on to look at forestry, and we'll move through a number of others, so I'm keen that for selfish reason for my department that we do one around the turf management and horticulture areas, because I think those are important. I've already mentioned micro credentials, but again that I think is really important. We're developing those out of existing MSC programs, but also things that we've worked on with stakeholders and partners, and clearly as an organisation we'll be open to approaches from organisations with ideas. At the moment that's at MSC level, so whatever we develop has to be of that sort of educational level, but I think it's an exciting development, and we're also developing other styles of research programs, so we have something called master's by research which allows us to give a student a taught master's program with a big element on research, so those are just some of the developments going on. So we just threw things that we run currently. So we have pre-apprenticeships which is a level 4 qualification, this we teach in conjunction with a partner organisation, and it proves very popular, it runs from the summer through to round about January, February time depending on how long it takes the students to pass the range of skills that they need to do, and we've got listed there the key ones, and you can see there's some generic ones and also some very specific ones to agriculture. We then have our modern apprenticeship, currently we run a version of the modern apprenticeship at level 5 and level 6, it has core skills which teaches things around IT communication personal development. We have industry specific training around emergency first aid, and then a whole range of the activities that we expect students do in agriculture to do, so they learn how to do tractor driving, building maintenance, and a whole range of qualifications. The level 6 builds on what the students do at level 5, and as the two provide a really comprehensive sort of grounding in agriculture, at the bottom you'll see it says the units are currently under review, so SDS who are the funders for the apprenticeships are going through a review of the frameworks. As always happens in education, the period between reviews varies, but we're always carrying out a route and branch review at some point, so for degree programs it's usually every five years that we do that. Already mentioned the technical apprenticeship, so the technical apprenticeship is meant to really build the leadership element of an individual, their skills as well, and to match what we will be teaching in an on-campus HND environment, so the program will draw on some of the material from our new HND, which has just been launched recently. So HND, arguably in agriculture, which is the example you can see here, is our bread and butter, the HND and HND have just gone through a process of revalidation to something called next-generation standards, so SQA has developed a modernization on its frameworks and the sort of key take-homes, and some of you may have actually done our HNC or another HNC at some point, you'll notice there's not hundreds and hundreds of units there. We basically have five units now in the first year and in the HNC year and six in the HND year. There's no less teaching to the students, we have just pulled things together. The benefits for the students is really that we're not assessing them every five minutes and I'll probably get in trouble for telling my little story, but there isn't quite an indent in Tullip Farm, which is where we do some of our teaching, but when someone told me students needed 45 assessments to get their HNC, I did somewhat go weak at the knees. It's an awful lot of assessment given that we're teaching the students for 30 weeks a year, you know, it's one and a half assessments a week, so we've now got fewer, more fit for purpose assessments that test their skill set in depth and I think it's a better approach and just to tell a side story, we ran the HNC for the first time in 22, 23. Instead of possibly 50% of the HNC students going onto the HND, we had not closer to 85%. So I think the new qualification is encouraging students to stay with their education. We'll see how many transfer at the end of this year, it's set year of running. We've just re-validated our agriculture degree, so the BSC and the BSC honours level and the key take-homes from this is we've been looking to make these more attractive to pull students through more into those final two years, but also to address some of the real industry problems. So there's more elements of entrepreneurship, more elements around business, business management and then looking at some of the more in-depth sort of agricultural problems of the future, so we've got elements around looking at impacts of climate change and how that might change the agricultural landscape, so I think we'll know how exciting that is the first student start on that in September. Similarly, we've reviewed and revalidated our Rural Business Management. As I mentioned before, this programme, One Pathway takes you to a RIX accreditation, but we now have accreditations around tourism and around business management as well, so there are a number of pathways that students can take through Rural Business Management now. Mentioned that we have Master's programme, so out of Aberdeen, we run all of our Master's programmes as distance learning programmes, so again some of you may have studied on our programme around organic farming, we've got one around agricultural professional practice, and we've decided to move forward to bring those two programmes together in this new sustainability in agriculture and business programme. This still retains elements around regenerative agriculture, sustainable agriculture, business management, but we put it together in a single sort of package, and we're recruiting that to that for September. Other programmes in my department in Aberdeen, we have wildlife and conservation management, which we teach right across the board, and the focus there is very much around practical skills, we were talking to nature Scotland last week about provisions, and one of the things that one of the professional bodies has identified is the lack of practical skills that students have, and I think our programmes very much have those practical skills, they spend a lot of time going out on identification of plants, identification of birds, doing practical conservation skills, but they also spend a lot of time doing the people side, so a lot of students, as you might imagine, go into roles where they might be rangers or wardens, and there are people skills you need for that, and that's embedded in there. As said, horticulture and food and drink, we are two new developments up here. We have an apprenticeship at level four, sorry five and six, it's a block release one currently, so colleagues have been coming up on a monthly basis to run courses with the students. We partly did this because we had a cluster of Aberdeen students, and rather than making them go all the way down to five, we thought we would come to them, and it seems to have been very successful in something that we are promoting and would like to extend food and drink apprenticeship is a brand new one, we have two apprenticeship around local food, and it's around manufacture and the developing of business skills as well, so again quite an exciting development. I mentioned courses for schools, so we run a course, a series of programmes that align with the sort of senior phase course options for S4, S5 and S6. We provide these pathways around a range of subjects in land based and veterinary medicine, and it's really to start bridging that gap between school and college throughout university. We have flexibility in delivery, so some of our programmes are delivered wholly online, some of them are delivered, partly online with students coming in for practical activities, some of them are delivered on campus, it just varies with the qualification. And here's just a list of those that we're currently running, so environmental awareness is a new one, you'll notice the odd one out that it's actually at level 7, so this is equivalent to an HNC unit, and I believe if I'm writing what I've been told maps against sort of advanced higher qualifications, so potentially it's for those students who are perhaps education a bit more able and want stretching, we have this qualification, and then you'll see the range of other ones. I would say that the levels are put there, we're indicative of the level at which the activity is done, many of these, some of them are done through SQA, some of them are college devised qualifications, but we have these programmes, numbers vary so environmental awareness is new so we're not sure, I know veterinary terminology is very popular, the horticulture one attracts students on campus down in Elmwood, around about 40, 50, 60 students, investigating modern agriculture is purely online, so that's had quite an impact, so that's our schools provision. Just to touch on the vet school, so I'm about as far from being a vet as you can possibly get, being a geographer, but these are just the key highlights of the vet programme, so the vet school itself is up and running, everyone thinks it isn't, but it has been running programmes for a range of students since last September, so our students are doing veterinary nursing, doing rural animal health, doing the zoonosis and epidemiology MSC, equine studies, veterinary care, assistant animal care, those have all been in the vet school, they're up and running, the programme to come online which will be starting this September in 2024 is obviously our veterinary medicine programme, unique elements about the vet programme is it is looking to attract students who are going to work in rural practices, are happy around large animal work, and so we've got a number of articulations into it to increase accessibility, so rural animal health is an HND gateway as it's got their programme, and basically students who study that can then get articulation into the vet programme, so a very different way of approaching veterinary medicine. So I just briefly wanted to talk a little bit about facilities, because many of you who probably know the life history of the Crapesdon campus and that it was reduced in size following the sale of some of the land under previous ownership, not during SIUC's time, and I think people tend to think that means that we've completely disappeared, but it's far from the case, so we have the Ferguson building, this is effectively the headquarters of the activities in the north faculty of SIUC, very, I find it a lovely building to work in, we have our administration based here, we have a range of classrooms and study rooms, and we have a laboratory block for carrying out research of various forms in that block, so really useful sort of campus, this is sort of, I did a bit of an estimate, it's probably about the top 10% of what used to be the Crapesdon estate, the rest obviously now are going to be under houses at some point, so I think a lot of people thought this meant that we'd lost our facilities, but far from the case, so our agriculture and some of our veterinary practice is carry out on Tullip Farm, which is one of SIUC's commercial farms, we've invested over a million pounds in the development of the farm, so we built a new engineering shed where we teach our mechanized agriculture, we've built a new covered facility over our animal handling area, and we now have a second animal shed as well, to go with one we already have there, we've also done a lot of work on the farmer's cottage, which is now a welfare area for students with a kitchen, a small classroom, changing locker rooms for students to obviously get ready for their practicals, so that's a great facility, and we run a shuttle bus from the main campus to this facility, which is about 10 minute drive away, just about a mile and a bit really, as the crow flies, and we run this as an organic farm, we have animals on there as well, so the students get the full sort of experience using this facility, we've also made use of two other facilities, and I've managed to fit them both on one aerial photograph, I'm using aerial photographs just because I do remote sensing, so I can't like aerial photos, but I think it also gives you a little bit of a spatial awareness of where things are, so we have Sunny Bray, which is again one of the old SIUC farms, in it we've done lots of work around, it's going to be where our large animal handling facilities for the vet school will be, and then Sunny Bray is literally just opposite the crepes and estate, and it's where the veterinary surveillance unit has been based for many years, and we now have small animal handling facilities, animal care there, and are very nice for those people who like it, dissection laboratory in that space, and there's just a couple of pictures in there, some people chopping up some poor defence lists, whatever they have on the tables there, and then you can see our equine handling facility on the right-hand side at Sunny Bray. So just quickly, we are a research institution, so we have research of various types going on, probably one of our most famous activities is the long-term soil pH experiment, which is shown in the little diagram at the top left, this has been going on for 65 years, I think it is now, it used to be on the main site, and there's a whole story, and in fact now an academic paper about how we moved all of that soil from where it was to where it is now, which is nearer to Tullock, cost about £10,000, but it's meant that we've been able to keep this project ongoing, and it looks at the impact of soil pH, and basically the team keep plots of soil at a set pH, so we go from pH 4.5 to pH 7.5, I think it is. Just to show how we're diversifying, we've got a news article there about some of the marine work that we do, so we have a number of colleagues who are working around looking at dolphin populations and sustainable use of the oceans, so that's sort of a newer area. We'll perhaps get to one of my colleagues to come and give you a research, come and give the group a research talk, and conscious of time, I'll click onto my last slide, which is just about where we're going as an institution, so at the top of the slide you'll see it talks about talk degree awarding powers and research degree awarding powers, so currently SIUC for our talk, programs make awards through SQA, Scottish Qualifications Authority, we also make our degree awards through generally Glasgow University or Edinburgh University. We will have an application in which is at its final stage for us to get the right to award degrees in our own name, and that will be exciting because it will allow us freedom to develop a whole range of qualifications, the micro-credentials are likely, and the vet program are likely to be two of the first of those, once we've got that we were then very keen to get degree awarding powers which allows us to award PhDs in our name, own name. Activities, vet school you already know about, I'm sure many of you know about seed pod which we're involved with, further south we have digital dairy which has been developed, we have a vertical farm being created at Edinburgh for both research and teaching purposes, and RAVIC which was open in Inverness by the Princess Royal not last month or month before which is an incubator centre for development of a whole range of activities and we already have tenants in there who are using it, there we go, bit longer than I anticipated but thank you very much. Thank you for that Dr Amritich, it was a very useful talk, very interesting and very, I started taking notes for questions but you've come so much into it that I've lost my own place. So anyway, any questions for Dr Amritich? Councillor Kenne, do you have a screen now to please, thank you. Yes, Councillor Kenne, please, from Angus Councillor. I found that thoroughly enjoyable and extremely interesting. I attended Cribson more than 40 years ago and what a change in the whole curriculum, the whole offering and I think it's really exciting. I could ask a hundred questions too but I'll keep it to one, wondering about horticulture and in particular, glasshouse production. The Dutch are dominant in Northern Europe with glasshouse production now but almost wholly dependent on fossil fuel gas or providing energy to do it and they're going to have the change away from that and I think we could find that there's an opportunity for us to maybe get some of that market because in the North East of Scotland there we have an abundant potential of renewable energy. So I'm really wondering, do you have much by way of teaching specific to glasshouse production? How quickly do you think you could develop that if the need arose and I'm asking really because if there is to be a potential for glasshouse production in Scotland we would like Angus to be at the very forefront of that as we are in so many other aspects of agriculture. Thank you for your question, yes, in our HNC curriculum we very much do focus around activities that make use of growing and the process of growing in glasshouses so down at the Elmwood campus we have a very extensive glasshouse installation and my team that deliver the horticulture are very keen that our flavour, so horticulture is delivered out of the Elmwood campus out of our Edinburgh campus and out of the campus we have in Glasgow and we are very much keen to have this sort of, if you might call it, the production horticulture side of thing as our sort of unique selling point for the programs out of Elmwood so certainly the students get a lot of experience of growing and the issues around growing in our glasshouses. We are trying to look at whether we might run our HND program as well, it's all to do with how many students we can get interested and that would certainly grow the numbers and I wonder whether also there is work going on with in the future to have the technical apprenticeship which is at that higher level in horticulture and I will take that one back to the team developing that because I think it's a really important point and when I go down to the site at Elmwood obviously pass a lot of the growing going on in glasshouses so yeah and polytunnel so I think it's a very important area and one that I'll take a note of and take back to the team so thank you for the question. Thank you very much. Thanks for that, I've got a good point because we have so much, there are so many things we could do in agriculture and Scotland, we have a lot of potential and when you look at the Dutch whether you are doing the best it seems and sometimes to destroy the own industry there is opportunity and we should be taking advantage of that and I hope our bosses and Edinburgh take note of that and try and fund us properly and get the agricultural sector moving. Now number we have our Councilor Julie Bell next. Thank you very much and thank you Dr Amritage for that, that was absolutely fascinating. I represent Keremure and Dean in Angus, sorry Angus is hogging it a wee bit. We have a project in Keremure called Sustainable Keremure that's all about like community growing, engaging with children and multi-generations and they're just about to take on a long-term lease on a field, something like a 12 acre field for horticulture, wildlife diversity and I'm thinking there could potentially be some scope to linking around research with SRUC and is that community growing that sustainable activity, multi-generational work of any interest to any of your research students do you think? I think there's potential for quite a bit of vibrant and exciting work there. Thank you. Thank you for the question, sorry, yes thank you for the question, no I think you're absolutely right I think we're very keen on the, as SRUC, on embedding and working with the community and I know that the horticulture teams currently are involved in a range of projects with groups from across Fife but we've also been developing links in Aberdeen as well so when my team have been up here they've been talking to one of the local community garden groups so I think very much we'd be very interested in linking up and seeing how we might be able to support the activities out of the onward site as well. We have our land-based courses as well and we do a lot of work around conservation so I think there's a number of teams and groups that would be interested in working with you and they already do a lot of community work so I'm absolutely more than happy to make some links and some dialogue on that. Thanks a lot and next we have Councillor Wandaher on a ticket you're going to do a pitch for Morley next. Now whatever made you think that yes I'm actually just really interested in the kind of multifaceted approach that you've outlined and particularly working with schools and taking that approach from school through to further education, higher education and so on and so forth I think that's really fantastic and given the examples and the work that obviously happens down in Aberdeen I'm just wondering what level of partnership is happening up here in Murray and whether there is more that we can do to support you being involved in or the so you see been involved in Murray and I'm also be interested to know how that would segue in into collaborating with UHI as well because I know that I think there's while some work is going on in in Venice a bit interesting to see if there's something we could do in Murray which is obviously an area with a high level of forestry, high level of agriculture and if I may just do the part of this as well which I think is interesting in what you're doing is the connection with SMEs and again Murray is actually exceptionally I think it's like 86% of our businesses are SMEs so I'm just curious to know how we can partner more effectively with the business community to forward some of the items that you've outlined. Thank you. Thank you very much for the question. I think the model we've got is it lends itself very much to what you're talking about and I think we obviously have our core sites and in Venice is arguably the closer one to you and our activities out of there are probably a bit more limited at the moment but there is a plan to develop those but we also do make use of the consulting offices the SAC consulting office of which they there are a number I know across that area. I think starting point is obviously a national progression award programs and the school's work and we have a dedicated school's team so there's a link on that last slide which takes you to more information about how to integrate with them then look with them. We are looking to sort of rebuild our outreach work because I think I've only been with the organisation since 22 so I arrived in the sort of the back end of the COVID era and when you know a lot of the outreach work had sort of been suspended and we are in the process of trying to look at developing and getting colleagues to be able to visit more areas not just necessary schools but also businesses so we take a lot of students into businesses particularly around rural business management and agriculture so that's another opportunity to sort of link in so I think I think it's about sort of looking at what resource we have in your area and seeing how we can link up both through the consulting teams and our sort of academic teams because I know some of my team actually live quite a way up towards the Murray end of the sort of the coastline and so we can probably look to see how we can link together so I think I may take that one away and have a thing but you know it's exciting and I do think you know our mission as an institution is to have these sorts of links and so I think this is the start of and part of the reason I wanted to do the talk was so that we could start these conversations so I'm probably not fully answered your question there but I think there's some exciting elements and certainly at the schools level that was that's certainly a way in where we've got tools in place that we can we can definitely make use of to start start the relationship. Thank you, Council of Divine. Good morning, I'm Linda Vine from Angus as well and I'm convener of the Education Committee. Thank you very much for your wonderful presentation but also for that link for the courses for schools because obviously we're very brutal here and I know there's an equine course going on in Webster's high and kidding you're I don't know if you're involved with that but we certainly could be I think making more use of your outreach people in our schools there's always a tendency for children, young people to look on rural skills as kind of picking raspberries or something you know there's just so much out there that we could I will certainly give that link to our director and hope that she will get in touch. Look at that I'll give you I'll give her your email as well if you don't mind. One little question I wanted to know was in your food and drink aspect do you or the courses is there an emphasis on agritourism? There isn't at the moment they're based on on frameworks which are quite broad and so we we have selected to deliver elements of them so in our two MPA awards one of them is very much focused around sort of thinking about sustainability thinking about how you get a product to market and then students can specialize in agriculture or horticulture with that one. In the MA it is quite broad and we have brought on sorry that's the modern apprenticeship we have brought on some additional units. I'm honestly I couldn't tell you if there was a tourism element in there but clearly it's an important area and we do cover that within our rural business management offerings at sort of HNC HND and degree levels so it's an element that we certainly are aware of and I will have a check. I honestly couldn't say but I can talk to my colleagues who deliver that program because they're very versed in what's in there. Just that also used to thank you for the point you made about you know and I think that's part of also what was wanting to engage more with schools is this to change the perception that you know rural is about going and picking raspberries or planting potatoes which vital important because we all like them but there are a whole range of careers across the whole spectrum and you know that's what we need to to get over to people I think so thank you for raising that. Thank you and that's a very good point it's a whole spectrum of careers it's not just picking raspberries. Well-going team two weeks holding the tatty holders in October to pick tattys which nobody does anymore. Councillor interjecting. Thank you yeah flying the flag for Murray as well. I've got two questions one specific and one a bit general. The first one is I am a veterinary surgeon so I'm really excited to see the vet school opening in Aberdeen but I do have some concerns around it because I think that I think the it's absolutely commendable the approach to the pathways and routes into the vet school but as we all know the vet school applications are extremely competitive so I'm just wondering with the fact that because the Royal College will have certain standards they'll have to do it quite and they'll have to still do small animals they'll still have to do small furries and they're going to have to do obviously the large animal component. How confident are you that people coming into your course are actually going to go out and work in the rural communities and work in large animal practice which is where we have an absolute shortage of large animal vets so that's my first question. My second question is a little bit more high level I know there's somebody on the chat who's going to come in and discuss but I believe there's a debate this afternoon in Parliament about funding for colleges and one of the issues we have at the moment and it links back to the previous lady from Angus is we are struggling to give our kids in schools the college day breadth of subjects because of the cuts that are happening with UHI so again is there an opportunity here where we can bring in the outreach approach to give the kids an opportunity because it is all about raising their attainment and not every kid's going to do hires and advanced hires and if we can give them these SCQF level qualifications in things that really matter to our area and sustainability of our rural activities I think it's really important. Thank you for your questions. I'm going to take them in reverse order because then that's by my area of expertise and so yes I think it is a big piece and I think you know the support of schools is really important and you know it's something that I think we take very seriously as an organisation to such an extent that we have a schools team which is split across the campuses whose job is to work with schools to provide support where we're able to. Obviously you've raised the issue of funding and we're all in the same sort of boat on that one. I think where the NPA awards that we've currently got in place are helpful is that they provide a framework and a package of materials that can be taken and used to support children, the pupils in the schools and to provide that sort of ambition piece and as I say most of them there's an element of practical work which has been designed in such a way that it can be done and we too bring students in a lot to the campuses but can also be done with other partners so you know we were looking for example with the one of the NPA's we've got in food and drink about using lab packs that we could send out so that those who couldn't access a laboratory could still do the experiments in a safe way you know we're not talking about throwing acid around or anything like that but to do experiments and I think it's an area that our seedable curriculum is particularly going to be useful in trying to reshape the way that we make these engaging activities which I think is another element of encouraging students to get to to go on to to education and further education and higher education so the points are made about SQA sorry not SQA about the SQA next generation I think are helping so I think you know please make use of our our schools officers and see how we can work to provide some of that provision and as I say everyone gets a bit twitchy about distance learning but when it's done properly it can be a very enriching experience and address some of the issues you've said where we're not able to get a physical resource in place so move on to the other question which I'm a little less qualified to answer not being a of a veterinary background but my my understanding of the passion and the the from the team is that we will have a slightly different admissions process so while students obviously will have to meet a good academic standard there will be a series there will all be interviewed and there will be a review process of you know what is their driver and their ambition to become a vet so I think I can certainly pass on your query to my colleagues are dealing with that and we can probably more fully answer but I think they're looking to draw students from those communities from the rural communities to come into veterinary medicine so I suppose there's that element of we're starting with people already based in those communities and hopefully that will will help somewhat in in retaining them in those communities as well so that's a bit of a botched answer but that that I believe is the is the drivers behind what my colleagues in the vet school are looking to do I thank you for that we'll now go to consular Ian Taylor of Aberdeenshire who will hold our author and ask your question thank you thank you very much indeed chair and just like many of the earlier contributors can graduate there the church and he's brought his presentation and just as valuable the discussion afterwards it's been truly enlightening and I had a number of queries but I'll just major in one and it went under the fancy title of the green triple helix you commented about education government and industry and I command the idea of the three groupings and I'm just wondering if we as a local politician I suppose were able to help in any way if you think there's a weakest link with any within these that three linkage thank you thank you for your question I think you know our piece is always to get that level of engagement and I think you know why I've enjoyed my membership of this particular group is to hear what the the regional problems are and I think that is and the regional issues and I think that is something that is really important and we need to engage with the councils in the northeast region particularly for the northern part of SIUC because we are the sort of we're sort of not quite the outpost but obviously the element that is looking to grow and develop probably the more than the other regions of the of the business so I think very much it's that support around engaging with schools engaging with projects such as you know the developers see pod to see where we've got perhaps around some of the green agendas things that we can support each other in so I know that colleagues from from the department and work a lot with different sort of community groups and different different local businesses we know as was mentioned we work a lot with SMEs but I think there is that piece potentially around for us to explore more where how we work with yourselves on you know the range of projects and activities that the councils are looking to do so I think it is that dialogue and you know I was hoping that today would be the start of that process so it clearly has been from the questions and and the interest that people have shown so so I think yeah I think it's about sort of moving down the political scale so I think as an organization we interact very well with the Scottish government you know a number of colleagues are on panels and they're invited to briefing sessions and brief ministers but I think there is that thing about how at a local level we can sort of replicate some of that in a bit more with a bit more strength perhaps to our mutual benefits so so yeah I think through this group we can continue to work on that thank you thank you are you finished Ian yes thanks very much indeed thank you Elizabeth and Majerik I apologize if I haven't pronounced you to your name properly it's fine Liz at land trust normally easier for this me Eric thank you very much just to update you on the training funds because I think I can tell you a little bit more about that which SRUC have contributed a great deal towards setting up courses sometimes bespoke for these funds women in forestry we had 108 approved applications by the end of March which was the end of financial year which was the end of that round of funding women in agriculture 276 approved applications currently at the ground 100 on the waiting list and for next generation there were 335 approved applications and the waiting list is growing for that one as well and if any of you are interested in looking at the courses the kind of courses that were badged for the funding and putting the link to skills hub dot scott into the chat so you can find them there again it's also pulled out a lot of the SRUC courses but as well as other training providers as well other things that we've also been doing with SRUC is the career event so there's be a farmer will be at SRUC Aberdeen on the 12th of June very much a collaborative effort between the skills for farming group but mainly that the heavy lifting is being done by SRUC on this one because obviously it's at their campus and so we've invited local schools to that what we're trying to do is to not replicate what's happening with the the mains of dipole event which is also happening in June and so looking we're targeting the schools that wouldn't normally be in the catchment for the mains of dipole so both of those events should be raising awareness of different careers within the sector what different types of jobs that are available within farming and how to get those jobs as well so hopefully that helps too thanks Liz I know was going to advertise right at the end at the farms event so we're very much looking forward to hosting that and our fingers crossed that it's a nice day although we've got some nice new big sheds so if all else fails we we can all go on inside but hopefully it'll be lovely so but thank you for the market as well just in case thank you Liz um no more questions nothing oh we have one from the city yeah and our computers don't work here so we can't I can't signal and I just want to have a broad question for you the demographics are they changing in farming and agriculture and picking up that they're more women going into farming and agriculture forestry and I'm also interested in movement from the city to the to the Shires is that changing you know obviously in the past industry has wanted people to come into the cities that suits a lot of industries is that now reversing to a certain extent thank you um yes I think we are seeing a change and it's really interesting that in a lot of our programs to the agriculture ones and the last few years our final year has been completely female and it's interesting because that means you know if we equate getting the honest degree puts people higher up so into the higher roles the sort of more agricultural business roles the consultant roles and more so than perhaps being on the farm and and so I think we are seeing that change with more of our students so if we look at the students I'm just trying to think with the current year it's not 50/50 it's something like 60/40 I would say if we went across all of the years but as we move through to the higher level years you know we do tend to see the female students stopping on longer than the male students so there's a bit of a reverse piece of work to probably do around that and in some of the other things that we do our wildlife and conservation it's probably about 50/50 our real business management is much more female based and I think because there is a big overlap between RBM and agriculture we're getting some of the students who thinking I'm going to do agriculture I'm going to do business and they're tending to go down the business route and so as an institution we've been told that we've got to look at that and see how many more male students we can get in so I think there is a change I think you know noticeably we're getting more a bit a better mix in I think we're probably not quite there on the the mix of getting more urban students doing our courses sending around agriculture I think RBM is a little bit different but not as much as you might think and I think the wildlife one is the is the very mixed bag because we've got a lot of career changes in that so there's a lot of you know students in the 20s and 30s coming to do that so one of the things we are looking to do is to start engaging with schools as we used to it sort of died out a bit and I started as a head of department in this sort of that period and been getting up to speed but one of the things I do I am keen on is to do is to look at the schools where we're getting students from and then the schools where we should be getting students from and then a group of schools that we target who perhaps have students with the right educational background but perhaps not got that tradition of coming so you're absolutely right I think for us it's a piece of work to do to diversify the group of students we've got because you can see in you know if I take the wildlife one where they really are from different backgrounds the quality of the the learning experience for the students because they're learning off each other as well as off us and as many people know you know that learning off each other is is just as important as somebody standing at the front you know managing the learning experience so I think you know I think that the latter one is work in progress I think we as an institution have put in place so all of the programs are governed through something called the Board of Studies and all the Board of Studies have an action plan around gender imbalances and for example in the agriculture one one of my colleagues is doing a whole piece of work around getting the right equipment for women farmers so you know boots that actually are ladies boots that fit boiler suits you know all the things you wouldn't necessarily think about but are actually important elements in encouraging people into the industry but say we've got some really great flagbearers who've come out from the female agriculture students who you know we're trying to use as ambassadors and sort of examples and get them to come in to talk to the students to sort of drive the agenda forward so I think that's where we're standing at the moment okay thank you uh Liz is that a legacy hand or you want to come in back in no just to come in to support what's just been said um absolutely agree the the number is the gender balance particularly higher education level um is pretty good male female when it comes to apprenticeships though the bias is very much more towards males now obviously apprenticeships they are recruited so that's not for the college to appoint so the the apprentices come to the college so and so you see so so it's a bit more difficult um to challenge that one through the women in agriculture practical training fund that's certainly having an impact we find that the vast majority of the applicants already have a degree but either the degree was in a different area or they still don't feel confident enough to take on some of the practical tasks that the farm work would require um the women in agricultural task force found that men were much more likely to encourage sons nephews to help them with practical tasks so the nieces and daughters had less opportunity to engage with some of those practical tasks and to build that practical experience so it's a work in progress um certainly the training fund has helped the the agricultural sector to access the the skills and the qualifications within this um more than half of the population um that are wanting to go into farming as well so that's it's uh it's developing and certainly the numbers at the high education are very um encouraging um but it's also good to see things like the next generation uh training fund open to both genders to encourage both to be uh continually engaging in um learning and development opportunities and that the agriculture bill had such a high emphasis or such a strong emphasis on cpd as well that helps thanks thank you lice uh before we're going to further michael i believe we have a couple of late uh members attending yes thank you chair so we have counselor walker from Aberdeenshire council and counselor race um from Angus council have both joined us late so could you confirm they have no interest to declare and that they accept the public sector equality duties please hi can the counselors who are other members who have joined can they confirm that they have nothing to declare and they accept the uh yes i call this statement etc i certainly do convener and i'm having to declare to declare my apologies also i've got nothing to declare thank you thank you we have another question from counselor kenny please yes it's really just a very quick comment um people spend an awful lot of their lives at their work and it's really important that they have jobs that they kind of enjoy doing and the whole idea that still perbain society of pink jobs and blue jobs is such a massive hindrance because it pretty much halves your options your opportunity your chance of getting a job that you like um and so really pleased to hear that we take great cognizance of this and we do know we can to to get forward from that position and we are making progress um when i attended uh cribson the ratio of males the females was 95 to 5 and they and they were excellent students the females and got a good career from the agriculture and we need more of that please i think we can all agree to that sentiment um so dr armattish thank you for coming it's a very educational uh experience and we hope to see you again and i think we can all uh agree that it was very useful thank you so number six nor agenda is mineral exploitation exploration rather in abadinshire for energy transition if um for this look Francis uh Fraser Gardner chief executive officer abadine minerals over to you Fraser i will get started shortly thank you uh okay uh thank you for that clarification that we are discussing exploration today and and not exploitation i can i can i can go into the um i can go into the distinct differences but we're not quite there yet um we're still in the exploration phase so uh first of all thank you for the opportunity to speak to the advisory group for the first time um about our our business and why mineral exploration is an important endeavor uh particularly in its links to delivering an energy transition as our primary industry producing the commodities that the world cannot do without the mining sector shares a lot in common with agriculture and indeed the agricultural community is currently the primary stakeholder group on our projects so it's a pleasure to and to be here and discuss or work with you this morning um just one very brief comment about myself and and relating to the uh the the last question there in the in the previous session about and the importance of doing work that that that you enjoy um my my background is uh i'm qualified as a geologist and my passion overall my life has been working with rocks so what what what what better way to spend your working life than i'm getting paid to do what you enjoy um about Aberdeen minerals we are a privately held mineral exploration company um focused entirely um here in North East Scotland looking for nickel copper and cobalt mineral deposits we um we were the the business was formed in 2018 so the business has been on the go for for quite some time um but really only started being more visible and and actively operating with with surveys on our projects over the last two years or so we are headquartered and managed in in the town of Ellen i'm not from the from the abadinsure areas you can probably tell but um my team and i um are are all located locally in the area which we think is is is very important uh mineral projects tend to be um uh in in rather remote parts of the world um and i spent my last most of my 25-26 year career working internationally in some of those remote areas um but it's a it's a real pleasure actually to be uh doing the work that we enjoy much closer to home the foundation to our business is our 100% interest in access and exploration mineral agreements with uh with local landowners and those agreements at the moment cover around 7500 hectares or 75 square kilometers our interest is is very much uh regional um we we're looking on a district scale for for mineral deposits and the map on this slide the map on the left basically shows the highlights in green the areas of bedrock which are of primary interest to us these rocks are called gabros there's a there's a very well documented series of these gabro rocks which are very specific to north east scotland and those are the areas shown in green they're not all um entirely prospective for the type of minerals that we're looking for but they are the right types of rocks and so that's that that kind of shows the scope of our overall interest but we are very much focused um in the immediate term in the area called arthrath which is a prospect about six kilometers north of the town of ellen arthrath is the uk's largest nickel deposit so it's it's a very significant deposit on a on a on a country wide scale and it was discovered by the the major mining company Rio tinto as farback as 1968 um a couple of recent developments with with our business especially in area of finance we have been fortunate enough to uh to attract the support of the uk government with a three hundred thousand pound grant towards our activities from the automotive transformation fund which supports projects um which help build out the supply chain to the automotive sector especially in the in the electrification side of things um and we were very pleased um a few weeks ago on the 25th of march to announce a five point five million pounds uh financing package for our business um all of which will be uh will be focused on investment in in arbardinesia over the next 24 months up until this point we've probably invested about two to two and a half million pounds um so um you know the the the the doubling of that budget over the next couple of years um i think kind of underlines the scope of our of our ambition in terms of how we engage with the agricultural sector um the minerals in the uk form part of the landowners property this is quite unusual in our sector in just about every other uh jurisdiction in the world the minerals are vested in the state so if a business like ours wants to explore and eventually develop um the the mineral resources then we would engage with the government and and and and and get our apply for a license and be awarded a license to explore from the government in this case in the uk where the minerals are privately held and it's the landowners who who we have to engage with so uh we we we form partnerships with landowners um as as a foundation to our business um they have the minerals we have the we have the the skills the and the finance and the expertise to evaluate the mineral potential of their land and we currently work with with about so we've got about 50 agreements with with landowners in arbardinesia mostly are around that arthraath area near ellen but we also have some agreements in the bell healthy area just north of arbardine and engaging with with with agriculture more generally we we obviously aim to work as as closely as possible with the farming community and we want to carry out our activities in a way that minimizes disruption so we carry out a lot of our survey work for example over the winter time when there's there's less activity on the land livestock are inside crops are harvested we can actually get on and and carry out our surveys and we're always very grateful for the for the cooperation of of of farmers landowners and more generally the the rural communities as we carry out our work the importance of what we do it's obviously very important to us as as a business but but it's it's really important for for for for me and for our business to to really highlight the the challenge that that we face in our sector and and this really is a a global scale challenge there is a there is a huge mineral supply challenging challenge that that faces the delivery of of an energy transition so as we move away from from a hydrocarbon based energy system we rely less on or we're aiming to rely less on fossil fuels that form of natural resource but we're moving the demands onto another form of natural resource which is which is the metals that are required to to facilitate the roll out of those technologies and the challenge is of a massive scale so I've put some some numbers there on the slide to achieve 2013 at zero emissions targets which which seem to be rather out of reach at the moment but if that's where we got want to get to in whatever time scale the industry needs to bring on around 18 new copper mines 17 new lithium mines 17 new nickel mines and 13 new cobalt mines now those are not numbers from our industry those are those are numbers from from the UN and bringing on mines of those scale there's no small feat these these these mines have to be discovered the minerals need to be discovered the mining properties need to be explored investigated financed and put through planning permissions and actually brought into production so we're looking at a really tight time scale to achieve those types of increases in mineral production and in the context of our country we rely almost entirely on overseas supply chains for these raw materials so we're relying on other jurisdictions other countries other geological provinces to deliver those minerals to us to support our industry and as we've seen in for example in relation to gas supplies we are very vulnerable to to market shocks those those types of shocks those pure geopolitical issues apply just as much to the mineral sector as they do to to the hydrocarbon sector so building domestic resilience to support our our our other industries really starts with with mineral exploration you know we're at the start of the we're at the very the very start of the supply chain and the work that we do and looking at geologically favorable areas like Aberdeenshire to to look at the opportunities both strategic and economic opportunities to identify and eventually develop and that our own mineral wealth and if it can be proven that that it's financially environmentally and socially viable to do so why specifically nickel copper and cobalt which are our key minerals of interest well these are metals which which are absolutely vital to the electrification of the economy and nickel and cobalt are metals which are used in in cathode materials and for avi batteries and for other technologies but the main demand and that's is being driven by by the ev sector and and copper of course is is universal and it's and it's important for electrical transmission so they they kind of small charts they're on on the left i mean basically the both both nickel and copper the the demand requirements over the next sort of 10 to 15 years and in both of those metals where we need to double the levels of production that that we have today so against that backdrop again the UK is currently reliant on 100 percent or 100 percent reliant on imports of each of these three metals nickel copper and cobalt but there are no currencies in the UK and specifically here in north east Scotland there are bedrock deposits that have been known about since the 1960s but they remain for one reason or another in the ground and and undeveloped so these are high value prospective metals to target hence their hence their focus on on that particular metal suite and in terms of the UK's own demand so there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a global sergeant demand but the UK is is is very one of its largest exporters and largest industries is the automotive sector and and that is basically what's going to drive the the the demand of these of these battery metals specifically so the the charts on the right there shows the the the nickel demand today at 3000 tons and cobalt at 1000 tons and to meet the the next Euro targets or the the the energy transition targets by by 2030 you're looking at a 1,600 percent increase in the amount of nickel that that industry requires so that's that's that's a huge increase just for our just for our country of one and the reason for that is and in terms of nickel specifically there's an internal combustion engine vehicle uses very little nickel effectively zero kilograms of nickel but the the battery the standard battery for an EV requires 40 kilograms of nickel metal so multiply that by 1.3 million EVs being produced per year which is the industry's target and you can soon see where that that that demand trajectory absolutely takes off so where do we if we don't produce these metals ourselves where do we currently get them from and for nickel specifically indonesia is the dominant global producer last yearly produced almost 60 percent of the world's total nickel supply indonesia nickel has has really taken off and and and they are now you're putting the market with with with cheap nickel metal products and they've been able to do that through primarily heavy Chinese investment in mines and processing facilities in indonesia but it's really important to be aware that although the supply from indonesia has been abundant the it comes at a bit of a cost so the charts on the right there shows the the carbon footprint the the greenhouse gas emissions intensity for producing the type of nickel which is produced out of indonesia which which has between two and six times the the carbon footprint compared to the type of nickel that we would potentially produce here in Scotland and that's because the the the mining and refining of of that particular types of nickel minerals requires a lot more energy and to convert to the high purity chemicals used in the battery sector and most of that energy is currently produced through coal-fired power stations not only that but the where this where the the nickel and refining nickel mining and refining takes place in indonesia is in some of the most biodiverse places on earth so in coastal areas around around islands of of wallacea where there's there's there's a lot of deforestation of of of biodiverse rich rainforest around these nickel mining areas and what of that mine production has has an impact on on the sea itself on on on on coastal areas and coastal communities so we believe that there's there's there's a way of doing things better and we believe that where we have opportunities here in Scotland and the UK and we were not the most mineral rich country in the world but where we do have opportunities to explore for and produce these raw materials to support an energy transition then we should be looking at opportunities within our own borders and these these are opportunities to to to really develop and the domestic capacity and and the manufacturing supply chain resilience we would never be able to meet our full long-term mineral requirements as I say we don't have the diverse mineral deposits in the UK to to to produce everything that we need and even and even nickel and copper we wouldn't really be able to come close to the to the total demand but we should at least be be be producing what we can to to increase that resilience doing this work at home would ensure the environmental and social responsibilities of mining and processing so we would we would be working within our own legal frameworks our own work practices our own human rights so practices and policies and and therefore we'd have much much more control and the consumer of products producing this country would have a lot more visibility and a lot more control in terms of of of of how these minerals were actually produced and and and and as well as ensuring those responsibilities then of course we would ensure the economic benefits so you know we would we would be creating jobs we would be creating economic benefits and and and diverse in rural rural economies in particular and northeast Scotland as the map on the right shows this is this is a map produced last year by the British Geological Survey which reviewed the mineral potential the critical so-called critical mineral potential across all of the UK and you can see there that northeast Scotland is a real is one of the key hotspots and so this is the right place to explore for and look to develop these types of you know this mineral potential in terms of our project itself at Arthrath and basically the the key thing for us is that the the geology here is favorable we have the right types of rocks it's been demonstrated in the past that the nickel and copper minerals that we would target a car here and are rich locally enriched in certain areas and and specifically at Arthrath this deposit was discovered in the 1960s but at that time only underwent very limited drilling program so the actual assessment of of the size and and and scope of the of the deposit at Arthrath was not fully explored and that's what we've been doing so last year we we carried out our first drilling program and the the diagram there on the right is it is like a slice through the deposit basically the can is my mouse visible there yep so this the scale down the right hand side here each of these increments here is 100 meters so the we now know that the deposit extends down to about 300 meters below the surface but all of the historical work basically took place in the top 100 meters we drilled the first hole this this this of longer hole here this is hole number seven from our program last year where we actually drilled 100 meters below the level that had previously been explored and we hit some of the highest mineral enrichment that we've that we've seen out the project and so that just shows with one drill hole we've been able to to to really open up the the potential here and we you know we're very encouraged by those early results and believe this does a whole lot more to work for and this is a kind of thing that happens at at this one locality and this is why if we can if we can demonstrate that the the potential of of this particular locality then we believe there are there will be plentiful opportunities across the broader district and region and to identify further deposits of this nature now what we are I guess the challenge of of what we face as geologists is that these deposits and host rocks formed 470 million years ago below what used to be a huge mountain range which extended from North America through Scotland and Ireland and across the Scandinavia our job as geologists is to try and unravel that 470 million years of geological history and pinpoint where these deposits are it's kind of like needle and a haystack but with the what's what's different to what we do now compared to the work that was done 50 or 60 years ago is that we've we've had 50 years of of geological research we have new geological models we have new technologies a lot of the the the the geophysical technology that we use to penetrate and understand what's happening in the subsurface has evolved a huge deal since the since the 1960s and 70s and we now have access to massive computing power to actually process data run models and properly understand these complex natural environments so that these factors combined with the strategic incentive to to find more of these mineral deposits and find them quickly and creates a very compelling environment for for new discoveries so a very exciting time for us and for our industry as a whole now going back to your your introduction there and and exploration versus exploitation and I guess this is a this is a key slide in terms of managing expectations we and our investors are obviously looking to our interest is to is to discover and then eventually develop mineral deposits which which are commercially viable but that is quite a long process and quite a long pathway and we are essentially just at the start of this process so the diagram here shows the shows the mining cycle it shows the steps that a project like ours and a business like ours would would basically take from starting with with exploration and discovery through development and into production important to highlight that our projects at this current time are very much at that exploration and discovery stage there is quite a considerable amount of work that needs to be done to actually locate a praise and then come up with a development plan in terms of where and how we are going to develop a mineral resource if we find something which is which warrants further development we're still some some some way off having the information that we need to make those kinds of those kinds of development decisions just to give a little bit of an overview of the type of work that we do a lot of the work that we do is is is non-invasive it's surveys from the surface so these are these are these are two geologists on my team out and about over the past few months taking samples of of the soil to understand the we we can use soil samples to to understand the the chemical makeup of the of of the underlying bedrock and and pinpoint areas of mineral enrichment and we can use good old-fashioned prospecting which is just getting out and about and mapping the rocks and sampling taking samples of of of of rock out crops and boulders around the broader area we carry out geophysical surveys and so in september 2022 we carried out a major airborne geophysical campaign across our projects and broader abradinsia we follow that up with once we use the airborne survey to to to to identify areas of interest we then follow those up with more detailed ground geophysical surveys and those diagrams on their the photos on the right show the kind of scale and nature of that work it's people on the ground using electrical equipment to take soundings from from the bedrock and and to pinpoint and locate where these deposits potentially are that that culminates in drilling and when we talk about drilling then we really are looking at small-scale mineral drilling so the picture on the left hand side there shows our shows our drilling program from last year at the at the site in arthraath we you know that it's small equipment we it's drive-on tracked equipment we we drive up to the site we we take up a very small footprint and we we design our programs to to be as as as simple as possible and to minimize any impact that we have on on on both agricultural operations and any surrounding communities so just to summarize our progress and plans this is what we're looking what we're working on now we're looking to do next we have received very positive results from our work so far and those those results have have supported the the significant investment that which we've just received and and the next step for us is is an all-around of drilling focusing on arthraath due to commence actually in june july um over a kind of we'll have an initial father three or four month drilling program and then on the basis of that work we'll we'll we'll basically decide where we go and what we do next it's very much a staged process where we where we carry out our investigations we gather the data from from the from the drilling that we do and then we make a technical and financial decision as as to as to the next stage in the program we would then look to all undertake father exploration across earlier stage projects which which we're in the process of identifying using some of those more regional geophysical surveys we are continually looking to grow our land position and meet with and work together with within an expanding landowner group the more we talk about what we do and and the more awareness there is of other activities then then we do and we are building some there is quite a lot of interest and and going into partnership with us and and we also have the opportunity now to expand both our staff and facilities so right now there's there's me and a staff of two and we're we're a very small technical team but with the new funding in place and and the scope of of of activities that we're looking to carry out then and we're looking to grow that that that team and the facilities that we have in Ellen and we are looking to increase our general engagement with with community and and broader stakeholders it's important that that's commensurate with with with the project progress so at a very early stage we you know we need to manage expectations we're just exploring we're just cutting out some early stage activities to understand what we have where but obviously in any one area as a project starts to gain momentum if it's successful for us then it is important that we we engage more fully with those local communities and and keep keep people well informed about about what's happening now and what and what potentially the future may hold so thank you very much thank you that was very interesting I'll open up to questions and I can ask quickly just one for myself the time scale of the project and barriers to completion I imagine with me all I have in my mind sometimes you see films where you find a goal deposit or a loyal deposit and within months it's being produced you seem to be very slow and careful just wondering what's over time scale and what the barriers are to your production yes thank you yes it's not we're not quite like the old-time speculators and in a gold rush but obviously we are motivated to advance and and ultimately develop these projects as as quickly as possible and start producing these minerals so urgently and and and bringing in some revenue but it is very important that we go through both the technical financial and community and environmental sort of viability studies and and that is all on process even even just getting the the financing to do that kind of staged technical work that we're doing just now that takes multiple years so the the typical time frame from the point of discovery to actually bringing a minerals project of this type of scale into production it's typically the order of 10 to 15 years and now we're we're already part of the way down that path but on a project like this in an area like this then it does have to be done systematically it does have to be done with with with on a well-informed basis does have to be done with a with a consent of of of the community and those are processes that take time just like any other form of development thank you put out questions Kevin Gilbert yeah thanks mr german um yeah great presentation freezer is it the flooding of the market by the Indonesians it's the main problem because presumably it's more expensive takes that locally than it goes that certainly doesn't help so that so that there's cheap nickel on the market just now which is which has led to a certain price which is quite a low price for our industry but again just looking at time scales we are not necessarily concerned with with what the price is now we're looking at what the demand outlook and and and the price for the product would be in 10 to 15 years time and and that outlook you even even with the production coming out of indonesia today that's still not going to be sufficient to meet the the the demand over those kinds of time frames and so that's not really that's not really a hurdle for us i mean we've been able to the key thing for us is to secure secure investment to carry out our activities and we've been very successful and been able to achieve that um but i i i i guess a follow-on point from that would be um there are other factors than just um cost which we think are going to become strategically important um we think that consumers of these products such as electrical vehicles are going to be um more aware and and more concerned with the um the ethical cost or the the non-financial cost of of the products that they are consuming um and this is where we have an opportunity here to actually um produce these minerals um and and and the the the the products from them that go into these um sort of eventual consumer products um produce them in a way that is satisfactory to that end consumer and and more than just the the the uh the financial aspect thank you uh counsel counsel on everson nice thank you chair and thank you for that presentation in which you explained really clearly your rationale for for this work and you've expanded on that bit there as well i just wanted to probe a bit more into the community element and the community consultation you are expecting at at the appropriate time i get to get that there's got to be appropriate time um but obviously we've learned locally how important it is for trust to be built up when when new things are brought into areas um which are going to have an impact on people locally so i wondered if you could maybe explain a bit more about your intentions around that communication with with people in the local area yeah so we do engage with um with locals around or even just around our current drilling programs and the work that we're doing um i mean the the primary community that we engage with um are the farmers themselves um but uh and and they're as the landowners and mineral owners then then they have an interest in in in supporting our work um the uh but but there are people in the community who are not necessarily landowners who who don't have a uh necessarily have a um a vested interest in in the minerals um but obviously um our our our still stakeholders and in our current and future activities so so we do engage with with with everybody in the area certainly around our drilling sites um we are um you know we have a process where we keep them informed of what we're doing um we we we we manage those activities to minimize any impact that we may have on those communities um and in fact that's part of the um that the planning requirement is that our activities are done in a certain way um notifications have to be given and and we have to follow certain um uh primitive development uh order uh requirements um so so so for now it's is a process of just making sure that we are providing the right level of information to people who are more directly involved in in our current activities uh but yes as we go on to the um the next stage and and and we crystallize more of a plan um then we will be looking to to to broaden um that outreach um to to a much broader community to villages in the area and to other people who may not necessarily have be be be so in in the in the in the directory of our activities but with nevertheless um have an interest in and how they may well be impacted about our future activity but until we until we actually know what the future looks like this is where we have to be very careful with managing expectations until we actually um the questions that that people have already um and and that they that are already posed to us on on a kind of small scale on a on a limited level um we don't have the answers to those questions yet and until we carry out the work that we're doing just now so that's where it becomes important actually rather than go out and and present some bold um sort of case for for what we think this might look like and then um set expectations start making promises and and um start raising questions which which may not actually um you know people may not need to be concerned about those particular questions um we we we we want to manage those expectations um so careful as we proceed thank you uh Councillor Taylor thanks chair and thanks Fraser again excellent presentation and my question again touches on your previous previous say for the previous question and indeed may be going a little bit further than than what you're able to answer at the minute um I'm particularly looking at slide day and where it would appear and you've already commented that you're drilling far deeper than what's been done before and it would appear that the deeper it is the consternation of the minerals you're looking for uh in cases although it may be that the depths of the seams are shallower are you in a position to comment as to how the extraction is likely to come about and I appreciate things could change techniques could change between now and well whenever it is then just down or so um you also come into the 2030 I was a major impact upon demand that's only six years away so some of these things will be coming about well yeah six then 15 years time or so um so I wonder how the extraction is likely to come about thank you yes thank you and that's probably the question that we get asked most often what what does this look like um and and again that's why we have to be quite quite cautious about how we position things because we don't yet know but based on the information that we have in the fact that our drilling is taking us deeper um and things are improving um as we go deeper um we're looking at um a depth of bedrock which would require underground mining techniques and that would certainly be our preferred approach where we are um keeping all of the the mining activity all of the mining infrastructure um underground um and therefore the the the impact the surface impact and the footprint of our activities um on the surface would would be of a very limited nature um and this that's that's the style of mining which is which is prevalent now um you're across across Europe um so for example I have some previous experience in Ireland where one of the largest uh zinc mines in Europe um operates right next to the town of of Navan um that has a very extensive underground uh mine which which kind of goes under the town and areas around the boat um and if you live in the town and drive near the mine site then you did have very little idea that it was actually there um so these things these things in a modern context this is where this is where I believe and we believe we can we can do a much better job of of of managing um erminable requirements uh than open um than strip mining and rainforest areas of of of indonesia just to give that particular example um so ideally ideally our our future would be would would be as an underground mine um a caveat that by um by the comment of course that um it's still an early stage in our investigations in terms of meeting those time frames the 2030 or 2025 time frames then uh yes um we would not be able to deliver um any material um into the into the the demand within that within that time frame um but this is not just a this is not just about delivering that initial material to meet that time frame um but it's about building longer term um industrial and economic resilience um for this new electrified um so future so um certainly if we're looking at 10 to 15 years that kind of time frame um even if if Scotland and the UK um have to depend on imports up until that point then that's just that's just the way it's going to be um but in the meantime we should be building as much resilience as we possibly can thank you uh London Patterson hi thank you thank you Fraser very very interesting as ever I suppose I'm not going to ask any questions um it's more of a comment we for any if you Scotland engaged with Fraser and his business partner probably a couple of years ago now not long after the business kind of became a wee bit more visible up in the northeast and it was as much to find out what was going on because you know we were wondering you know we're going into potentially quarrying land and what would impact be on farming communities so on and I have to say we were extremely delighted with what we learned um we were we have since not changed our opinion on any of that the the manner in which Aberdeen minerals operates up here for us is nothing short of brilliant and um we are very comfortable um with the way that Aberdeen minerals operate in the locality and I would go far to see with my limited knowledge of geology that I think this is extraordinary exciting exciting times for for our area up here in the northeast um so that was all it was I'm just endorsing um the behaviours and the way that Aberdeen minerals conduct themselves locally um and yeah that's me speaking on behalf of any if you Scotland and it's personal as well so thank you always great to have your support lama thank you very much um and yeah since we had that initial engagement with you um and we we'll end a lot about um about any if you Scotland and and you know it's very important for us to to to learn what we can we we need to communicate about our industry but we need to learn as much as we can um about um about the agricultural community as well um and since we met we we have joined in a few Scotland as a as a professional member um and and you know really do um uh value the um the uh that membership and and the information that we learned as well um I have spoken a couple of times I've been to a couple of uh events where I've spoken to the farming community one was uh in a few Scotland in New Deer I spoke to the New Deer branch um and engaged there with their members um and more recently I actually spoke with the uh the women's institute at uh in Tipperti um and engaged with their members which was very enjoyable thank you for that Fraser and a good point Alorna Gillian a coast on Gillian Orne. Thanks very much. Hi Fraser um obviously being a ward member for the Ellen and District area I've obviously met Fraser and I've obviously been to his set up and everything else I have to say I found it incredibly exciting uh like Lorna I think there's there's new dimensions and everything I think actually you've been fairly well accepted now within the Ellen and District ward which is really good and I think people do know and understand now when they see some of your flying things they know exactly what it is rather than everyone looking up thinking oh my god what's that um and obviously you had a few teething problems to begin with but I think um you seem to have ironed them all out now and I think it's really good and I suspect um I'm looking forward next we agreed that I'd go on site next and have a have a wee look so um to see it see it actually happening on on on the surface which is also good but I do think it's important the communication aspect it really is that so that people know and understand um and I suspect there's lots of people around the table that could point you in the right direction in terms of who else you really need to sort of tap on the shoulder and I think if you could do that and just get a little bit more information out there uh I think it'd be really good I put it all on Facebook when I went um and I got quite a number of likes and everything and I put it on Ellen matters um which is also a good a good way of actually making the community understand what's going on and I just want to wish you well yeah thank you very much for that support and um yeah indeed um anybody with with with any kind of um feedback or any pointers um I think that's why it's it's important to um to have this opportunity and in groups like this and speak more broadly um to um to the community about about what we're doing and and we are um we're very open to to to to hearing what what people have to see and the ideas that they might have um in terms of ongoing engagement um it is much easier and more fulfilling uh for for for people coming to see us if we actually have something on the go on the site um and something of tactile and and and interesting to look at um and in that regard um we we are planning to start drilling again um in June, July um and we're very open to um to to to anyone who wants to come along and actually see for themselves what we do how we do it and see our operations actually in action oh thank you for that thank you for that council alone uh some good points we'll meet and if there's an open invitation I'd like to come along too it's uh be very interesting to see what you're doing and it's also very useful to know what your helicopters with those big spinny things in doing because we thought they're perhaps looking for aliens or russians by his own it's good to know what they what they ask us do we have any questions from the city yes we do yes i've been waiting patiently and so um i've been following your story in the present journal it's very interesting and i think you're absolutely right about the concept of provenance for customers is going to matter where the nickel comes from for a lot of people i'm interested in what you think you've probably made some calculation and you'll have knowledge of how much nickel is left in indonesia and how long that's going to take before that runs out and if you're maybe coming into the market at a time when their nickel um is going down in in their ability to mine it um and what you think your balance of trade is going to be you know you're going to be how much so obviously you want the provenance but they'll probably be export and import what do you think those kind of percentages will be yeah interesting question about the the the the nickel that's being produced now we're having in the world and and a given to knees an example because there is the largest producer but the other the next largest nickel producing countries at the moment are the philippines which is a very similar geographical environment and a similar type of type of nickel and then number three in the world i think still is erosia and and so obviously we're all a lot more sort of geopolitically aware about about where the materials that we'd um sort of come from um but you're uh you speak to a good point so um right now uh the the capacity and a lot of these countries has has increased to meet today's demand uh but both the the demand trajectory is increasing and these are still finite resources which um once once they've taken the the the easy deposits the near surface ones and these are ones to grin and build those and mine and places like Indonesia um that's not necessarily going to going to last forever so you have that combination of factors of of finite resources and an increasing demand um so that's why it's important to to to look at projects like covers because we we are thinking in time frames not today or tomorrow but in 10 to 15 years um in in terms of the in terms of the balance of trade import and export we are very much focused just now on what the uh what uk industry require and and this is this is where we got and we have received funding from the uk government grant funding um that that is going towards a project that we're working on which actually keeps or or or or investigates the potential to keep the whole supply chain here in the uk so there's a there's a production of the raw mineral material but then the next stage in the process is actually refining that into the um sort of high purity chemicals that the batteries require that's not currently possible in the uk um if we were to bring something into production today we would basically have to sell our mineral product overseas to a smelter or an overseas facility in which case we're not really achieving anything in terms of securing end-to-end uk supply chains and so there's work that's been done just now to actually um ensure that the entire supply chain um so so we would be looking to actually the the the whole so basis for like grant funding and and for that project is is to actually make sure that the minerals that are are being produced here are kept here um and not exported in certainly in the in the raw form um once those battery materials are into the products or into the the manufactured products that then whether that's for internal consumption or for export I mean most of the 1.3 million vehicles produced in the uk are actually for export so the the overall balance of trade becomes a lot a lot more complex once once you actually get followed downstream um but in terms of what we were looking to produce then it's very much for the for the uk market that's you know we we that's where we see the strategic potential as well as just the financial value in in doing what we're doing and of course the resilience aspect which I think has become more um cognizant for all of us after the pandemic and and now with the wars that are going on just now as well thank you any other questions for Frieza no well thank you Fraser for coming this has been very again educational and we've enjoyed your presentation and it's enlightened as always of what you're doing north of Ellen and we all wish you well in your future endeavors thank you next in our lists as farmer led farmer driven presentation by Peter Petey Hunter Farm Regional Advisor so over to you Peter thank you very much and my colleague in both Beth Alexander one of five program managers gonna start good afternoon all and thank you very much for this opportunity to have us along today to present on the monitor farm Scotland which is a farmer led farmer driven fully funded project by Scottish governments knowledge transfer and innovation fund and Beth Alexander and the program manager for the monitor farm program I'm also a beef and sheep farmer in Persia so got a real vested interest on developing the current and next generation of our farming industry so the concept of the monitor farm Scotland program first began back in 2003 it came from New Zealand originally and the first monitor farm was down in the borders the lives they family were the very first monitor farmers and all those years ago that concept has really evolved over the last 20 years and it's been an evolution not a revolution and we have launched nine new monitor farms back in November 2022 so they're not so new now that they are a year and a half into the program but with that we've changed the structure of the program this iteration is managed by quality meat Scotland with support from AHDB on the serial side of the project and with that we've brought the failed delivery team in house so there's myself as the program manager and I have three colleagues Peter Piti is the regional advisor from the north and Christine and Mora who managed two other areas for the program and as I mentioned we are fully funded by the Scottish Government Knowledge Transfer Innovation Grant so we have 1.9 million for this program from 2022 to 2026 so our aims of the project as I said we are farmer-led and farmer-driven so really driving that knowledge exchange on farm we want to create an open and honest space for that peer-to-peer based knowledge exchange so creating an environment that farming businesses can come together and share share their ideas we want to drive database decision-making we've had a real focus on data collection in the first year and a half of the project and establishing baselines and then on top of that we're establishing a network of discussion groups this year best practice and drive innovation and new thinking so we are our nine monitor farms for 2022 to 26 so we have a cluster-based approach for this program so we've grouped the nine into three clusters so up in the north we have Peter Piti is the original advisor up here and we have the Banff and Bucken Monitor Farm which is Bruce Oven and family up at Salkentree we have the Strath's Bay Monitor Farm the Smith family of O'Kownick and we have the Deside Monitor Farm which is Duncan and Claire Morrison at Michael Melbourne. In the west our regional advisor is Christine Cuthbertson and she manages the Stolenshore Monitor Farm which is the Duncan family of Lanza Drumhead the Seifier Show Monitor Farm which is John and David Andrew at Rainston Farm and our Gail Show Monitor Farm which is on Iowa which is Craig and Petra Archibald of Kregain's Farm. And then finally in the south we have Moira Wilson as our regional advisor and we have the East Lothian Monitor Farm which is Strictly Nicole of Castleton Farm we have the Roxbury Monitor Farm which is Robert Wilson at Powerboke and the Dunfreece Monitor Farm which is Richard McCormick and family at Farmbackle Farm. So with our main farms across Scotland we have a real diverse tapestry in the individuals farmers themselves the farming business setups we have multi-generational businesses and a diverse range of enterprises from beef sheep, arable, many with diversified enterprises on top of that. So I'm going to hand over to Peter now who's going to discuss how we can bring that to life. Yeah thank you very much Beth. Thank you yes I'm the regional advisor for the north so three farms as Beth has mentioned. I'm just going to go over some of the things that we do on these farms. So the real key thing about the Monitor Farm program is it has the farmer's voice on their farm, these three monitor farmers and their family. So just an example here we've got Bruce Ervin last summer Bruce up at Sockington he's got very very light soils, has real problems with keeping grazing going after mid-summer as it dries out so he's focused a lot on mixed species swage and his grassland so what you've got here is Bruce explaining this to a group of farmers and consultants and students on his open day which was last June and will be again on Friday the 7th of June up at Sockington if it knew about that. He's shown it demonstrating it. We've also got Duncan Morrison who's the Deside Monitor Farm well he's also got two farms and done side as well on Kevin Gilbert's Wombow Hill Farm and on his own home farm at Upper Ingeustre near Inveruri. But here he is up at Wombow Hill talking about his beef cutland surprise and he is a man that knows his figures, he knows his cost of production, he knows the daily live weight gain of his cattle, endures and he's been doing more work with Scottish Rural College and with the the group as well to investigate the most profitable way of delivering his business. There's very much low input figures there and very little use of fertilizer, a big focus on good grassland and soil management and across the three farms he's got. Something will click and work. Oh is it moved? Oh that good stuff right. So the way that the monarch farms work to deliver that farmer-led farmer-driven concept is we have the farmer but around about that farmer is a management group. Now we've got for each of the management groups in the north we've got about 20 to 23 names of whom about 15, 16 and that number the people actually are changed slightly for each management group meeting. We've got four meetings a year, they work very very closely with the farmer, they will challenge the farmer, they will help the farmer answer some of the questions they have about their own farm at the Strath's Bay there was a real issue this year, a very good piece of work being done with Scottish Rural College. It was SEC on animal nutrition, cattle were going really, calves are going really well and then they got an outburst of pneumonia at one of their stadiums. So the management group suggested Jimmy Robertson and Aberdeen, another dean consultant used to work at the college and university come in and give a talk to the management group about ventilation in the stadium at the Strath's Bay Monitor of Farm and then from that comes a report that we're able to publish on the Monitor of Farm website. So it's delivered change for the monitor of farmer and the management group themselves have asked Jimmy to come back and talk about ventilation to a much wider group in there in the autumn in Strath's Bay on one of the other stadiums of course as well and that bigger group open meeting is open to the community group which is a wider group of farmers and consultants and others who come to open meetings and there's two of these a year usually a winter one and a summer one on the monitor of farm. Last year decided up at Ingleson the message was get that right beast for the right the right system on your farm and Duncan was showing off for the first time to people the way he manages his heffers and humanities and replacement replacement animals and he manages bull beef system there. So again we tend to have speakers we have four speakers there four stations people wandering and on to spending time at each of these stations we had vets who had Duncan himself who had a specialist and the like so they're community events they're often you know they're energetic they're finished off with a nice little barbecue from a local producer as well so it's talking about an encouraging community at which button do I push that one yes good okay it's it's also it's also learning as well it gives an opportunity to ask farmers in that management group in particular each of the management groups what do they want to do a little bit of work on to take time off the farm so in the case here we've got a lot of focus going forward on soils and good soil management healthy soils healthy in terms of the composition of the soil the structure of the soil and also the biodiversity that lies within it so it was a fantastic opportunity to get 10 or so farmers along with Nicki Yoxel for pasture for life to come and dig some holes and in meekle moulding and look at that I was really good to see because the quality of the soils they are superb soils well managed no compaction and Duncan able is the farmer to explain what he's doing to maintain these soils in good condition and an opportunity for the farmers to take that land and back onto their own farms back home it's also an opportunity to for local innovation this is mother Duncan's herd advanced system here on the right you see in the picture this is a cattle automatic weighing machine so that there's water in there that the cattle go into drink and as they go into drink they're weighed as they as they get weighed you can there's a program it can be applied to that if if the time is right you can use that weigh system to drive the animals through and then shed them off so into whether you want to feed them differently whether you want a certain group of animals to be going off that this of that farming perhaps to some other some other place so it allows that so it allows muddle an opportunity to do real farm testing of his of his homemade and developed project and get feedback from the management group as well so that's part of what goes on there um being farmer led and farmer driven and my role in this is often for somebody to say well we've heard about this we've heard about SIUC talking about the importance of body condition scoring on cattle which is an important bit of being able to manage your cattle before carbon so that uh cattle are checked for the weight and body condition and then you're able to alter um the nutrition for them to bring them into prime condition for carbon and the evidence this is professor Simon Turner from SIUC and he's able to come and explain the importance of body condition scoring in cattle and that that improves carbon um outcomes so better carbon with the cows in good condition uh it's better colostrum for that first drink from the calf and it's also better performance from the calf afterwards as well and then the cow is able to be in good health to get back into condition for serving by the bull um all all of it important for for profitability um or on the farm and just for good outcomes you've got a healthy calf a well-growing calf a good cow um so he's coming up to uh he's coming up to talk in two meetings um one in strats bay in um uh in september and then uh to what with blue seven and the community group in an open meeting um in decev in november and then following on from that he's hoping to use and help you what with the monitor farms to put some further training in place for people who have got a particular interest in that so we will be doing a further training we hope with a number of farmers afterwards just improve and get that message out so i mean there's only five percent of farmers at the moment are doing body condition scoring it's an opportunity to explain the benefits of it and get much more people practiced in it and again that's one of the things that come from the community group they've asked us to help develop this and we'll put that in place. abbey mcgillbury um you know people in farm will hear an awful lot but my hair starts now it's it's the information that's automatically registered uh when you're registering your your carto and your register and calfbaths and it's producing a whole screed of information that scott eid um is putting together into a visual display that helps farmers understand how they're getting on in their cattle performance so livestock performance on farms and abbey mcgillbury is one of the key people within scott eid she's also a member of our management group and she's coming to give a discussion on this and the electronic identification of of cattle uh at the the summer meet at stratsby so again that wouldn't have happened without that one farm program being in place there we we can take it beyond once a year we'll do a um a bigger what's called a cluster meeting so that's it reflect it it goes out the invite goes out to farmers community group members and a wider audience beyond just the three farms individually so it was a cluster meeting and we decided to have it in hunt lake and lamb lamb performance and lamb lamb condition and lamb quality is really important in this period leading up to christmas so we've got collaboration with uh brucevin or farmer um and one of the local farmers to supply a a lamb carcass we've got um two different groups of buyers we've had the mat talking about what people buying at the mat are looking for from their lambs and we also had woodhead brothers saying what they look for how when they're buying a lambs off a farm but just slightly different so of real interest for the audience to hear different buyers looking at different ways of marketing and presenting your animals for the market what a vet that took was describing how to get your lambs in the condition for sale and then we'll have these guys for rebound uh well had the the butchers and huntley come in to do a lamb demo so they took a lamb carcass a local lamb carcass killed locally and split it in half half of that lamb i was cutting the old traditional way the way that you'd have been familiar with um if you'd been buying some lamb 20 years ago that doesn't produce enough income for a butcher so what they're doing is they're spending time cutting that carcass up into new cuts that suit individual buyers or small families or people who are wanting a new flavor um so he was showing all the herbs and spices he used he was showing how to make long kebabs he was showing how to make small roast he was using the whole carcass to add value to that carcass which adds money into the the business of course as well but it makes it attractive for people to go into the butchers rather than just buy from all day or test goes or or whatever it gives us something extra it was a fantastic demo um served up with uh lamb lamb curry and lamb lamb stew as well um from the local from the auction years restaurant as well but 130 attendees added fantastic feedback as well so you can tell it allows us also we've got keynote speakers who want to come and address an audience about something they're very passionate about passion runs through the heart I think of the monitor fund program but Michael Blanche as you can see Pash there pumps me up he's an absolute advocate for for for grassland it's got mixed species in it that gets down into the depths of of the minerals within the soil it provides a better range of feed for animals help them drive the performing so on so Michael Blanche was was a fantastic speaker that was at last again last summer's meeting and we have others keynote speakers come in we've got John Gilliland professor John Gilliland speaking at bump and bucking on the 3rd of June on net zero and the importance of net zero in farming and we've got um we've got others coming to speak you know the keynote speakers at the other monitor firms as well one of the important things about the the management group suggestions and the monitor fund program as well as allows us to bring together interested farmers to go and visit other interesting farmers so Keith was with us on the trip south conceived of at d-side monitor farm meeting involvement with an invitation up to the north doctor bump and bucking as well to go down and see four farms over two days down in the south of Scotland in the north of england and the ideas from the community groups and management group itself as you know to do contrast so we we looked at Stuart Mitchell's organic farm almost no inputs at all into that farm and slow growing animals um but but profitable making a profit you move from um I know you can look at high input farm where this where John Elliott is producing he's absolutely massive bulls bull beef um and the like but pumping food into them but focusing on the genetics that lead to efficient efficiency so you know for a one conversion rate of every four kilos in the animals growing by a kilo but I mean I'm talking about 12 kilos of feed um into an animal a day um you know driving them on bring bringing huge production um gains from that and again profitable in a completely different way and you've got our farmers sitting in the middle out looking at oh there's one option oh there's another option and we went to see two other farms as well um one in the north of england another one in the in in the south of Scotland over these two days each one of them producing profitable livestock each one of them doing it in a completely different way also these monitor farms catch the interest of politicians um this is uh this is Markham Smith and and Colin behind him in the distance here um looking at a piece of ground it starts bay that has a real chance of being planted out with forestry and yet and that there is incentive to do that and yet this piece of ground has been an open moorland for hundreds of years and has its own biodiversity and its own natural capital and value and you look at the maps and it was always up in moorland behind them is forestry for the left is forestry over to the right is forestry as well and yet when we did it but we were able to get nature Scott to do a biodiversity survey over this piece of ground there are over a hundred species of plants just a two day survey over a hundred different species they identified on this open ground and some of the plants are at the very most easterly range um that the discovered in Scotland so there's a very valuable piece of ground so that information and that opportunity gives Markham a chance to explain why he wants to keep that in open moorland and speak to others who may feel under pressure who might make the right decision might be forestry there might be right decision might be woodland but the right decision might also be to maintain open pasture as well and it was just interesting for Aaron Burgess the Green Highland MSB to see how livestock can enhance nature on the farm because we also had the wood we had the cattle in the woodland as well to see how it enhances it at the same time also as it raises various challenges for farmers in the area of the Kingham's National Park in this case um once we have interest from Holyrood we also have interest to um from Westminster so we had a call recently asking if Richard Thompson and B for Gordon could come and visit um the Decide Monitor farm so about three weeks ago we came up um and visited Duncan Morrison Upper Engleston and along with him we invited our chair from that management group Keith Stewart who's a finisher um up at Huntley so they had a lively discussion and debate about the challenges facing livestock producers up in the north east and found them very a very attentive visitor to the farm as well and also gives opportunity for our chief executive as well Sarah Millet to come and discuss um the political situation and the work that QMS are doing in the area so that's some of the stuff that we do um we've done over the last 15 months or so around about um the monitor farms up in the north east we're going to pass you back at this point um the the bed. How could you Peter I think it was a really great way that you could bring it to life with the photos and um one thing that is clear is the people are really at the heart of the program um although we are looking to achieve environmental sustainability economic sustainability social sustainability is a really core pillar to our program and allowing that opportunity for networking and sharing ideas is hugely valuable so looking at how we measure the impact of our program and as Peter said we're delivering open meetings on farm so these are wide reaching uh community meetings and our average attendance at them has been a 60 over the last year and a half now that varies from perhaps 40 on our um island uh monitor farm to over 100 um in some of the the larger and more accessible areas. Looking at the demograph that are attending those meetings we've got 51% of them are under 45 and that is a metric we're very proud of because that is who we're really wanting to focus on developing and assisting that next generation into transitioning the taking over these businesses we're aiming for the key decision makers and also other influential members of the the family around the table. 31 30% of our attendees are female which is something we've been looking to build on as well and it's obviously as a as a female in agriculture or something i'm passionate about and so we've been looking to develop that further as well and that's been over 29 open meetings too deep and really the focus on of this program is on the management meetings so those 15 to 20 businesses that are really investing their time in the program and we hope to deliver back to them in in value so we've got an average of 15 attending each of these meetings um but there there's 24 on some of these groups. 57% of them are under 45 so to take that from 51% to open meetings to turning that into 57% and those that we're investing that in the decision makers of those businesses is really great and we only have 19% um as females on these groups so that's definitely an area we're looking to improve on and again looking at varying time meetings of timings of meetings and other topics is important too. So as we said we're investing heavily in the management groups that are giving us a lot of their time and so we've issued us our baby recently looking at impact on the management group members so we've got a recommendation score that 8.7 out of 10 and we're always looking to improve and gain feedback from them. So when we asked them have you made any changes as a result of the monitor farm program to date 45% of those that completed the survey have answered yes and I'll come on to what those changes have been and then when looking forward are they planning to make a change in this year 67% of those are planning to make a change so really to us in terms of looking at impact we want to see that 60% percent increase and particularly turn into that they have made a change by the end of this program and so that will that will look that's what good looks like to us. In terms of changes to practice it just comes I know some of the practical things that they've taken on as a result of the program each of our monitor farmer is completed out an integrated land management plan in year one of the program which is a real deep dive into your business looking at your performance your in terms of productivity and financial and that I can overlook of your business so all nine of them completed one of them and as a result some of our management group members have actually seen it as a worthwhile investment for them to go and carry that out. There's been a large theme of looking to winter more livestock and particularly looking to reduce the cost of wintering the suckler count and with that there's been more use of forage crops and looking at your rotation there. We had I think we forced a spike of sales of red clover down in South Asia and as a result of a meeting which was really fantastic to see how one really fantastic communicator influenced a group of farmers and then looking at improved data collection so we've we've looked at a road out a benchmarking calculator to all of our management group members and we're now in the process of doing kind of analyzing that and feeding back their own data back to them again and we've had a real focus on data collection and our key message that's come out of that from one of our management group members is if you don't record it you can't manage it so very much collecting what you what you really need to know and being able to make informed business decisions off the back of that and another key message is collaboration and knowledge exchange is vital to keep farming relevant and profitable so that really to us is that social sustainability and creating that network for farmers to re-drive the whole sector forward and take take the industry with them. So as Peter said we've got a whole cohort of summer open meetings coming up and we would you know welcome anyone along to these meetings we've highlighted the ones up in the north for you there but as we've had politicians and various other stakeholders in the industry come on to the month farms we do extend that invite to all and if we can help share the messages and give a voice to our farmers that's really important to us and allow them to share their their knowledge and their own personal experiences and in terms of challenges and opportunities in their area and their industry. With that we are also really grateful to a lot of the collaborators that we've had in in the program to date and Peter mentioned a few of them and SRUC have been a large part of that as well but we've been hugely supported by the trade our industry and other stakeholders in our industry so we really want the monetary farm Scotland program to be you know an open and honest environment for all for commercial and also for that with the research side to come and share some of their innovative ideas that we've got coming forward. So if you do have any I would like to get in touch or come along to our meetings or come on to some of our monetary farms then please don't hesitate to get in touch with us. Thank you very much. Thank you a very useful presentation again what I would say well it's fresh in my head. I think myself I'd love to come up to your open meeting and something you know I think it is. If you pass on some information about that so we can distribute the members and anyone who's interested could hopefully come along to that meeting or the one it's just be or whatever. Thank you. Now we have any questions? There's not Julie Bell. Thank you very much and thank you for that presentation. I'm particularly interested in some issues that affect what a lot of agricultural land around me which is the loss of topsoil and but also flooding and you'll be aware of the flooding issues that Angus has had in the last couple of years. Has there been any discussion or work around the use of extending natural flood plains in using sort of naturally occurring areas that help urban areas particularly further upstream because you know I think the use of natural adaptations is probably the way to go and I'm just wondering if your your members are willing to engage in that conversation with local authorities. Thanks. Yeah it's a great point and I know I'm not too far from Angus and from these areas that we've had a lot of flooding damage. In the South Ocean Monitor Farm has actually been looking at this quite a lot and I suppose it's you know we're farmer-led and farmer-driven so it's incentivizing the farmers to see it from their point of view and how they can offer that wider benefit to the local environment as well as to their productivity within their business and so the South Ocean Monitor Farm have actually done a I've been doing a survey with local authorities on one of their fields that could offer it and they would describe it as a very wet field that they really struggle to manage at times anyway so naturally it falls into an opportunity where we can look at alternative agri environmental schemes or other opportunities with that so you know we're definitely open to engaging where that is a good opportunity it obviously depends on the farmland and the farm type and perhaps the agreement that we've got there as well and whether it's a known or occupier or a tenancy or a contract farm as well we've got a real variance in that but it's certainly something that's been discussed on the Monitor Farms and we'd be willing to share that further yet. Thank you for that and a personal comment I have to say that the flooding we've had locally in Bristol in Alfred the amount of silt the soil has lost through flooding is quite huge and we really have to as our local authorities will center up and look at that because in case so many problems and so many issues and we've got to do something about that. Any more questions perhaps from the city? We have one more? I've got one. Oh sorry my oh in when divine. It's a little divine yeah okay it's a little divine first. Yeah just following up on Julie's point there I know that there is a tremendous amount of work going on in the James Hutton Institute regarding soil preservation and improvement and I was just wondering if monitor farms have been in touch with them at all that would just be one thing I would I suppose I'm sorry that there's not a monitor farm in Angus but I was wondering if you had any stats on the number of Angus farmers who may be attended some of your other open meetings in the past and hopefully in the future they will too. Sorry about that noise. Going back to your first question the program is governed by a strategic board so that's trying to look at you know all the stakeholders across the industry taking in the research organizations down through to you know some past monitor farmers on that as well. So the James Hutton able of Kenneth loads from James Hutton Institute actually sits on that group so we've got that direct point of contact there so that that's really valuable to have the insights into the work that they're doing and you know we're not looking to do research on these monitor farms but what we would like to do is create an opportunity to apply some of that research in a commercial setting so that we can diffuse that knowledge you know both down the chain and up the chain to give that feedback as well on what may work in a trial might not work in you know a real farming environment and all these different variances that we have but yes a great opportunity to to have the linkage with the lights of James Hutton Institute and we've got a fantastic suite of research organizations in Scotland on our doorstep that we could really make more of as well so we'll look forward to that the relationship continuing and then on to your second question about Angus representation I know we do have a bit of a gap in the central belt of Scotland which you know being from Persia it would be nice to have somewhere on my doorstep as well but we do have multiple members that travel up to the D side monitor farm that are from Angus and also over to the Stirlingshire farm they actually make quite a trick over to West Stirlingshire to attend there so there has been some you know engagement across there and actually in the last program that ran until 2020 we did have that monitor farmer in Angus with the Stoddart family and so we have had that you know that engagement there previously it's just that we didn't have that that we couldn't fill the whole of Scotland which is which we would like to do but you know in future years we always look to make sure we're filling the gaps and you know when this program finishes we'll look to go elsewhere in future years as well thank you thank you thank you for that if you just hold the fire we'll go to the city first since they're quite anxious thanks very much yeah and we've just gone back to Julie's question about flooding that was a fascinating presentation by the way and we did this group did visit to James Hutton place a couple of years ago when they were discussing the river D and how the old theory used to be to stop flooding what you need to do is to straighten out the river and get all that water down out the shire in the city as quick as possible well folk in the city the slightly different view of course but I think they've found all the what they've done in the D with creating places for flooding to a car as it used to do has been hugely beneficial both to fish and to have with an else thanks thank you for that uh Councillor Taylor yes thanks Chair and thank Peter and Beth for their presentation I don't have a question simply comments I have attended a number of these meetings over the years when and I suppose I need to declare an interest in terms of I do find them although I ended up the same scale as perhaps previously and I think one of the major benefits is in terms of seeing others try changes in other words depending up to in the water having the organic experience and knowledge from others before you try it yourself and in other words it reduces risk it's very important to be aware of whether developments are taking place and lastly is and it is great to see the younger members of the pharma community attending these because they have the whole pharma career or a big part of the pharma career ahead of them and really they work themselves to keep a place of innovation be aware and do us best they can we do wish to put forward the industry as a very professional proficient efficient industry thank you very much indeed thank you Anna well said next speaker Andy McGovern first of all well done Beth and Peter great presentation um been a huge fan of this concept for 20 years it's the most effective way of getting farmers to change they don't need to admit they're changing they just pay more attention to other what other farmers do than what so-called experts do so it's just very effective for driving the industry forward we've had a couple in the paper sector as well which was very useful I'm interested in the views whether some of the counselors have economic development more broadly as part of their brief and that just be interested in his thoughts Peter and Beth and whether you think this concept could apply another part to the economy either retail or the nighttime economy and whether this this kind of learning from each other is a you've got model there that's very effective in the rural side could it be applied in urban environment yeah I think that's a really great point Andy and I think we've got that start to have that natural transition with the agritourism monitor farm which is a separate project although under that same umbrella of the monitor farm program they're looking very much at the diversification on farm and looking at you know farm retail and farm shops and you know we're quite cautious that that program is ongoing and we don't want to duplicate what they're doing so I think they'll have some insights onto how that could be taken forward into others and you know ultimately it's about um you see a lot of networking groups and imagine that you'll attend lots of different events and really that is what we're offering it's that opportunity to network with other like-minded individuals and whether that's in your within your own sector or looking at other sectors as well I think a great opportunity through the monitor farm program is to take farmers off farm and into other industries also and take some you know whether it's learnings from manufacturing or different processing sites etc and further that ultimately may come come back down to agriculture as well as a great opportunity. Peter would you like to add? Yeah I worked with Andy actually in one farm program about 15 years ago and after that I investigated the potential for the monitor farm concept to be done in other sectors as well and I think city centre retail would would match that very well so long as people are not competitors with each other so a whole range of small businesses getting business experience being able to share business ideas but not actually competitors so across a range of different shops where they're looking at some of the big issues that you face and so we tried to come we we got traction for the idea about 10 years ago so in Dundee but the funding just was not available in the way it was in the agricultural sector and those terms found innovation fund so it didn't the shopkeepers business shop businesses wanted it but we just couldn't get funding for it then but yes I think that's one example wherever they're not competitive the fish sector doesn't work well because people aren't and that was that was discussed as all people are not particularly keen to share what they're doing in say fish farming with alike because they're such big businesses they've got their own internal training structure in the lake as well but yeah where there are small smaller units and smaller businesses I think there are opportunities to do something like this yeah just to add on that the program really is totally underpinned by the monitor farmers that are open and you know really expose themselves to the management group members and in return they get that you know honesty back and that is integral to the success of the program and like you say if you don't want your kind of competitor knowing your insight information you'd have to find in a way that you could come to a common ground that you would be able to willing to share then allows that opportunity to take your common challenges forward as well you know we had a meeting in down in Roxborough a large portion of that area is farmed but is owned by large estates that are moving towards contract farming so we saw that again as a common challenge to farmers in that area as they're getting forced into different agreements that they weren't familiar with or not that comfortable with Subirana meeting on you know how is how should you as a farmer approach a a contract farming agreement and how should you as the landowner and you know have that open discussion with the those that might be the kind of the middleman man in between as well and the agency offering to there so it's it's an opportunity to you know bring your your challenges together and have one voice and also look for your opportunities but that being open and and sharing and you know quite quite sensitive business information is really important to that too yeah thanks for that I think the cross fertilization of ideas is so very important and even to the city if I if I knew they have and your market sitting up into the old British youngsters building so these sort of ideas will be useful for that is there going to be a lot of local produce so there so it's all very useful and I'm sure do well out of it. Next with Kenny, a personal Kenny brace? Yes thanks to you. Well really the first comment would be echoing what Ian said you know this is a fantastic program huge benefits for those who participate and a great thing for those who are you know with the sort of outset of their career in agriculture but I kind of remember this first reading about this whole concept when it became quite a big thing in New Zealand it's a massive difference I was at New Zealand them a long time ago now but the attitude of farmers there was completely different to hear at that time and well up for a discussion with other farmers about what they were doing in their farms and much more open about financial performance of their business and if you're not a bit engaged in that then you're much more limited in what you're good to get out is this sort of thing that a great success and do wonder though there there's an awful lot of foreign businesses that don't have a successor and I wonder hey what I don't suppose it's happening in monitor monitor groups but is there any sort of group activity for farmers who are looking for an exit strategy that you know of so when we went back to recruit the monitor farms in 2022 we actually had an applicant that's so we asked everyone to state their ambition we had an applicant that's ambition was to retire from the farm and did not have a successor there is the land matching service available in Scotland to look to match a new entrant with someone that's exiting the industry and they have an over-subscription of new entrants and not enough of those that are you know willing to give an opportunity to somebody else so we have we did discuss and you know we're not really taking it further at the moment but I would hope to see this in the future as a potential new entrant style monitor farm which could you know follow through that journey of how to to leave the industry and also give that opportunity to somebody else because you're not just passing over a business and financial the land the assets you're passing over you know years worth of knowledge of that ground as well and that's a real opportunity to and that mentoring site as well so that is something I would like to see as an opportunity with the monitor farm program again to I think if if somebody was to be a bit more open about sharing that experience as well it might bring others forward I think a lot maybe don't think about that they perhaps sell up and move on and we know of the the financial restraints of investing in land and getting new entrants into the industry that we're facing so that would be something that I would definitely like to see through the monitor farm program but we're just not quite there yet so hopefully and we'd like to see that okay thanks yeah may I add to that as well please again out of the decide management group came an idea for a cluster meeting so representing you know going out to all the three north monitor farms and beyond actually to do a piece on as a cluster meeting an open meeting on succession planning and so we spoke with johnson we've spoken recently with johnson car Michael virgin money and shepherd and wetterburn and we will be having a cluster meeting on November the 7th up at feinstein on succession planning legal implications and and tax now whilst that sounds highly dry it's going to be done in the form of a dallas style play which was an incredible success like 15 years ago when it was taken around so the found old video tapes of this performance and they're redoing it and we have one of our monitor farmers is going to be the farmer planning says planning is excess succession going forward so that's another we think to look out for but i hope to do what we'll do one up in feinstein we'll hope to do one in the south as well and that was the seventh of november at feinstein yeah i said yeah seventh of november feinstein right thanks thank you uh any last minute questions anything from city quite happy good right well thank you both for coming uh it's been a really good uh discussion and with uh it's grown a week of arms and legs but that's good and thank you and we'll see you again now i'd like to announce uh i'll point out that with the standing orders have been suspended uh so it's basically near the end of our meeting so uh we'll continue on to the next item eight on the agenda now this is it's industry report and front table round up or table round up basically is that anything i want us to ask about whatever we've talked about today and did you want to bring something up that we may find of interest anything from anyone yes it's rubber management i would be interested in you know read meandering how are we gonna you know i live beside the dawn i run beside the dawn i cycle beside the dawn and um i noticed that it just gone completely browning the other day what's happening there i want to know and um you know is it going to be possible to give the river more space as um as water levels rise oh thank you for that um it gives you to get rid of that yeah thank you so anything else of any other members what i would like to see uh for future reference notes over today's reference if there's anything that members want to take to us anything you want to discuss anything you find of interest please forward to to Keith or myself and we'll take it forward i would like to see or can you have something to say oh it's just the place really really just before you close the meeting i've been in this committee now for seven years um first five i think under the excellent chairship of uh bill how it's in them i'm really pleased to see that that's continuing and pleased to see that the the presentations we're getting is continuing in the and the standard of excellence that will become new