Opinion
Huffing and puffin
Our favourite seabirds are facing a shortage of sand eels, but please don’t blame the fish farmers. On 15 May 2021, the Herald newspaper included a two-page commercial feature placed by the Coastal Communities Network who claim that the safety of Scottish water is being compromised as the economic drivers of open cage salmon farming…
Read MoreThe feed conundrum
There have been great strides forward in aquafeed, but the industry will need to continue looking for even better solutions. When I was first in the industry, feed was pelletised not extruded. It sank like a stone in the pens. The pellets were so hard that you couldn’t break them, though they still seemed to…
Read MoreDisappearing act
A statistical glitch meant figures for Scottish salmon exported to the EU in January were wildly wrong, but it took a while for HMRC to realise there was a problem. As every economist knows, there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. But that view is not confined to economists. It is…
Read MoreChicken feed
Maybe it’s time to revisit a bright idea from the 1990s? Industry critics regularly refer to comments, made by the Scottish Parliament’s Rural Economy and Connectivity (REC) Committee in 2018, to the effect that that “the status quo is not an option”. In fact, when it comes to salmon farming the status quo has never…
Read MoreThe Changing of the Guard
So here it is, my dear old Mum is nearing the end and it is a sad, sad process to have to stand by and watch. Many of you will experience, or have experienced, such an event and it is not only sobering but also thought-provoking. My Mum is 92 and has had an utterly…
Read MoreParty pledges
Back in the early days of the Scottish Parliament, manifesto launches were a big deal. They signalled the kick-off of the campaign. They set the tone and they were important; indeed, parties that got them wrong could see their whole strategy thrown off course. Political hacks like me used to scour each one for stories…
Read MoreThe art of story telling
Writing last month’s piece about the last 50 years reminded me how much the industry has changed in other ways. When I first started to understand how we were seen by our critics, it became obvious that our story telling just simply wasn’t good enough. In those days a view prevailed that PR and marketing…
Read MoreUnfair game
Earlier this month, I came across a headline in the Mail on Sunday that declared: “Listen to country folk – we know our land best”. This was a piece written by Alex Hogg MBE, chairman of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association and it is interesting because he does not seem to follow his own advice. His…
Read MoreHolyrood in the balance
John Finnie is one of many MSPs who are standing down at next month’s Holyrood election and I will be sorry to see him go. That is because he has been the only Green MSP in the Scottish Parliament I have come across who has been prepared to have a proper dialogue and discussion with…
Read MoreEvolution of an industry
Given the importance of salmon farming to Scotland, it is hard to believe that just 50 years have passed since the first harvest of farmed salmon. It wasn’t until 1979, that the Scottish Government started to officially record and publish production, and, in that year, it had grown by 15% on the previous to a…
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