Women in agriculture task force: members' biographies

Joyce Campbell - Armadale Farm

Joyce is 47 and runs a family-run hill farm on the north coast of Sutherland started helping out on the farm in the 1970s and took over running of the farm when she was twenty and is supported by her husband and a team. In 2015 the farm was awarded Agriscot Scottish Sheep Farm. The farm has a policy of buying and hiring locally and they regularly take on secondary school 3-4 year pupils who are taking up the Rural Skills programme (a vocational skills route) and employs young people and gives them the opportunity to develop their skills before going onto vocational skills training. She runs a flock of 830 pure-bred North Country Cheviot Hill Ewes and some suckler cows. Joyce who has diversified her business runs holiday cottages, is a keen photographer selling calendars and cards of her pictures and publishes drone videos, with one video being view 4.2M times on facebook. She is keen at a farm and national level that agriculture needs to get better at re-connecting with our communities and the general public to help them appreciate the high quality of our products. Joyce was awarded the Associate of the Royal Agricultural Societies (ARAgS) in January 2017, in recognition of her distinguished achievement in agriculture.

Nina Clancy - Chief Executive of RSABI – Chief Executive of RSABI, Scotland's agricultural charity, non-exec director SAOS and a partner in a sheep enterprise in the Scottish Borders

Nina joined RSABI as Chief Executive in October 2013. She has farming interests in the Scottish Borders and previously worked with NFU Scotland as Regional Manager for Lothian and Borders. The majority of her working career so far has been as a self-employed insurance agent with NFU Mutual and Group Secretary for NFU Scotland based in Newtown St Boswells. She built up the business to be the largest agency in Scotland, giving her an in depth knowledge of the rural community and rural business. She took up the post of external director of SAOS in 2014, believing that cooperation and collaboration in the food and farming industries is increasingly important given the many business pressures on farmers and growers. She is currently chairman of Border Ice Rink Ltd running the curling and skating facility in Kelso. Sandy Hay- Bank of Scotland Area Director, Agriculture, South & East Scotland: Sandy comes from a farming family background. He has an HND in Agriculture from the East of Scotland College of Agriculture and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland. He has 22 years' experience with Bank of Scotland, mostly involved supporting farming clients across Scotland as a relationship manager and now as Area Director for Agriculture. Sandy has responsibility for a team of dedicated relationship managers providing a face to face banking service to over 750 clients in South & East of Scotland. In addition he represents the Bank on agricultural matters across Scotland including political &stakeholder engagement.

Patrick Krause

Partick is the Chief Executive of the Scottish Crofting Federation (SCF), the only organisation solely dedicated to campaigning for crofters and the fighting for the future of crofting. SCF is the largest association of small-scale food producers in the UK. Patrick has been in this position for 14 years. Before this Patrick worked in international rural development, chiefly for a development organisation which was based in Scotland operating livestock projects mainly in Africa. He moved from international to Scottish rural development as he could see that Scotland faced interesting challenges in rural development practice, especially regarding the Highlands and Islands, crofting and smaller-scale food production.

Sarah Jane Laing - Executive Director SLE

Sarah-Jane works and lives with her husband and 3 children on the family's farm in the Scottish Borders. She joined the organisation in 2004 as Housing Strategy Officer, after 10 years in both local authority and housing association environments. During those 10 years she carried out a number of housing related roles, latterly specialising in housing research and strategic policy development. Her role as Housing Strategy Officer involved raising awareness of the role of the rural private rented sector, increasing and maintaining standards within the sector, and identifying opportunities for further development of the private sector role in meeting the housing needs of rural Scotland. Sarah-Jane played a lead role in the development of the Rural Homes for Rent Grant Scheme. She became Head of Policy in 2009 and was made Director of Policy & Parliamentary Affairs in January 2013 - a role which involved overseeing the policy team, directing all external and internal communications and leading on lobbying and representational work. Sarah-Jane was appointed to the Board as Executive Director in May 2017, taking on additional organisational responsibilities alongside her policy and parliamentary team.

Andrew Marchant, Clonhie Farm (QMS Monitor Farm)

Andrew and Aileen Marchant's run a 300-hectare upland farm in the south of Scotland. Neither of them are from a farming background. From a young age, Andrew has worked hard to develop his farming skills to enable him to get a career and degree in agriculture. Before the couple took over the tenancy of the 93 hectare Clonhie farm from Buccleuch Estates in March 2012, Andrew was the manager of a dairy and beef unit in Castle Douglas. Over the past four years they have taken on more land from Buccleuch, including a neighbouring 134-hectare farm. They have increased stock numbers on Clonhie have increased significantly since taking over and the farm now has 900 breeding ewes and 230 ewe lambs They have also established a small herd of Luing cows and plan to build the herd up to about 40 in order to sell females and store cattle in the future. The Marchants are keen to embrace change and move agriculture forward.

Andrew McCornick, Barnbackle, Lochfoot, Dumfries, President of NFUS.

Andrew, is married with three sons and a daughter, was born and brought up on a dairy farm in Wigtown. Andrew and wife Janice farm their 230+ ha unit with 160 suckler cows and 600 breeding ewes with a small herd of pedigree Charolais cattle. For as long as Andrew can remember, he has been a member of the Union, and became more involved when the consultation for Nithsdale NVZ came out. He went on to become vice chairman of the Dumfries branch, and then to his previous role of Regional Board Chairman for Dumfries and Galloway. He also sat on the LFASS committee.

Anne Rae MacDonald

Anne is married with one young child. She is a partner of a 700 acre arable farming business Nonikiln, Alness and a director of Highland Business Services co-operative which serves members throughout Highlands and Argyll, and a council member of SAOS Ltd. Prior to this, Anne spent 23 years with RPID working with farmers and rural communities in Orkney, Aberdeenshire and for the last 10 years as Principal Agricultural Officer for Highland Area overseeing operations in the Inverness and Skye Offices, as well as the Scottish Government bull stud at Knocknagael. She was also chair of the joint agency SRDP Project Assessment Committee for Highland for 5 years, awarding grants for rural business, agri-environment and forestry projects throughout the region.

Dr Annie McKee

Annie is a social researcher in land management at the James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen, and was part of the team who completed the 'Women in Farming and the Agricultural Sector' research project commissioned by the Scottish Government. Annie's research interests include rural governance, agricultural and land use policy, the impact of land reform, rural community development and achieving sustainable development in rural areas. She developed extensive knowledge and understanding of Scottish landownership and estate management systems through her PhD research, contributing to the 'Sustainable Estates for the 21st Century' project. Annie has significant experience of qualitative data collection and analysis, and has developed proficient facilitation skills through research roles in EU funded projects including FarmPath and PRO-AKIS, amongst others, as well as contributing to the Scottish Government's Strategic Research Programme (2011 – 2016 and 2016 – 2021 (ongoing)), focussing on themes of 'rural economy adaptation to key external drivers' and 'local assets, local decisions and community resilience'.

Professor Wayne Powell - Principal and Chief Executive of SRUC

Wayne was born in a small mining village, Abercraf, in the Swansea Valley and was the first member of his family to attend University. He graduated in Agricultural Botany from University College of Wales, Aberystwyth (1974) and went on to do a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (1975) and then an MSc in Genetics and Plant Breeding (with Distinction, 1980) there. He then gained a PhD in Quantitative Genetics (1985) and a DSc in Plant Genetic Manipulation (1993) from University of Birmingham He was the Director of Institute of Biological, Environmental & Rural Sciences at Aberystwyth University and then the Chief Science Officer at CGIAR Consortium in Montpellier, France . Among his Awards, Distinctions and Honours, he is an elected Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and the winner of the Broeckhuizen Prize in 1990 for outstanding contribution to cereal science research in Europe by a scientist under the age of 40. He has also been involved at Board Level for a number of companies and institutes and on International Scientific Advisory Committees. His personal research interests are in the domestication and evolution of crops and the production of global public goods. He has published over 280 refereed papers, more than 120 book chapters and an H index of 78.

Professor Sally Shortall - Duke of Northumberland Chair of Rural Economy, Newcastle University

Sally grew up family farm south of Dublin and has six brothers so has always had an interest in farming. Her main research interests are the role of women on farms and in rural development, rural development policy more generally, social changes in farming practice and the links between evidence and policy. She is published widely including books, peer reviewed journal articles, and policy reports. She is currently president of the European Society for Rural Sociology, and First Vice-President of the International Rural Sociology Association. She has worked with the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (Farming and Agriculture Organisation). She is currently the Principle Investigator on the Scottish Government funded research on women in agriculture in Scotland with colleagues from the James Hutton Institute. She is also the Principle Investigator on an ESRC funded project which explores and addresses the regional impacts in Northern Ireland of the global energy-climate-food security nexus. The focus is primarily on global energy availability and climate change and their impacts on regional food security; and she is working with colleagues in the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute in Belfast on research to establish how best to implement rural proofing measures, and to identify best practice and barriers to best practice.

Lee-Ann Sutherland

Lee-Ann Sutherland was raised on a family farm in Ontario, Canada. Growing up, she was regularly involved in discussions of farm-sector politics: her parents were both involved in farming organisations – her father on the Ontario Pork Producers Marketing Board and her mother as chair of the Ontario and Canadian Swine Breeders' Associations. As a teenager, Lee-Ann was heavily involved in 4-H clubs, winning the Ontario Silver Dollar Competition (for beef heifer conformation and showmanship) in 1991. While completing her MSc in Rural Planning and Development at the University of Guelph, Lee-Ann worked with the Ontario Farm Women's Network to set up their stress hotline for farm families. Lee-Ann obtained her PhD in Land Economy at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and joined the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute (now the James Hutton Institute) in 2005. She has worked extensively on farm household adaptation in Europe, particularly farm diversification and agri-environmental scheme participation. She has recently obtained over £400 000 to study and set up networking opportunities for new entrants to farming. She coordinated the European Commission's EIP Agri Focus Group on New Entrants to Farming in 2015/2016 and is currently undertaking a review of New Entrants Supports for the European Parliament. She is also co-ordinating a European Commission-funded project 'PLAID' which is producing an inventory of demonstration farms across Europe, as well as leading on-going research for Scottish Government on farm adaptation and diversification. Lee-Ann has published 37 peer reviewed journal articles and is on the editorial board of Land Use Policy. In the Women in Farming and the Agriculture Sector study, Lee-Ann led the quantitative research (on-line surveys).