Scotland's forgotten farmers fight for industry's future

IT WAS a day like any other for Kelvin Pate, tending to cattle and sheep on his 350-acre farm in Scotland yesterday. But his future, and the survival of thousands of other farmers, depends upon the outcome of a crisis that has been ignored or forgotten by much of the population.

Hundreds of thousands of healthy sheep face a cull because they cannot be exported in the wake of foot-and-mouth, cattle producers are under the shadow of bluetongue and the government is being sued for compensation.

Meanwhile, Scotland's food supply chain is being buckled beyond repair as rising costs force some 11 per cent of pig producers to abandon farming altogether.

This is one of the darkest times in the history of Scottish agriculture, which is worth £2 billion to the national economy and is the third-largest source of employment - 70,000 jobs. Yet national awareness of the issue is low, a result of the fractured relationship between the farmers who produce our food and the consumers who eat it.