update
Spring 2021 - news from, and for, Scotland’s farmer co-ops
SAOS Online Conference Focuses on the Positives Ahead The theme of January’s SAOS Conference was an A to Z for a Bright Future. Our vision was of an upbeat future for the Scottish agriculture and food producing sectors, and we looked at the key ingredients required to make that happen. Technology allowed us to cover our (rather ambitious) 26 topics in the afternoon, through speaker presentations and virtual ‘expo booths’ and we tried very hard to avoid any doom and gloom. Initally, and understandably, an unusually downbeat James Withers, CEO of Scotland Food & Drink, ‘kept it real’, but even he managed to look to a potentially more positive land of opportunity ahead.
SAOS Chief Executive Tim Bailey, showcased the need for open-minded and informed Government policy to underpin and incentivise change. Following up on his presentation, Tim reiterated: “We believe there are five key policy pillars that will enable positive change to happen, based around the industry working together more effectively: • • • • •
Continue to offer and operate successful agricultural innovation and development programmes, such as RISS and KTIF Modify the approach of Food Processing grant programmes, to align with industry priorities and incentivise the farmers and processors to co-operate more effectively Invest in a Future Farming programme, as Australia did, to provide structured support and advice to improve all forms of co-operation Embed the Producer Organisation approach within the fruit and vegetable sector and extend to all farming sectors Finally, let agriculture access the broadband voucher funding scheme as a single community to overcome the inherent business disadvantage from non-existent or grossly inadequate connectivity.”
Mark Clark, our Chairman, added: “The Scottish agricultural community has a very positive working partnership with the Scottish Government and SAOS would welcome the opportunity to work with them and all industry partners to make this upbeat future a reality for all farming businesses and the whole food supply chain.” These points above are key within SAOS’s manifesto, outlining our priorities for the next Scottish Parliament and Government. #workingtogether Holding the conference online presented a great opportunity to attract new delegates from different areas, especially those who may not be so likely to travel to attend on the day. Another plus, was that we could invite various other industry bodies we work with to showcase their ‘wares’ and our work together where appropriate. At the same time this highlighted SAOS’s ‘mantra’ of working together more effectively across the entire food and farming sector and supply chains, we know that this is now more vital than ever before. Once again, we were delighted to have the support of NFU Mutual as sponsors (more from them overleaf on why they value our relationship), and for the first time we were also supported by Ledingham Chalmers who made themselves very popular at tea break time! We’ve added a new section to our website and all the A-Z content from the conference is now hosted there, so that everyone who missed out, or who couldn’t get round all the expo booths, can still check those out. Thanks again to everyone for ‘coming along’, especially those who also filled in our conference survey. Catch up with what you missed (except for the tea break provisions, sorry!) : www.saos.coop/SAOSConference
Attendance was up by over 100 delegates on our 2020 Conference 40% of our conference attendees were women 87% of conf survey responses rated the conference as either excellent or v good