What Labour should learn from farmers' 'heroic' actions in snow-bound Scotland
Farmers are no ordinary businesses. They produce the food we eat, act as custodians of the natural world and are pillars of their communities
After giving birth at Peterhead Maternity Unit, Gracie Ballantine, 31, her partner Jake and baby Frank found their car stuck in heavy snow about half a mile from home. They faced an unpleasant walk in bitterly cold conditions, until local farmers Graham and Lynn Pirie came to the rescue with their tractor, towing them the rest of the way.
It is a heart-warming story that will be familiar to many who live in rural areas – a farmer almost casually helping someone in need, often hardly pausing to receive thanks for their efforts.
It is actions like these that prompted Scottish Conservative Shadow Rural Affairs Secretary Tim Eagle to call for underspent agricultural funds to be used to give farmers a thank-you payment for their “heroic” work.
"I hope we can agree Scotland's farmers deliver far more than food production alone. They are central to the economic, environmental and social fabric of rural Scotland,” he wrote in a letter to agriculture minister Jim Fairlie.
READ MORE: Watch heartwarming moment Aberdeenshire newborn towed home from hospital during snowstorm
‘Keeping rural Scotland moving’
Eagle said farmers had been using tractors to “to clear roads, reach isolated homes, assist stranded residents, and support emergency services”, and many had “quite literally spent days and their own money keeping rural Scotland moving”.
Farmers and other landowners have also been to the fore during efforts to fight wildfires during the spring and summer.
Some do all this even as bad weather has a direct impact on their incomes and, sometimes, their mental health. The RSABI farming charity has just issued a call “for those experiencing loss as a result of the exceptional snow affecting much of the north and north-east of Scotland” to apply for payments of up to £1,000.
Before the recent U-turn, Labour’s inheritance tax changes appeared to treat farmers as just another business and reportedly prompted some older people to consider suicide to avoid leaving their children with an unaffordable tax bill.
As well as producing the food we eat, farmers are custodians of the natural world and pillars of their communities. And while they can be asset rich, many are cash poor. When making decisions that affect their lives, politicians would do well to remember just how important farmers truly are.
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