Projects and Partners
Fundamental to SCF is our belief in the crofting system and in crofting underpinning the future of the rural policy in the crofting counties. We are working to increase the contribution made by crofting to our communities by providing a range of valuable support services by crofters.
The Crofting Resources Programme (CRP), which is funded by the Scottish Rural Development Programme, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, aims to build capacity within the crofting community through collaborative activity. The CRP develops co-operation and assists networks of producers to utilise existing best practice. Crofter-led producer groups have considerable capacity to contribute to the aims of the Scottish Government Food Policy.
The programme assists crofting communities to make best use of the resources available to them in order to sustain the cultural heritage of crofting, its people and practices, and the rich environment and cultural landscape derived from extensive crofting land use
For more information please see the Crofting Resources Programme (CRP) web page.
SCF would like to thank the the following organisations for supporting this programme.
Crofting Connections
Crofting Connections ~ Ceanglaichean Croitearachd
Learning about crofting past, present and future, and helping schools to deliver the Curriculum for Excellence. Crofting Connections is a programme of activities and events that will inspire over 1,000 young people aged 5-16 living in remote rural communities throughout the Highlands & Islands about crofting past, present and future.
They will learn traditional skills from crofters, create their own climate-friendly food-growing projects, and help safeguard the history, culture and heritage associated with their crofting communities.
For more information please see the
or visit the website at www.croftingconnections.com
Crofting Connections would like to thank the following organisations for funding this project.
Skills Development Scheme
Participants are invited to select from the following units, and then to attend training days on specific elements of that unit. The units, and some example training days that may be available are:
- Crofting Livestock (sheep shearing; lambing; basic livestock husbandry)
- Croft Land Management (fencing; pest control; soil analysis; equipment use)
- Crofting Conservation and Environment (muirburn; improving grassland; managing wetland)
- Crofter Forestry (coppicing; structural support for trees; deer management)
- Crofter Horticulture (use of polytunnels; crop disorders; soft fruit growing)
- Crofter Heritage Skills (local dry-stone walling styles; thatching)
In 2011-12 there will be 14 practical training days for all units, except Crofter Heritage Skills, widely spread across the Highlands and Islands. For Heritage Skills there will be 7 training days. Courses will cost from £30 for each day of training.
Training is arranged and delivered through LANTRA approved trainers, and will be available across the Highlands and Islands. The exact location and topic of the training days will depend on the demand for each course, so we welcome training requests.
A regular email update can be provided to everyone interested in the programme, and information on upcoming courses will also be available on the training page of the website.
SCF would like to thank the following organisations funding the skills development scheme.
Farmer's Seeds
Today, both in Europe and in the South, agriculture is facing a new global crisis involving its relationship with society and with the nature and the role of farmers in the food chain. The externalities of food production are increasingly evident, starting from pesticides to the new agenda on climate change. Two different sides of the same problem concerning global society: the quality of food (in the North) and Food Security (in the South.) Farmers are experiencing a reduction in their autonomy as it increases their dependence on agro-food system.
While the majority proposals of modernization in agriculture provide for a greater industrialization of the sector in order to deal with this transition, examples from the field show that an alternative way of farming (i.e. organic, low input and agro-ecological) is more suitable for overcoming the crisis and ensuring Food Security and Sovereignty.
The widespread adoption of a relatively few commercially successful crop varieties has led to the loss of an estimated 75% of the genetic diversity in agriculture in the past 100 years (FAO data). Industrial farming in the European Unions's 27 states has seen the loss of an estimated three million full time agricultural jobs between 2003 and 2008 this represents a 16% reduction in jobs and the loss of 1.5 million small farms with less than 5 hectares (Eurostat data). This project aims to:
The dissemination and capitalization of good practices on family farming in African and European countries involved in the project
Setting up a pilot network for decentralized cooperation, which pays attention to education and agro-biodiversity issues, involving small farmers' organizations, NGOs, civil society organizations, universities, local authorities and private actors from European and African countries involved in the project
Realizing an information campaign aimed at European citizens about the ITPGRFA in order to raise support for African farmers and be involved in programs of international cooperation
Promoting consistency with art #6 of the Treaty (sustainable use of genetic resources in agriculture and farmers' rights) for EU policies on agriculture, commerce, education and development cooperation
For more information please visit the Farmers Seeds website
The following organisations are supporters of the Farmers Seeds 
This project is funded by the EU.
Vodaphone World of Difference
The Vodafone Foundation’s 'World of Difference' competition gives people the chance to propose projects that will support a local charity, and the award to the SCF is one of 500 received by different charity based projects throughout the UK.
The funding will enable Iain MacKinnon, whose research specialises in the area of traditional ecological knowledge, to organise and prepare for crofters to have a presence at the Swedish conference which will discuss issues of agricultural biodiversity, local food systems and traditional knowledge, and is being held by the international Slow Food movement and the Sami, the people who are indigenous to many parts of northern Europe.
Visit the Vodaphone World of Difference website.
Visit Iain MacKinnon's Blog on the Vodaphone website.
Connecting Coastal Communities
For the island fishermen of Scotland and Ireland, their work is more than just a source of income. It is a livelihood from a way of living that has helped to define island identities for many generations. Small-scale fishermen on the islands of Arranmore, Inishbofin and Tory off the west coast of County Donegal in Ireland, and on Barra in the Western Isles of Scotland believe that their livelihood and way of living is threatened by powerful forces against which they find it difficult to make their voices heard.
In Donegal the islanders are seeking to overturn the Irish government’s decision to implement a total ban on their traditional subsistence salmon fishery - the ban has been implemented because there has been a decline nationally in the numbers of salmon returning to Irish rivers. On Barra, the islanders are opposing proposals from the Scottish Government’s heritage conservation agency to establish a marine Special Area of Conservation in the seas close to the island.
In both localities concern is being expressed that emigration - on islands where past population loss has been dramatic - will begin to increase again, and that restrictions on or the loss of a traditional livelihood from fishing, which has been so vital for the island peoples’ past survival, could make life on the island unteneable for many who have maintained cultural traditions - including the language traditions. These concerns have been made particularly acute in the context of the current economic crisis.
The Connecting Coastal Communities project aims to be a means by which islanders can express the importance of their relationship with their home place and of their working relationships with the seas, relationships which have helped to inform their cultural identities.
The research, which is being supported by funding from the ColmCille Partnership, will be carried out by Iain MacKinnon from the Isle of Skye and Liam Campbell from Donegal.
They will be asking fishermen on the Donegal islands and on Barra to tell them what their work means to them not just as a source of income, but also as a way of living - and whether and how this way of living has encouraged a sense of responsibility for their environment, as well as supporting their cultural and linguistic traditions.
By exploring their distinctive but shared maritime cultural identities, the research will seek to express connections between the Scottish and Irish island communities in ways that will encourage their resilience to maintain traditions in the face of a changing world.
Crofting Community Mapping
There are nearly 18,000 crofts in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, with crofters managing three quarters of a million hectares of land. Most of this huge asset is unmapped. New legislation due to be implemented in two years’ time, will require crofters to register their land on a national land register held by Registers of Scotland (RoS). There are potential problems;
- most crofters do not have the information required to register their land and it is difficult to obtain this information
- the nature of crofting and its history has meant that it is not clear in many communities where both land rights and usufruct rights begin and end - much of the information is held by elders, but with an aging population this information is being lost;
- it will cause disputes that could only be resolved in the Scottish Land Court – a costly and uncertain means of trying to resolve matters;
- Substantial costs could be met by the public under the Legal Aid system;
- the mapping itself will need to be done by ‘experts’ for each individual and so will be costly;
- it is likely to take several generations to get the register completed;
- it will cause resentment and crofters are likely to develop avoidance strategies.
The SCF believes that a community mapping approach to populating the register of crofts would be far more effective and acceptable than the individual ‘trigger point’ concept proposed by Scottish Government. The community gather together and helped by trained facilitators and mediators they generate the maps of their community assets together by walking through the community, comparing existing maps, drawing boundaries on maps and so on. This is a well-practiced development methodology that has proven benefits:
It gets the community together in an exercise that strengthens the community and builds social capital; the community takes ownership of the mapping and the subsequent agreed maps; disputes will still arise but can be more easily resolved at the time using trained mediators in the exercise; the community creates a collective map and/or a series of individual maps that could be submitted to the register together; the mapping itself can be cheaper as there is less dependence on judicial expertise; maps are created and registered in a matter of months. Depending on how well resourced this is, the whole crofting area could be mapped in a few years rather than generations.
What do we hope to achieve?
This project aims to enable communities to take pre-emptive steps to agree their rights and boundaries before they are required to map them for the Land Register. It will also enable communities to assess their assets, both household and community, that will enable them to better plan future developments within their community.
Please see our Rules of Procedure below:
Mapping-procedure.pdf