Scotland's grouse moor problem: How feudal land ownership is holding back capitalist entrepreneurs – Robin McAlpine

There's something strange at the heart of Scotland's economy.

Grouse moors are far from the most productive use of the land, says Robin McAlpine (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Like most developed nations, Scotland' s economic strategy has for generations been driven by concepts like efficiency, effective deployment and exploitation of resources, profit maximisation, productivity, trade expansion and innovative improvement.

And if you were to superimpose a colour-coded 'heat map' of performance indicators in these areas over a map of Scotland and you were to look at urban and agricultural land, you would see much the same as you would in most Western nations – a lot of red.

Our cities, our agriculture and, to a lesser degree, our towns have all seen GDP growth, productivity increases and increased efficiency – for both good and ill (much of our 'efficient food' is dire nutritionally and the impacts of growth on individual communities has been mixed to say the least).

But you would then notice something else, something strange – very large patches of the map would be showing next to no improvements at all. On a heat map, they would be blue.

And this is not a feature we find in other European nations. They do not have giant 'productivity deserts' like we do in Scotland. There will always be geographical areas with lower productivity, often because it's pretty difficult to be productive up a mountain.

But Scotland's productivity deserts are by no means all at high altitude. We have vast areas which are largely economically dead for no reason.

So, what is causing this and why isn't it a subject of extensive discussion? The cause is Scotland's land use and ownership patterns and the reasons it's not properly debated is probably in part attributable to both sides of the debate.

As is well known, Scotland almost certainly has the most concentrated land ownership pattern of any developed country. Bluntly it has never looked like the land ownership pattern of a capitalist democracy and has never really shaken off ownership patterns that look feudal in nature.

The result has been depopulation (since 1900, Scotland's population has grown less than half as fast as Europe’s), deforestation (Norway has more than twice as much forest as Scotland, Sweden nearly three times and Finland more than four times), lack of innovation and poor productivity growth.

To demonstrate the latter, Common Weal has done two analysis papers of alternative economic uses for grouse moors (which make up about a seventh of Scotland's land area and are an excellent proxy for what is wrong with land use in Scotland).

We analysed seven potential different uses in terms of economic output per hectare and, in a separate report, ten alternative uses in terms of employment and income potential. Basically, it is really very hard to find a use of land which isn't significantly more productive.

And this really matters for Scotland. If we are to tackle climate change and poverty, we need environmentally friendly materials, clean energy and good jobs. The potential for developing these in Scotland is enormous, precisely because of our poor use of land.

From advanced construction materials to crucial insulation products (for home retrofitting) to bioplastics to biodegradable fabrics, Scotland could move quickly to becoming a world leader in 'clean manufacturing' as well as in clean energy. We have abundant potential for both.

The barriers are innovation and workforce availability. As we demonstrated in another report on land reform, produced jointly with the New Economics Foundation, the inability of small and medium-sized businesses to get access to the land they need is what blocks innovation and the lack of available land for new housing suppresses the potential workforce and chokes the life from rural communities.

In yet another report, we set out a vision for how Scotland could create a 'mosaic of life' on the land which it is difficult to make economically productive, enabling proper carbon sequestration and driving rapid biodiversity recovery.

As a nation we are simply refusing to look seriously at this gaping hole in our economy. So why?

One of the main reasons is that, wherever you look, you will discover that land ownership confers power, and the sheer scale of Scotland's land holdings confer enormous power over both local and national debate (and in many cases this power has been in the hands of the same families for centuries).

Scotland's politicians are scared of land reform because they are scared to take on landowners. It is our national economy and the economic health of rural Scotland which suffers.

The second reason is that land reform has for centuries been largely presented as an issue of social justice. It absolutely is an issue of social justice, but this has obscured the crucial economic, developmental and environmental issues.

Common Weal (and the Revive coalition which commissioned most of the above reports) is not anti-landowner and Scotland has some wonderful landowners doing all the right things. In fact, so keen are we on landowners that we want to see thousands more of them.

And we want this not because we are anti-countryside but for the opposite reason. Scotland could create a flourishing rural future with thriving and growing communities living in good housing, working in well-paid productive jobs, and living in not our current 'wet deserts' but in a landscape which is brought alive again.

Scotland is squandering one of its most valuable assets. If entrepreneurs and communities who want to use that asset properly cannot get access, we will squander it for another generation.

That's why Scotland needs land reform.

Robin McAlpine is head of strategic development for Common Weal, a partner of the Revive coalition

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