This week we caught up with former The Scottish Farmer colleague, Claire Taylor, during her travels around the world for her Nuffield scholarship.

Here is what she had to say: "I arrived in Australia on the last leg of my travels and have spent the past few days visiting avocado, banana and papaya farms and even had a tour of a brand new exotic mushroom factory which is the first of its kind in Australia and after investing $32m dollars, the farmer expects to make his money back within three years as huge gap in the market here and in Asia.

"Over the past seven weeks, I’ve visited Canada, NZ, Indonesia, Japan and Australia, travelling with a group of 13 international Nuffield farming scholars from 10 different countries – Brazil (2), Chile, Poland, France, Germany, US (2), Ireland (2), The Netherlands and Canada. The goal is to gain an understanding of different farming systems globally and to push us out of our comfort zone to immerse in to new ways of thinking.

"We have been averaging 3-4 farm visits a day – and averaging four hours sleep too!

"In Indonesia, we kicked off with a beef feedlot visit where they are fattening 60,000 head of cattle – Brahman – across two lots, with all cattle imported from Australia to be fattened for a further 4/5 months, closed system due to foot and mouth outbreak in the country since April last year.

"In Japan, there is a huge focus on increasing domestic food production and reducing reliance on imports. Consumers support local produce and seasonality and are willing to pay high prices when foods are in season.

"No focus on farms or from the government on reducing impact on the environment – it's all about subsidising farmers to produce more food."