Young Crofters

SCF and The MacRobert Trust invited the nomination of young crofters for the award of Young Crofter 2022.

Struan, who crofts sheep, pigs and goats in Achmelvich, Sutherland, has been chosen as SCF Young Crofter.

On being awarded the prize at the SCF Gathering Fort William, Struan said, “I feel very honoured to get this and hope its an inspiration to other young crofters. I am not sure what got me in to crofting, I just started helping the older crofters about here and it went from there. I aim to increase my livestock, get some cows and to sell my meat locally.”

Previous winner, Helen O’Keefe, in Elphin, said “The Young Crofter Award has been a great way to share the message about how important crofting is, especially for our communities”.

SCF and The MacRobert Trust invited the nomination of young crofters for the award of Young Crofter 2020.

Helen O’Keefe, in Elphin, Sutherland, has been chosen as winner of SCF Young Crofter of the Year. Judges representing Scottish Crofting Federation (SCF), The MacRobert Trust and the Crofting Commission made their choice from exceptionally worthy submissions

Donald MacKinnon, chair of the SCF, said, “We got an extremely high calibre of entrants for this round of the SCF Young Crofter Award, which is generously supported by The MacRobert Trust. It is an inspiration to see young folk doing such a very wide variety of activities on their crofts and they all fully deserve to be recognised for their efforts and enterprises. The judges, representatives of SCF, The MacRobert Trust and the Crofting Commission, certainly found what they were looking for – inspiration, enterprise, commitment and community involvement, in abundance. From the wide range of nominations, all very worthy ambassadors for crofting, we narrowed it down to a shortlist – Adam Veitch from Banavie, Cheryl McIntyre from Skye and Helen O’Keefe from Elphin. But of course there can only be one winner and Helen seems to be some sort of human dynamo!”

The online SCF Young Crofters gathering was a first for SCF and well received by those taking part. The day was chaired by young crofter, Donald MacKinnon, SCF’s vice-chair, who said ”We had a great gathering with over 60 people participating. The video presentations made by young crofters showing us their enterprises were very inspiring and the discussions that followed were vibrant and illuminating. We covered topics including local food, horticulture, direct selling of meat and other products and the Scottish Crofting Produce Mark.

The lack of available land kept coming up and is clearly a major obstacle for young folk wanting to get into crofting.”

The videos and presentations made by young crofters showing the range and diversity of crofting activity are now available to watch at your leisure on the SCF YouTube channel. Well worth watching!

In March 2015 the SCF Gathering  –  ‘Young Crofters: 20:20’ –  took place in Glencanisp Lodge on the community-owned Glencanisp Estate in Assynt. A short film was made of the event –  Crofting’s New Voices.

This was the first gathering of young crofters and aspiring young crofters, with the purpose of addressing the question: “What do we want crofting to look like in 2020 and beyond?”

The event was hosted by the SCF and Crofting Connections.

2020 will see a follow-up to this event with an online session planned for July. Look out for more details here and on social media.

SCF is keen to encourage and support young crofters who would like to get involved in the organisation. If you would be interested or would like  more details just get in touch.