2021 Steven and Gillian Bullock Award

The winner of the 2021 Bullock award, Caroline Millar, has been able to effect change to her own business in the last decade but has also had a significant impact at a regional and national level.

She has weathered the impact of covid at home, but also found time to support other businesses who have been hard-hit as well.

Her on-farm tourism venture welcomes couples who want to ‘get away from it all’ in luxury cabins near Dundee. But Caroline has done plenty of travelling too, starting of course with their study tour. This took her to Italy, the world leaders in agritourism, and she left with a burning desire to emulate the success they had seen in Italy. After her Nuffield presentation she was invited to speak to the Oxford Farming Conference in 2014, after which there was a stint as an Oxford Farming Conference director, which culminated in her chairing the conference in 2018.

More recently she has become one of the first two women to be elected to the NFU Scotland board after becoming chair of the East Central Scotland region. But throughout this time, at every level, she has campaigned tirelessly for a greater profile for agri-tourism, holding meetings with farmers, tourism leaders, councillors and members of the Scottish parliament. This diligence has finally been rewarded with the recent publication of the Scottish government’s first ever agri-tourism strategy. It seeks to form a virtuous circle between agri-tourism and Scotland’s wonderful food and drink, already enjoyed the world over, and has the potential to build on the fine work that farmers already do to promote the countryside and homegrown food. Ladies and Gentlemen, for all the work that has stemmed from her Nuffield already, and for championing a strategy that will help farming businesses of the future flourish, the judges had no hesitation in awarding the 2021 Steven and Gill Bullock Award to Caroline Millar.

Stephen Fell NSch