Scotland leads the way on farm co-operation says James Graham

THE United Nations has designated 2012 as the International Year of Co-operatives and, according to James Graham, the chief executive of SAOS, the umbrella organisation for Scottish co-ops, the co-operatives in this country “stand comparison with any in the rest of the world”.

Graham was speaking at the annual SAOS conference in Carnoustie where he highlighted the important role that co-operation plays in the farming industry.

Farmer-owned co-ops had a combined turnover of £2.3 billion last year, he said, although this total did not solely relate to Scotland as some businesses, such as First Milk, also operate south of the Border.

Graham said he believed co-ops were much in vogue just now as they were more linked to social involvement and were more flexible in coping with change. They were often in the forefront of innovation in the industry.

Picking up on the theme of innovation, Alistair Ewan managing director of East of Scotland growers (ESG), highlighted the work his vegetable-growing company was taking in order to become more competitive.

“With our main crop of broccoli it is very difficult to get higher prices out of the marketplace so we have to continually look at reducing our growing costs.,” he said.

One area of this cost-cutting is receiving particular attention; that of harvesting, which traditionally has been carried out by hand.

This year, Ewan said, they were hoping to introduce automatic harvesting with a prototype machine being developed in Australia. This would operate on a “one pass” system with all the heads being harvested at one time as opposed to the current method, which sees the harvesting team going through crops a number of times.