The independent agronomy coop, Scottish Agronomy, has kickstarted 2025 with the opening of a second office and a new agronomist trainee programme.
The second office, in addition to the main office at Arlary, will be at Cortachy, near Kirriemuir, and will also provide a meeting space for the regular group agronomy meetings for farming members in the Angus and South Aberdeenshire areas.
Adam Christie, Managing Director of Scottish Agronomy said that it is timely to be extending both offerings to the membership:
“It’s important that as a coop we are always looking to modernise and adapt to ensure we are meeting our members’ needs. As the coop has evolved in recent years to include more holistic services beyond our core agronomy research and advice, such as machinery reviews, Integrated Pest Management plans and Healthy Soils Courses, we need to ensure we have both the people and the hubs to service this really well.
“We’ve always had a strong ethos at Scottish Agronomy about training up through the ranks and it’s exciting to be formalising this and opening up opportunities to those who don’t have technical agricultural or agronomy degrees. We believe it’s important to invest in the future of agriculture as well as the coop’s succession planning. Importantly, as well, these trainees will also bring different skills and perspective to strengthen the consultancy and skills we offer.”
Starting this year as one of the two trainees is Emma May who came to Scottish Agronomy on the trials side in 2023.
“I started a degree in nursing and soon realised it wasn’t for me, so I decided to study Environmental Science via the Open University,” explains Emma. “This sparked an interest in agriculture, and I first got involved with lambing, calf rearing and milking, with a flock of sheep on the side. I then worked in agricultural research with the James Hutton Institute and joined Scottish Agronomy as a Trials Officer in September 2023. I love the variety of the job, always something different to do and something new to learn. We’ve got a great team who are supportive of each other and love working outdoors. I am really excited about the next step now of training up to be an agronomist.”
The second trainee, Juaad Al-Saffar, graduated from accountancy at Robert Gordon’s University, working in oil and gas, latterly as a project manager, for six years. He has family connections to farming, was a member of Forfar Young Farmers and spent his summers tattie rogueing.
The training will take up to three years and include shadowing the agronomists to gain in-field experience, working on the trials’ sites to understand the research and, for example, disease expression, as well as formal Basis and Facts, and mentoring.
Scottish Agronomy is also contributing agronomy expertise for the first time as part of Scotland’s Monitor Farms, and new cross-industry and collaborative crop and potato research projects are in the pipeline.
“It’s an exciting time for progression and expansion for the cooperative,” adds Mr Christie.