AgriScot switch Ingliston event to February 2022

AgriScot, the country’s largest indoor farming event, has been moved from its normal early November slot to February 2022, the organisers announced yesterday.

AgriScot at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston

While it had originally been planned for the farm business event to go ahead at the usual time, and plans were well underway to stage it the unprecedent decision was taken to move it to the later slot in view of the likely continuing Covid restrictions on indoor events.

AgriScot Chairman Robert Neill said the decision was not taken lightly.

“Unfortunately, even as restrictions lift, Covid is still proving to be a hurdle for large scale, indoor events such as AgriScot,” he said.

Mid-way through August, the event still faced uncertainty for its November slot - including the prospect of a limited capacity still being imposed.

“The other factor affecting our decision is had we gone ahead in November it would have been without the use of the Lowland Hall, which traditionally forms a significant proportion of our floor space.

The Lowland Hall is currently in use as one of the largest Covid vaccine centres in Scotland and the organisers said that they understood the necessity for the vaccine centre to remain open over the November period when AgriScot would normally have taken place.

“The AgriScot Board is fully supportive of the continuation of this important immunisation facility at the Royal Highland Centre, ” added Neill.

However he admitted that the whole AgriScot team was keenly aware that a change of date would not suit everyone:

“But we hope that stakeholders understand the reasons for this one-off change and will support our event on 9 February.

He said that it was now almost 22 months since the organising committee had last been able to hold a live AgriScot event and, despite ht highly successful on-lone event which was held in November last year Neoll said:

“I am delighted that we have been able to settle on 9 February as a definitive date for our next event and will launch our online booking platform for trade exhibitors on 8 September.”

He also said that it was planned that AgriScot would revert to the normal scheduled date later in 2022 (16 November) – meaning that for the first time in the event’s history it would be run twice in one calendar year.”

The organisers were also keen to highlight the fact that three of their Farm of the Year Awards were currently still open for entry and nominations, these being the Beef, Sheep and Diversified Farm Awards. The Business Skills Award, for young people under 26, is set to open for entries soon and all of the farm of the year awards and competitions will run to their scheduled timeframes and deadlines with the announcements, results and award ceremony set to be held as part of the main event on 9 February