Pioneers sowed seeds for today's practice

IT ISN'T exactly a title that trips off the tongue, or a subject matter that would shoot to the top of the best-seller list today.

But George Robertson's book A General View of the Agriculture of Kincardine-shire or the Mearns did pretty well when it was published in 1810 largely because it was penned by one of Scotland's most perceptive and gifted agricultural commentators.

Robertson was one of the noted agricultural improvers of the era – part of a group who sought to create a new era of land use and food production in Scotland, and who used their writing skills to articulate the philosophy of change. Robertson and his fellow commentators were ahead of their times, and what they wrote – and what writing came after them – was instrumental in forging a new intellectual approach to the land.

They began a tradition that has been carried on for generations, and has created a bank of thought and learning that proves that the problems of farming today are not as new or as challenging as is often assumed. Agriculture has always been seen as a vital component of the national well-being.

There is an assumption that today's food producers lead the field and are in the vanguard of technological change, but the past teaches some very important lessons. In particular, agricultural advances have long been part of the on-going process of change, much of it expressed lucidly in regional terms where tools and equipment reflected local circumstances.

The "general views" were a comprehensive series commissioned by the Board of Agriculture to examine forensically the agricultural state of the nation, and to promote improvement to serve the Empire and examine the sources of public prosperity.

One of the over-riding mantras from the Board of Agriculture was that its series of county assessments and reports should ascertain the "means of promoting the improvement of people, in regard to their health, their industry, and morals, founded on a statistical survey, or a minute and careful inquiry, into the actual state of every parochial district in the kingdom…"

The books, which covered all of Scotland, came in between two major pieces of analysis of Scottish farming, parish by parish – the Old Statistical Account of Scotland and the New Statistical Account of Scotland published in the 1790s and 1845 respectively.

Scottish farming was on the move. The old run-rig system was disappearing. Major improvements were being made in drainage – a singularly important measure in restoring land to arable. Agriculture was moving from a subsistence to a commercial activity. A host of literature was being spawned to encourage, advise and report. The art of chronicling Scottish agriculture was in full spate and centuries of accompanying material were fast coming down the track.

The advocates for change and improvement have been on the go for 300 years. Witness William Mackintosh of Borlum's Essay on Ways and Means of Inclosing, Fallowing Planting etc in Scotland, published in 1729, and Henry Stephen's encyclopaedic Book of the Farm, first published in 1844 – works that combined intellectual rigour with mission statements on bettering the art of husbandry.

Equally, the transactions of the Highland Society of Scotland and the Royal Agricultural Society of England rapidly came to symbolise the energetic spirit of challenge, rural regeneration and adaptation, searching for and disseminating best practice, reporting on novel ways of doing things and stimulating the nation's awareness of the importance of agriculture and husbandry in every sphere, and at the same time reminding the world that the literature of the farm was part and parcel of Scottish life.

Alexander Fenton's seminal Scottish Country Life offered, in 1976, a new perspective on the material culture of farming change, working practices, grain harvesting and root cropping and interwove the social impact of technological change into an excellent text, while JRB Haldane's The Drove Roads of Scotland provided an outstanding piece of the history of cattle droving and overnight earned the status of a masterpiece of research and narrative.

A singular acknowledgement of the importance of the farm building as a reflection of a changing countryside and industry was flagged up early last year in a publication from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Buildings of the Land: Scotland's Farms 1750-2000.

The result of ten years' research, this record of agricultural buildings across Scotland by Miles Glendinning and Susanne Wade Martins has established itself as a particularly illuminating contribution to the field.