Experienced MD Teresa to take the helm at SQC assurance provider

Scottish Quality Crops (SQC), the country’s leading farm assurance provider for the arable sector, has appointed a new managing director to take over when executive director, Alistair Ewan, retires from his position later this year.

Teresa Dougall

Stepping into the new role in May will be Teresa Dougall, a well-known face in Scottish agriculture who has spent her entire career within the farming and rural business sectors. Bringing close to 30 years experience to her SQC position, Dougall started her career at Ayr Auction Mart where she developed a passion for the industry.

Following this, she has worked in both the public and private arenas and has spent the last 17 years working for membership organisations. This saw her take on the role of Regional Manager and then Director of Regions within National Farmers Union Scotland where she spent the last 7 years.

SQC said that with a substantial network of contacts across the industry – working and building relationships with farmers, key partners, business stakeholders and parliamentarians – Dougall has been committed to developing and strengthening the roles she has followed and said she looks forward to continuing to with this approach when she takes up her role with the assurance body.

SQC Chairman Andrew Moir said he was delighted with Dougall’s appointment at a critical time for Farm Assurance.

“The industry section requires strong leadership ensuring our sector can assist and manage the increasing requirement for additional assurance by the industry,” said Moir.

And retiring MD, Alistair Ewan said that with new developments coming through for assurance – including the bolt-on requirements of some buyers for additional audits such as LEAF Marque – he had decided that now was the time to hand over his SQC role, allowing him to concentrate on his globe-trotting consultancy work for Greenyard, the global suppliers of fresh, frozen and prepared fruit and vegetables.

*Meanwhile a call has been issued by scientists to “galvanize” efforts in international barley research - with the new International Barley Hub (IBH) at the James Hutton Institute outside Dundee playing a key administration and structuring role.

Professor Robbie Waugh, director of the IBH, said that with greater collaboration the global barley research community could demonstrate that investing in barley research made sound long term academic and economic sense:

“We want to encourage the upcoming generation of barley researchers to exploit and extend the vast genetic and genomic resources for barley available today,” said Waugh.

“We are not short of challenges: gene by gene or process by process functional studies remain long term objectives that could be enabled by collaboration/coordination, and co-development and sharing of biological and informational tools and resources will stimulate progress and enrich our community.”

Together with other leading researchers involved in the call he said that the ultimate aim was to re-establish a vibrant global public/private barley research community that shared resources, capabilities, data, game-changing ideas and technologies, and which fostered new collaborations and emerging networks:

“We want to enable impactful science that safeguards high quality, sustainable and resilient barley production around the world,” Prof Waugh concluded.