SIR, According to the recent farming press, everything is rosy in the tenanted sector.
If everything is supposedly rosy, why are there so many tenants losing land or being evicted for landlords' subsidy grabs greenwashing schemes, or holiday homes? And why are farm tenants in dispute still being fed into the court of session meat grinder? Why has half of the 2016 Land Reform Act not been implemented?
Why are there next to no farms being let? It has nothing to do with that old chestnut ‘the threat of right to buy’ it all to do with the ill conceived golden carrots that ScotGov is dangling before landlords which have removed the need for them to find farm tenants to fund the lairds' lifestyle.
The tenanted sector has shrunk massively since the Scottish tenant farming commissioner was established, it's so bad that even ScotGov has started an enquiry to see why rural depopulation is happening. You couldn’t make this up. I suggest a name change from the tenant farming commissioner to the Ministry of Inertia and hand wringing.
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