21st Century Crofting: Strengths and Opportunities for Community Development

Could ecologically sound human nutrition include the consumption of animal products?

“…With regard to the second reason, there may be a lack of social support for the conversion of Gary's farm. If Gary was a tenant farmer for one of the 1000 largest land owners who own more than half of Scotland (Hains, Hustedde, and Ricketts, 2013), he would be likely to manage a large amount of land. When the land is controlled by so few people, the most economical way to manage it might be to keep grazing animals due to the relatively large labour costs of other options.…”

Current Scottish Land Reform and Reclaiming the Commons: Building Community Resilience

“…5 Crofting is synonymous with Scotland’s modern history of rural land reform yet positions vary on the value of the term and its application. Today crofting and its alignment with progressive small communities across the highlands and islands region presents (and is adopted as) a narrative of renaissance and appropriateness for sustainable living contexts (Hains et al, 2013) (i.e., biodiversity, small-scale family and community-based working, a degree of common asset sharing, and expressive of deep cultural histories of people ‘knowing’ the land that is complexly predicated on Scotland’s Gaelic cultural and social history, ethnicity and ecologies (MacKinnon, 2018; MacLeod, 2009; McIntosh, 2001). Crofting is promoted as a framework to not only sustain people on the land but as an attractive prospect of retaining and attracting people to the land across the crofting counties of the highlands and islands where depopulation and wider demographic and migration vulnerabilities are historic challenges.…”