Farming: Landowners' lobby needs to stick to the issues, not its name game

I THINK it was Jim Walker, once NFU Scotland president, who mischievously suggested the Scottish Landowners Federation's initials of SLF really stood for the Snowdrop Liberation Front.

The trigger for his jibe was a press release from the SLF highlighting the problem of snowdrop thieves who pinch great swards of valuable bulbs and then either add them to their own collections or sell them to snowdrop addicts. It was an issue about which, I admit, I was largely ignorant.

At that time, the SLF was suffering an identity crisis, thinking its name gave the wrong impression. Looking back at my notes, there are references to it being "too tweedy" and "remote" in public perception.

Landowners were also, at that time, featured in cases where a rare bird of prey was found with its feet in the air and its crop full of poison.

This latter situation has not entirely gone away, but nowadays it is the Scottish Gamekeepers Association - a surprisingly well-funded organisation representing a traditionally poorly-paid profession - that is normally contacted by the press whenever there are wildlife misdemeanours. I will leave it to others to work out that paradox.

In order to shed their image, the landowners resolved to change their name. To indicate their wide-ranging list of interests, the name was changed to the Scottish Rural Property and Business Association or, slightly more succinctly, the SRPBA.

Despite years passing since the name change, the problem the landowners face is that not many people either recognise or remember the new, lengthy name and still refer to the organisation as the landowners federation or, more frequently, "the SLF or whatever they are called nowadays".

The past decade in the life of the landowners' organisation must have been the most hectic in its 100-year history as it covered the wide range of big issues coming along the track.

Even in the last session of the Scottish Parliament, which was noted for being "legislation lite" in other spheres of life, representatives of rural organisation such as the landowners were dealing with new laws on diverse issues such as reservoirs, wildlife crime and crofting.

That is without dealing with proposals on tenancies, tourism, forestry, land use, animal health and the environment. It is amazing that they managed all of this range of work despite limited resources and an ill-fitting title.

And that is one reason why, later this week, the 2,500-strong organisation representing the majority of the landowners in Scotland will sit down at their annual meeting and decide on a new name.I understand they will also decide on a re-ordering of the priorities for the group.

It is interesting that, despite including "business" in their current name, a group of large-scale, well-funded estate owners set up their own group to further highlight the economic importance of land owning in the countryside.

The Scottish Estates Business Group has always stressed it does not compete with the SRPBA; in fact, SEBG members are, I understand, also members of the landowners' organisation.

However, I believe that, among the proposals coming up this week, will be more focus on the economics of land owning.

There will also be more information on the rural focus idea mooted a couple of months ago by SRPBA director Andrew Howard.

This would see a meeting of all rural organisations under an independent chairman to try and provide government with a more cohesive view on particular issues.

The central role he suggested for the landowners was one of pulling these organisations together to debate, discuss and hopefully decide on possible policies prior to handing them over to government.

This group could play an important role for country organisations, as we live in an era where countryside matters are increasingly in the headlines.

The new Scottish Government will continue to play the rural card strongly. The SNP's manifesto highlighted areas where it wants to see progress; some of them based on previous promises, such as the contentious one of increasing the area of land under forestry.

All in all, the landowners should have an important, if not central, role in all of these. But what about the name?

I would suggest a very 21st-century title of Scottish Landowning Solutions. It is all encompassing, it is more than a bit naff but it is not in the least "tweedy" or "remote".

It would, however, still be prone to mischief makers providing other suggestions for the initials SLS.