The exhibition – Farming Fit for the Future – at Alyth Museum [1] in Perthshire shows how some farmers in Strathmore are regenerating the health and productivity of their land for a sustainable future.
[In progress – liable to editing 7 August 2024]
Agriculture here has a history of several thousand years. It has been through many cycles of decline and renewal. Some of the most effective changes in recent centuries – the Improvements – were introduced over several decades followed a devastating run of severe weather and resulting privation in the 1690s. The state of agriculture was later documented by farmer Andrew Wight on journeys beginning 1773 around mainland Scotland [2].
The Living Field looks back 250 years to the time of Mr Wight’s journals. What did he see as the main innovations or improvements in this part of Perthshire and Angus and how do they compare to the changes in land management described at the Alyth exhibition?
First – a look at the extent of managed agricultural land today, in Strathmore and beyond.
areaS of arable and managed grass TODAY
The agricultural census [3] records the area of land within several broad catagories. Arable or tilled land is typically ploughed and sown with cereals and other annual crops such as oilseed rape, potato and vegetables. Grassland, managed as grazing or hay for livestock, is separated into short-term (grown for less than 5 years) and long-term grass. A third broad category and the largest area, known as ‘rough grazing’, occupies mainly higher ground including the lower slopes of the hills. The main areas of production are the arable and managed grass.
These categories are not permanent. Traditionally, and today still in some areas, short-term grass is sown as part of an arable-grass sequence. Also, land can switch between arable and grass – for example, large areas of arable land were moved into grass as recently as the 1980s and 1990s.
Arable crops and grass are cultivated mainly in low-lying regions to the east and south of the country, but they extend to parts of the far west and north (Fig. 1). For the western islands and much of the west mainland, thin strands of agricultural fields trace the boundary between land and sea.
At the east-centre of the mainland, the cultivated land is delimited by the Highland Boundary Fault (approximated by the dashed grey line in Fig. 1). Arable and grass occupy lower elevations to the south of the Fault. Rough grazing and non-agricultural land extend to the north. The climate and soil to the south of the Fault support a diverse agriculture which by global standards is highly productive.
Strathmore runs north-east from just above Perth, towards Alyth and on to near the coast. The Living Field post – Can we grow more vegetables? [4] shows the topography and boundaries of the strath, while Feeding the Romans [5] describes the line of watch towers, forts and fortresses that the invaders built just south of the Fault.
Figure 2. Arable and grass fields in productive land mostly to the south of the Highland Boundary Fault (see Fig. 1) in Perthshire, Angus and Fife. Letters show (D) Dundee, (P) Perth, (A) Alyth and (M) Montrose. Coloured dots indicate centres of fields growing mostly arable (dark grey) and grass (light purple).
North of Alyth on Fig. 2, it looks as if the productive land in Strathmore is putting out ‘feelers’ – testing the conditions in the expanse of unproductive white. But these thin strands are formed by fields immediately adjacent to the rivers that flow down through steep sided glens (valleys) across the Fault and into Strathmore. The boundary between land and sea is not shown on the map, but the fields define the coastline, including the shape of the Tay estuary between Perth and Dundee.
The copious supplies of water from the north and the rich soil south of the Fault, together with the maritime climate of this region, give Strathmore its great capacity for agricultural production. Farms in the exhibition [1] lie mostly in the arable-grass but some extend to higher elevations.
Improvements by the late 1700s
A major, systematic change in land management in lowland Scotland was stimulated during the 1700s by the ideas and methods of wealthy landowners such as Henry Home (1696-1782) and John Sinclair (1754-1835). They were unsure as to how far their innovations had been taken up by other landowners and their tenants. So to get the evidence, Andrew Wight, himself a farmer, was commissioned to ride around Scotland, visiting innovative farmers and documenting their methods and results. His findings were published in 1778 and 1784 [2].
[To be continued with ….. the course of Mr Wight’s travels in Strathmore, his views on farming’s capacity to change …. ]
Author / contact: geoff.squire@hutton.ac.uk or geoff.squire@outlook.com
Sources | Links
[1] For the exhibition on regenerative agriculture at Alyth Museum – the Living Field post: Farming Fit for the Future.
[2] The Living Field web has several times used Andrew Wight’s records of journeys around mainland Scotland’s farming regions, for example at The Mill at Atholl and Great quantities of Aquavitae. Wight, A. 1778-1784. Present State of Husbandry in Scotland. Exracted from Reports made to the Commissioners of the Annexed Estates, and published by their authority. Edinburgh: William Creesh. Vol I, Vol II, Vol III Part I, Vol III Part II, Vol IV part II, Volume IV Part II. All available online via Google Books. With thanks.
[3] Results of the annual agricultural census are summarised at Scottish Agricultural Census: Results.
[4] The original map, from which Fig. 1 was derived, was constructed by Nora Quesada Pizarro and Graham Begg, working with Geoff Squire, at the James Hutton Institute, Dundee. The original was edited by the author to show approximate areas of managed arable and grass. The background data and the method of constructing this and similar maps by Hutton researchers, have been described on the Living Field web at Can we grown more vegetables. The map in Fig. 2 was constructed from grid coordinates for fields separated into broad categories of arable and grass.
[5] Notes on Roman escapades in Strathmore – Feeding the Romans.
[To be continued …..}
