News Rural reflections on the Covid pandemic
Livestock farming in highlands of Scotland.
How has Covid-19 affected rural communities and what are the main challenges now for the agricultural community? Professor Lee Innes from Moredun spoke with several of Moredun’s Regional Advisors in different parts of the UK to get their reflections on the pandemic. It is now over a year since the first lockdown in March 2020 and the Covid pandemic has affected all of our lives in so many different ways. As I am writing this, the UK is moving tentatively out of restrictions and people are making plans to see family and friends again and contemplate small gatherings once more. This has largely been made possible through the development and rollout of vaccines to train our immune systems to fight the virus, reduce transmission and prevent serious disease. Most of my research career has involved the study of infectious diseases and the development of solutions to prevent and control a wide range of different pathogens that cause disease in
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Moredun Magazine | Autumn/Winter 2021
livestock. Many of the farmers we work with are very familiar with biosecurity, testing and diagnostics, quarantine and vaccination and are used to dealing with diseases at a population level when managing the health and welfare of their livestock. Although, this time they had to apply the same principles to themselves to join with the rest of the population in dealing with a rapidly moving global pandemic. Some of the farmers have also mentioned parallels with the Foot and Mouth disease outbreak that occurred in 2001, where they had felt very isolated and worried about disease outbreaks on their farms. The Covid pandemic has also reminded people of the importance of scientific research to help us to understand pathogens and how they emerge, are transmitted and cause disease. Our work with livestock and the farming community has focussed our research effort to find solutions to disease control and this has often involved vaccination as a very effective method to prevent disease. While many of us had to significantly
change our working practices and quickly come to terms with remote working through video calls and laptops, farmers across the UK continued their essential work to produce food for the nation. At the beginning of the first lockdown last year, people started to panic buy produce and many of the supermarkets ran out of stock. It made people start to think more about food supply chains and local food production. One of the positive things that came out of the lockdown was that many people reconnected with their local food outlets and some farmers started to do direct selling to customers within their local communities. The shop local effect was significant and farmers were directly supplying local butchers and wholesalers, with sales at times doubling in volume. This has helped to reconnect people with the food they eat and where it comes from and has also reminded them of the vital work that farmers do to produce high quality food. During the Covid pandemic, farmers were doing essential work often in remote rural areas, and I spoke to some of the farmers we
