SIR, – I read your article on the recent developments at Newton Rigg College with growing despair.
Attracting young, bright, forward-looking people into hill farming is the key to the future of the sector. Indeed, lack of people working in the hills and lack of ability to pay for them are two of the biggest problems we have.
Your article seems to suggest that more youngsters will be attracted to Newton Rigg because of a big shed full of computerised kit and the promise of an easy life.
I would say that this type of potential recruit would be better directed to a job in a call centre, for their sakes and that of hill farming in the future. Instead, encourage those with a passion for the hills and the stock on them.
For the head of agriculture at Britain's only hill farming college to state that their hill ground 'grows nothing but poverty' shows contempt and a complete lack of understanding of the hills, and their vital place in the stratified agriculture of this country.
The policy of removing ewes from their hill to a shed for two months before lambing shows a disregard for the importance of hardiness and any innate ability to survive, and thrive on the hill, bred into them by nature and generations of skilled hill men before us.
I can hear them turning in their graves!
This is no way to train the next generation of shepherds and hill farmers in my opinion.
Dan Mclaughlin
Castles,
Dalmally,
Argyll.
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