Bill Howatson: The Highland Show's future is secure, now to honour its great legacy

Published on Friday 28 January 2011 19:24

THE organisers of the Royal Highland Show, Scotland's premier farming event, are set for a secure future on their 300-acre showground site at Ingliston on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

The "rough wooing" by their neighbour, Edinburgh Airport, to fulfil dramatic expansion plans on the showground has come to an end for the time being, and the show organisers, the Royal Highland & Agricultural Society of Scotland (RHASS) are to proceed with a major programme of development and improvement under a new chief executive, Stephen Hutt.

However, taking forward the showground site - which has been the permanent home to the Royal Highland Show since 1960 - is not simply about another property development near the capital. It is equally about progressing the aims and aspirations of a society that can trace its history to 1784. It is a child of the agricultural improvement movement which has played a key role in bridging the gap between rural and urban Scotland and can lay claim to be a dynamic force in agriculture.

At one level, the plans to develop Ingliston will have to take cognisance of a clutch of properties and organisations within the showground, many of which are tenants of the RHASS with leases coming up for discussion.

Organisations include the Scottish Association of Young Farmers' Clubs, the Scottish Government agriculture department pavilion, various banks and a car auction group.

The ambition is to improve and underline the position of what the society sees as Scotland's national showground, which hosts some 210 events a year, attracting 1.2 million visitors and adding 250 million to the Scottish economy.

Central to this is the four-day Royal Highland Show, which last year attracted a record 187,000 visitors, a fact that was reflected by a very congested showground on the Saturday and one which has given the organisers more food for thought in dealing with logistics. Typical attendance in recent years has been running at about 150,000 visitors. Ironically, while the show has an iconic status for farmers, it is part of a much bigger structure. However, the show and the society have become intertwined, and it has survived while its counterpart south of the Border, the Royal Show, lost direction and is no more.

The success of the Royal Highland Show owes much to decisive leadership, and a combination of the traditional aspects of livestock exhibition and stockmanship with an innovative formula that encompassed food production, the ancillary agricultural industries, the wider rural community, and its educational role.The challenge for the new chief executive will be not only to drive forward a multi-million-pound business, but to have due regard to custom and tradition, and shape the future of the society and its show without weakening its intrinsic values.

That will require a sense of what the society is about as much as the show itself, because the latter is only a manifestation of a deeper hinterland that has been honed for more than 220 years. The Royal Highland Show is part and parcel of Scotland's rural life, and an integral part of the agricultural message. Without it, the urban understanding of what makes modern farming tick would be considerably weaker.

The fact that the show brings in annually about 30,000 schoolchildren through the Royal Highland Education Trust is a clear expression of its ability to reach a wider audience.

The RHASS, and its predecessors, were shaped by forward-thinking individuals who recognised without qualification that agriculture was an indigenous industry which had to be furthered, promoted and developed on scientific lines. Its thinkers and leaders came from the same stable as those redoubtable improvers who penned the great agricultural accounts of the late 18th and 19th century - men who saw a crusading role for the society, which they hoped their successors would pursue with vigour.

That role has not diminished in the passage of time. Indeed, the challenges of food production on the back of a predicted nine billion world population by 2050 require the same level of intellectual rigour as those which faced the great thinkers of the 19th century.

The RHASS is a multi-faceted creature with the potential to be a real intellectual driver in shaping Scottish thinking, in building bridges between town and country and acting as an energetic and purposeful mechanism for making a positive contribution to the Scottish economy and the life of the nation.