The Scottish Government

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By pinpointing the con trick you've hit the nail on the head Donnie.
This con trick keeps people off the land and turns them away from rural Scotland. As a nation, we reap what we sow!
Sadly, life's struggles make it unlikely that consumers will rise up in revolt any more than they will reject en masse the convenience of supermarkets in favour of farm shops.
People respond to what is put before them, as do governments on whom consumers rely.
A major influence has been the preference of the farming community to study and seek to emmulate the ways of farming in sparsely populated American and antipodean countries where scale of production is key. Rejecting the socially healthy policies of our nearer European neighbours where large portions of the population have close contact with the land and food production is what dumps us at the foot of umpteen EU social league tables on health and welfare.
Governments have given free rein to supermarkets and have ignored the consequencies of distancing consumers from land and food production.
A broad discussion and national food policy must surely help.

I lived in England for a while and the local council had an initiate offering really cheap compost bins to anyone who was inspired to use one! Allotments are great if the weather in the region makes it easy for beginners to have success. Perhaps the local councils could offer cost effective mini polytunnels for enthusiastic home growers in the North!

Well said Tom Gray!
The taxing of the poor in the guise of supporting cheaper food and then actually giving it to the rich is a super con trick.
Lets get people back to the land and tell the 'not-dirty-hand farmers' to go and do someone else.
It is easy for the government to subsidise land for allotments instead of subsidising bio-fuel.

I am so impressed by all the blog entries, it should be required reading for all MSP's.
In regard to Tom's comment on consumers as stakeholders, I only wish they would vote with their feet and give greater support to Farmers Markets and Farm Shops, our local West Craigie Farm sells excellent produce. I am also saddened by the perceived 'need' for ever cheaper food, especially meat, which has impacted greatly upon quality. Our family income is low at the moment as I am a student, yet we prefer to buy smaller amounts of good quality, hopefully local, produce. I also encourage my children to pick their own fruit and veg at the local farm which helps them to both understand and appreciate where their food comes from.

In attempting to answer Sue's question, might I suggest that two generations ago children were two generations closer to their rural roots and I have no doubt that considerably more parents and grandparents at that time had first hand knowledge of food production.
Our key problem is our ancient landowning structure which has driven many needlessly to urbanisation and rejection of the countryside. This has created a huge urban/rural divide.
The next problem, which has simply exacerbated the first, is the guard them like the crown jewels attitude toward uncapped farming subsidies.
National food production policy has been driven largely by the self interest bodies, "stakeholders" as they are commonly called today. Farming and landowning lobbyists, with the ear of successive governments friendly to their cause, have guarded uncapped subsidies as the key to further prosperity. Inevitably and sadly this prosperity has only benefited the ever-decreasing number of farmers and estate owners free to gain the subsidies on land once farmed by family farmers.
The result is Scotland-wide rural clearance, serious lack of opportunity for new entrants to agriculture and a population further distanced from food production.
The real stakeholders in all this should be consumers. They provide the subsidies and need to ensure their distribution in the best interests of consumers.

I think the idea of bridging the age-gap with shared garden/allotment space sounds great. I was dissappointed to see a number of allotments replaced with flats over the last year on my street. (I appreciate that there is a housing shortage, but its not as if Edinburgh Council was meeting its 'affordable housing policy' when these apartments will sell for in excess of £500,000.)

I also feel strongly about encouraging vegetable/plant/herb growing within schools. I loved learning how to grow food at school and wish we could have been taught more!

Its worrying how much knowledge is being lost from generation to generation in self-sufficient food production. How is it possible that today's children can barely identify vegetables in the supermarket, when only two generations ago our nation's health/nutrtion depended on small-time/local food production.

There are some great ideas here. What about designing raised,suspended, rotating beds, a pulley system, for tight tenement space areas? A design competition/challenge for our design students. Recycled compost from neighbours excess waste. Neighbourhood competitions.

How about some intergenerational work and "joined up" thinking in local communities. Many elderly residents have gardens that they worry about maintaining - could'nt those individuals/ families who desire to grow their own veg offer to maintain the garden in return for use of ground for growing vegetables. My husband did this for years within our village to the benefit of all involved. Might need some mediation but worth a thought!

More allotments would be good, but there's not always land available in urban areas to make into allotment space. Brownfield sites may not be suitable because of land contamination, and people who use existing greenspace might object to it being turned into allotments.

Another solution would be to have vegetable patches in tenement gardens. Not all, but a lot of tenement gardens aren't well used at the moment.

In tenements factored by social landlords, it should be reasonably easy to encourage them to pilot some vegetable patches. Private factors would be more awkward, but there's nothing to stop occupiers taking a lead.

Another part of the problem is that people in tenements often don't know their neighbours so may be reluctant to use a communal space, but then, putting a shared resource other than the bins in a back court would encourage some community feeling.