Scotland’s agritourism sector is to receive a cash injection of £442k towards a second round of monitor farm projects, which will feature four new farms and is expected to benefit a further 400 rural businesses over the next three years.

Cabinet Secretary Mairi Gougeon made the announcement during the Scottish Agritourism conference in Perth, in front of an audience of over 270 delegates, praising the sector for its huge contribution to ‘sustaining family businesses, providing jobs in rural areas and connecting people to the land, food and nature’.

The new monitor farm programme will see the recruitment of four farms, with the involvement of a wider circle of eight rural businesses around each farm. Mairi Gougeon explained that the announcement follows the success of the first monitor farm programme which launched in 2019 and featured two initial farms: Lennox of Lomond run by the Lennox family and Drift Coffeehouse in North Berwick, run by Jo and Stuart McNicol.

“It is a challenging time for public finance, but this is such an important initiative, and it was fantastic to see what came from the two monitor farms previously,” said Ms Gougeon. “I have no doubt this will build on the success of the previous programme and continue the invaluable shared learning process and we hope that it will encourage more agritourism businesses in the future.”

Scottish Agritourism Chair Riddell Graham welcomed the announcement but stressed the need for capital funding to reduce the risk for those thinking about making the first steps in to agritourism.

“We are delighted with the Cabinet Secretary’s announcement as it is a significant investment in multiple businesses, and we hope it will encourage more people to get involved with agritourism moving forward. However, we are calling for access to a one-off capital grant to help folk get started and let them become more self-sustaining on their own. People are less likely to take the risk and invest if they don’t have the initial support.”

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Mairi Gougeon told the SF that she wanted to ‘seriously consider’ capital funding moving forward but that the government is constrained by budget cuts and hesitations around the annual budget framework and its limitations to business planning.

“Since we left the EU and the support of Leader funding, we have had to develop our own programme, trying to take learnings from Leader and adapt. I understand the need for initial capital to get some business and enterprises going, it is one of the biggest areas for me and we are seeing budgets reduce all the time, particularly in relation to capital.

“We previously had the certainty of a seven-year funding framework, so we knew what our allocation was, but operating on an annual basis, businesses now need to go through the process for applying for funding and then to have to spend it by the end of the financial year, which can prove difficult,” she explained. “These are all problems we are trying to make headway on, but I recognise the difference Leader funding has made to getting businesses off the ground, so I think if we are serious about this transition and for agritourism to grow, I think we have to look for those opportunities for people,” concluded Ms Gougeon.