Profits ahead for Young Farmers

AFTER suffering a difficult financial year in 2009, with a loss of £84,000, the Scottish Association of Young Farmers Clubs has carried out major restructuring.

Now, according to its chief executive, Penny Laird, the 3,100-member organisation is moving into profitable times. "We will be recording a loss of about 25,000 this year (which ends on tomorrow], but that is due to some one-off payments, including redundancy.

"We are now confident that we have turned the corner financially and are on course to make a profit in the new financial year. There is a strong management team in place, and we shall keep on course."

Laird paid tribute to both the Highland Society and NFU Scotland for being supportive during the dip in the financial fortunes of the organisation, which is 80 or so years old.

Part of the cost-cutting strategy will see the demise of the annual handbook, which cost more than 7,000 a year. Information will go direct to members via e-mail. This method will also cut one link out of the communication loop, as club secretaries often had to pass information on to members.

Laird, who is from a Fife farming family and has a degree in agriculture, was herself a young farmer with the Bell Baxter club. She is the first chief executive of the SAYFC, and one of her first priorities, after ensuring financial stability, is to raise the profile of the association.

She said there was still a perception of the SAYFC being only for the coming generation of farmers, but this was not the case. "We are really a rural youth organisation with many non-farming members."

Emphasising the wider range of interests, she said she wanted to see links forged with other youth groups, as well as other farming organisations.

She also believed that most people did not see the amount of good community work carried out by local young farmers' clubs. Often this is a matter of raising money for local projects, but it is now also helping to carry out work in local communities.

There are currently about 80 clubs scattered around Scotland.

The west of Scotland is still the strongest region of the association.

There is still an ebb and flow of clubs with, for example, Dunlop YF currently moving into abeyance, but another club in Campbeltown dusting off the cobwebs and coming back into life to compete in a number of events, having been reinvigorated with a fresh influx of members.