Muck, Sweat and Steers: 40 Years of Landward Landward

In April 1976, with little fanfare,

a series called Landward snuck into the schedule.

Flick through this edition of the Radio Times, April 1976,

the one with the cast of Angels on the front, and you'll find the

first-ever listing for the programme.

Other titles, including Angels and Pebble Mill, have come and gone.

But Landward has thrived and, for more than half of its existence,

I've worked on it.

I began in the '90s when my Landy was already 30 years old,

at least the original bits were.

Over the last 40 years, we've met the characters,

explored the issues and travelled across the country to bring you,

the viewer, a unique insight into rural Scotland.

I'm going to delve into Landward's archive and crisscross our beautiful

landscape in my beloved Land Rover

to uncover the story of how our countryside has changed in the last four decades.

VARIOUS VERSIONS OF LANDWARD THEME TUNE PLAY

Back in 1991,

I filmed my first-ever feature for Landward close to home in rural

Aberdeenshire and I haven't seen it since.

Many farmers are taking conservation increasingly seriously these days,

but perhaps none quite as seriously as John Strachan here at Tulloch

in Aberdeenshire.

When John arrived 27 years ago,

the farm was a typical north-east farm.

380 acres, part arable, part pasture.

There were a few trees and even fewer hedges, but now a series

of 14 ponds stretches across the entire farm.

A lot has changed. So young, so innocent.

Hedges are being replanted

and a series of trees are rapidly becoming established.

It looks flawless there. It took about an hour and a half

to record that because I kept on fluffing the lines.

And just talking to a camera - here we are 25 years later -

that feels really natural now.

At that time, talking to an inanimate object

I thought was ludicrous.

It's still ludicrous.

I've changed a lot since those early days and so has the patch that I report on.

'And so, a million and more square miles of Atlantic waste...'

When Landward was first broadcast,

the Second World War still cast a shadow over attitudes to farming and

the countryside.

Memories of food shortages and rationing were still vivid for many.

For Europe's politicians, the objective was clear.

The focus of the agricultural policy at the time was absolute.

Food security had top priority.

Britain had just joined the European Community, and with it,

the Common Agricultural Policy which subsidised farmers

to ensure a plentiful supply of food.

As we'll see, farmers responded to that call and that quest for

increased productivity is at the very heart

of how the story has unfolded.

For a start, everything seems to have got a whole lot bigger.

Farms, machinery,

and even our cattle.

In the 1940s, our native cattle breeds were tiny, just waist high.

Farmers bred small bulls for the export market because selling abroad

could be like winning the lottery.

'World record prices for every breed of cattle were knocked to smithereens

'at Perth's shorthorn show when an American cattleman paid £15,225 for

'champion bull, Pittodrie Upright.'

Despite being upright, Pittodrie certainly wasn't tall.

American buyers liked small bulls who put on fat quickly

because they in turn could breed cattle that could

do well on the poor grazing typical on ranches.

'Away overseas goes another product of the British Isles in this

'age of export.'

But by the '60s,

cattle breeders were turning their attention to the home market.

To start my journey,

I've come to the Borders and I'm heading for a farm near Kelso

to meet one of those breeders.

'John Jeffrey! Jeffrey is there!'

Former rugby star John Jeffrey

always split his time between farming and sport.

'Scoring his ninth try for Scotland...'

Come on.

At his farm near Kelso, he is feeding his Charolais cows.

Looking on is John's father, James.

Going to get cereal and then silage.

James was one of the first farmers to bring this large French breed to Scotland.

He recognised that bigger could be better.

Now THAT is a bull.

What have we got there?

That's Kersknowe Jason.

That bull is 18 months old.

And that's why we've got the Charolais

back into this country again.

He's got size, he's got scale,

he's got shape and at the age of 18 months, he's ready to go and work.

In the late '60s, along with a handful of other farmers,

James imported a number of the big, lean Charolais cattle from France.

Some of his neighbours, though, weren't that keen on the big beasts

that dwarfed their own cattle.

Well, this was quite a hotbed for the native breeds and I nearly got lynched.

You were in disgrace, were you?

There were people coming around to look at them and going, "Wow!"

Yes, they did.

And then, of course, we were successful in selling a bull

-to the Scottish Milk Marketing Board.

-How much did you get?

Got 10,000 for him.

£10,000 was a fantastic price at the time.

Adverts for Kersknowe Festival boasted that he was over a tonne

at just two years old and it was that ability to gain weight quickly

that made the Charolais top sellers.

And when John ventured across the Channel himself,

he realised the breed's full potential.

It probably wasn't until I went to the Paris show on a trip with the

agricultural college that I suddenly saw them in amongst all these bottles of wine

that were on show at the Paris show.

I suddenly saw these colossal beasts, the Charolais.

"Goodness me, look at the size of these!"

Compared to the Charolais that we had brought in,

that Father had brought in.

I thought, surely if we are in the business of

producing as much beef as possible,

surely this is a vehicle that can do it

and, ultimately, that's what we did.

We produced more kilos per day and produced it at an earlier age.

Yes, it has worked.

It goes back to seeing these monsters of beasts.

That was a defining moment for me, the Paris show thing.

God, look at these things...

Crunch question. How much is Jason going to make at the bull sales?

You're always hoping that you're going to be near the top.

It's going to be 10,000 guineas anyway, isn't it?

That would be all right, thank you.

We'll take that now, thank you.

Was that a bid? Where's my chequebook?!

What Jason doesn't know

is that his ancestors revolutionised the Scottish beef industry.

To take on the likes of the Charolais,

natives such as the Aberdeen Angus have been selectively bred to get

bigger and bigger.

This Angus bull at the Royal Highland Show in 2015

is enormous compared to his forefathers

at the Perth sale in 1947.

He's the handsome product of a competitive market.

And it's not just beef farmers who have had to change what they do.

In the last four decades,

all sectors of farming have had to adapt to globalisation

and increasingly volatile trading conditions.

Dairy is one striking example of this.

I'm travelling to the south-west to pick up on a story that has been

rattling around for many years.

In 1976, most farmers supplied local dairies

that, in turn, delivered to folk's doorsteps.

Farmers were paid a price guaranteed by milk marketing boards.

But in the early 1990s, as part of a widespread process of deregulation,

the boards were scrapped and that left dairy farmers exposed

to the open market.

Since then, the industry seems to have lurched from one crisis

to the next as Landward has recorded over the years.

Tell you what, you want to be on our income and then you'll bloody know what we're talking about.

Farming's seasonal, we all know that.

The same things come round year after year

but not this again, surely.

But they are back and they're angrier than ever.

We're being ripped off and we're totally cheesed off.

We've seen the supermarkets making a bigger margin than us.

We see the processers making a bigger margin and it's time

somebody was looking at us.

It is absolutely abhorrent that someone like Dairy Crest,

whose profits are going up and up and up do not pass all of that

back to you, the primary producer.

And just last year,

these farmers bought up all the milk in the supermarket

and gave it away for free, a metaphor for their daily life.

They said they were making a loss on every litre anyway.

Faced with the figures, most farmers have had two options.

One, to get out of the industry altogether

or two, to get bigger and take advantage of the economies of scale.

And that is exactly what they did at this farm near Stranraer.

The method of recording farm statistics

has changed over the years

but the figures suggest that in 1976,

there were five times as many dairy farms as there are now

and, on average, each farm had 80 cows.

Today, the average is 200 and here,

they are milking 700.

This farm is one of the biggest of its type in Scotland.

Using a modern rotary parlour, just two people can milk the 700 cows.

But what is it like to work in a system like this?

Schoolgirl Caitlin Bowen aspires to run a dairy farm in the future

but for the moment, she works here part-time.

We all know what we have to do so you can really master it.

So, how long is it going to take to do 700 cows?

In the mornings, it takes five and a half hours

and in the evening times, it takes eight.

-What time do you start for the morning shift?

-5am.

Because you are still at school at the moment?

How do you make that happen?

Well, I'll do milkings,

I tend to do milkings at the weekend or I can do them after school

because the after school milking starts about four

and I'll be home at four, so I can come in,

milk for the eight hours, go home to bed

and then get up again for school.

-So, why do you want to do it?

-Doing my bit. Without us,

you're not going to have your milk in the morning, so...

Do you want to try and cup one or...?

Yeah, but I haven't got any gloves.

I have gloves.

Bring it round and turn your hand upside down.

So, sitting like that.

Then you turn it... Hold on.

Turn it this way and you usually cup with the first one there.

OK, which one?

-Far away.

-Yep.

-You're not in danger of getting kicked at this point?

Make sure you hold that directly under the cow.

There you are.

-Caitlin...

-That was a bit harder than what it should have been

because she's a heifer and she's not used to the parlour.

If that was another cow from any other pen,

she would have stood still.

Well, that may be so,

but I think I'll leave the other 699 to the pros.

Here, the farmer has gone for economies of scale.

Lots of cows being fed high-energy feed producing lots of milk

but it does require serious investment.

Rotary parlours and 700 cows

don't come cheap.

And while this farm carefully monitors the health of their cattle,

not everyone approves of keeping cows

in an intensive system like this.

Some farmers have gone organic and get paid a premium for their milk.

Others have chosen to make their own products like cheese and ice cream

and sell direct.

In many ways, those two different models almost define the changes

that have happened in the Scottish countryside over the last 40 years.

If you want to make a full-time living in farming,

you've either got to get bigger and more efficient or you've got to get

more for your produce,

which is exactly what the man I'm going to see now

has managed to achieve.

Pig farmer Tom Mitchell

was interviewed on Landward at his farm in Fife in 1991.

It's a fairly small...

And I've taken along the footage to show him.

So, this is your pigs.

Oh, wow. 'Initially I think it is a fairly small asking price

'for what is being provided.'

Considerably less grey hair in that version of Tom Mitchell.

-It's quite frightening, isn't it?

-It's terribly frightening.

So, who were you selling to at this point?

We were selling through our Scotland pig producers

to Malton Bacon Factory down in Yorkshire.

In the late 1990s, Tom decided to change the way he did business.

The pound was strong, making imports cheap and foreign pork flooded into Scotland.

The British price just sank like a stone until we were getting

about 65% of the cost of production.

I think my bank manager described it as haemorrhaging money.

It certainly felt like that.

Tom decided to start butchering his pigs on the farm and sell the meat

directly to the public at farmers' markets

that had just begun to spring up.

And it was a good move. The business has gone from strength to strength.

In 1999, it employed three people including Tom

and it now employs 16 and the work is more rewarding.

In all the time that I've produced pigs,

I never once had anybody compliment me on producing...

"That was a great load of pigs that you sent down the road,"

or "That was a good load of barley," or whatever.

But suddenly was getting satisfied customers

who were anxious to come back

and buy from us again and again and again.

Does it surprise you that you've got customers? Because let's face it,

your bacon is a lot more expensive than the supermarket.

You can't make good quality stuff cheaply.

It's just not possible to do that.

It takes us quite a long time.

It takes me the thick end of a year from the moment you breed the pig to

the moment you've got something to sell.

That requires to be paid for.

I think the public get that completely.

From Fife, I'm going across the Forth

to somewhere they definitely do get it, the capital.

In Edinburgh, this is where country meets city, the farmers' market.

The first modern farmers' markets started in Perth in 1999.

Now there are markets throughout the country.

The ones in the smaller towns can be a bit quiet but in the cities,

there are enough people to support multiple markets.

I mean, this is fantastic.

This is elements of Paris, but with a Scottish flavour.

There's bacon, there's sausages, the smell of cooking fills the air.

There's lots of happy faces.

It is brilliant. And what is so good,

there's enough people to support these markets

that there's actually multiple ones.

There's one beneath the castle there.

There's also one in Stockbridge, there's one in Leith.

Sure, just pick two...

And there's one here in the Grassmarket

where, hundreds of years ago, drovers came to sell their cattle.

The farmers' market movement has allowed at least a few farmers

to take more control of the price they get paid for their produce.

And you can get things here

that you wouldn't find in your average supermarket.

Like buffalo meat.

There's over 100 of these amazingly powerful beasts here.

Buffalo farming is just one of the unusual ventures we featured

over the years.

If it was quirky or even a little bit crazy,

we just had to cover it.

This is a field of garlic and for the last few years,

there's been a quiet revolution going on here in the fields of Nairnshire.

Struthio camelus - or to you and me, some damn big ostriches.

What's happening in this old stable block is a livestock venture that no

other Scottish farmer has tackled.

Snails, a venture with a continental flavour.

Scottish farmers have certainly got creative

in their quest to make an extra pound or two.

But for most, the reality has meant growing the same traditional crops

but in much bigger fields and much more efficiently.

Take wheat, for example.

In the last 40 years,

the amount farmers can grow per hectare has roughly doubled.

So how has that incredible increase been achieved?

Well, the vital element has been improvements

in plant breeding techniques.

In recent decades,

scientists' understanding of the genetics of wheat and barley

has leapt forward.

That knowledge has enabled them to breed new varieties

with specific traits far more quickly.

For example, developing varieties of barley that are better at fighting off disease.

We're not talking about genetic modification here,

the so-called "monster food".

What we are talking about is scientists taking a quicker,

more precise approach

to something that farmers have done for hundreds of generations.

Selective breeding.

Knowledge of how to use agrichemicals has also improved.

The high cost of pesticides and fertiliser have encouraged farmers

to find more targeted and more efficient ways of using them.

But I think what has changed folk's everyday experience of farming most

are advances in machinery and technology.

Jobs that once took dozens of people and were hugely labour-intensive

can now be done with a couple of machines

and less than half a dozen bodies.

The workhorse of the countryside has changed massively, too.

Take a look at this.

This is the Massey Ferguson 595, the Mark II.

Back in '76,

this was a state-of-the-art tractor

and any tractor driver or farmer

would have been delighted to own this.

It would have set you back around £7,000, top speed about 30km/h,

just slightly faster than my Land Rover.

At the time, it could lift two tonnes

and that was a lot for a tractor

but the thing that was revolutionary about this is the cab.

The government at that time were taking tractor driver safety

really seriously.

This is the first time the cab came with the tractor.

Up until then, you bought them separately and put them together.

But what this did, it meant dust couldn't get into the lungs and it

protected the hearing of the tractor driver and it just put comfort

right at the centre of that job and if you go inside,

well, it has got everything a tractor driver would need.

You've got a radio and you've got a heater

and that is about it.

Even the heater at that time was an optional extra.

However...

this, the Massey Ferguson 7718,

180 hp, £70,000, and this can lift ten tonnes,

a top speed of 50km/h.

This is state-of-the-art stuff today.

And it is an absolute joy.

GPS technology, air conditioning, computing,

stereo system and somewhere in there, there might even be a fridge,

but today's tractor driver needs all of that.

They might be spending 12, 13, 16 hours a day in the field

and for that...you need comfort.

The introduction of massive machinery working huge fields

has made arable farming very efficient.

It's also become a very solitary business.

The number of people employed on Scottish farms

has dropped by 40% in 40 years

and the jobs are being replaced by things like these.

I find it desperately sad,

but I know that relentless drive for efficiency

has made food cheaper for consumers.

At the end of the '50s, food was a third of household expenditure.

By the '70s, it was a quarter

and these days, if you exclude eating out,

it hovers at just over a tenth.

One of the few sectors of farming that has remained labour-intensive

is fruit farming but the workers and the techniques used

have changed substantially.

In 1977, Landward visited Angus, the hub of fruit-growing in Scotland.

The raspberry, king of Scotland's fruit industry.

This year, between 600 and 700 producers in the main fruit-growing

counties of Angus and Perthshire

picked an estimated 12,000 tonnes of raspberries,

worth more than £3 million.

And this entrepreneurial farmer thought that people

might like to pay for the privilege of picking them.

I've always been brought up with the joke that the Scots were so mean,

you know, the music hall jokes.

I thought they would never come and pay to pick brambles

but that is not true.

They come in and they swipe them all.

I think you get satisfaction.

You think you are getting a bargain

when you pick your own berries, really.

And it's much better than just going in and buying them in a shop.

Lovely strawberries.

This is a part of the country you get the best strawberries.

It's very reasonable, yes. Mind you, I'm no expert -

this is the first time I've ever picked berries.

So, I'm no expert to judge by.

You need to ask some of the ladies round about, I would think.

Attitudes have changed a little since then,

but fruit farms have changed a lot.

What is striking in hindsight is there's not a polytunnel to be seen.

Visit a modern fruit farm

and you're confronted by absolutely acres of polythene.

Polytunnels first appeared in the early 1990s.

A way of protecting fruit from the vagaries of the Scottish weather.

Peter Thomson started in the family fruit business here

at Westfield Farm near Blairgowrie

in the same year that Landward began.

I've actually got some video of this.

How was it being harvested at that point?

It was all by pickers.

Pickers who pick all day.

They get very hot under the sun and a lot of them are just tired out

by the middle of the day.

Back then, Peter's fruit was being harvested for the canning and freezing market

and the pickers were local folk including lots of kids.

Why did that change? What happened? Was it a change in legislation?

It was a change in legislation and also a change...

What finally killed off the children in the fields, I think,

was supplying the supermarkets.

They just won't have anything to do with anything that was child labour,

but, back then, it wasn't really looked at as child labour,

it was just what people did in the school holidays.

We certainly remember

that the children used to go out in the field

picking with their mothers.

And the mothers asking them to pick

to earn the money for their school uniform.

They were keen, because after they had done that,

they got the money to themselves.

One year, '79,

it was so late that Perthshire and Kinross changed the time of school

holidays and had an extra three days to let the children come out picking

-in the field.

-Just for that one year?

Just that one year.

The thought that that would never happen...

It was impossible, but that is what happened then.

These days, fruit farms largely employ migrant workers.

The workforce has changed and the crops, too.

The raspberry might have been king in '76 but in 2016,

the late-season Scottish cherry is a more profitable crop for Peter.

We have just about the latest cherries of anywhere in the world

because our summers are so horrible really,

which is also why we have to have the polytunnels.

So, we grow later cherries than anyone else

and so we're able to sell them.

From the crops they grow to the machinery they use,

so far I've seen how different sectors of farming have adapted.

Of course, all this change has been happening within a shifting political climate.

The High Honourable Edward Heath, Prime Minister of Britain.

When the UK joined the European Community in 1973,

we were also signing up to the Common Agricultural Policy.

Nowadays, it is estimated

the policy costs each European citizen £85 per year.

40% of the European Union's budget is spent subsidising agriculture.

That's why the referendum

was especially significant for farmers.

At the moment, in return for the money,

they have to conform to a huge number of restrictive rules,

Many farmers believe

the Leave vote will mean the end to all that red tape.

Others fear the result will lead to

the loss of vital financial support.

The coming negotiations

will be critical for the future of agriculture.

Whatever the outcome, rural Scotland will adapt to changing politics just as it always has.

And the country has had relatively recent experience of that.

In July of 1999, the Scottish Parliament opened for business.

It shifted control of the countryside

from Westminster to Holyrood,

bringing policymakers much closer

to the people who had to live with their decisions.

Nigel Miller is the former president of the National Farmers' Union Scotland.

-Nigel.

-Good to see you.

And he's spent many years lobbying politicians, from Brussels to Westminster and Holyrood.

The place is almost green,

which is not always that way at this time of year.

So it's good news.

Nigel, you've got some fantastic sheep

and the most beautiful rolling countryside but

you had quite a long part of your life heavily involved in the NFU.

I suppose at the same time as the Scottish Parliament emerged -

did you notice a change in... agricultural legislation, I suppose?

Well, I think it was a dramatic difference from previous generations

and I think the rest of the UK was a bit jealous of the access we got

and I suppose the priority that agriculture was

for the Scottish Parliament.

That was over two very long-serving ministers,

Finnie and then Richard Lochhead.

And it built up a...maybe too close a relationship at times,

but a relationship which actually supported the industry.

Were you aware of agriculture becoming much more central

in the parliamentary business?

I think it was. I think...

Agriculture's a bigger part of Scotland's economy

than that of the rest of the UK.

And I think the present Government,

its food and drink policy is quite significant,

and those targets of 6.5 billion in food and drink

and five billion in exports are a real driver and

that meant there was some real drive and innovation there.

That's a real benefit for farmers.

Since its inception,

the Scottish Parliament has opened up access to the countryside,

set aside money for community ownership

and modernised farm tenancies.

There has been a slow but dramatic shift

in the politics of the landscape.

And in 2001,

the new Scottish Government had to deal with

its first major rural crisis.

Over the last 20 years on Landward,

I've covered a massive range of stories

but one of the most depressing,

challenging and downright disturbing was in the south-west,

and that's where I'm going now.

In March 2001, foot and mouth arrived in Dumfries and Galloway.

It's a highly infectious disease that affects sheep, pigs and cattle.

In an attempt to control the disease,

all the livestock on affected farms were culled

AND the livestock on neighbouring farms.

At the time, I also presented a programme called Frontline Scotland.

This is quite an emotional spot for me.

I spent a lot of time down here with Frontline Scotland in the heart of

the foot and mouth crisis and at that time

there was a police barrier right across this road.

That's Robin Spencer's farm up here and he was hit by foot and mouth

and the images of the funeral pyres

and the stench of the smoke and the smell of burning cattle

is a sensation I will never forget.

It was the end of the road. You had the barrier across the road.

-That's right.

-Did you put it up or the police?

'At the time, because of bio-security restrictions,

'we couldn't film on Robin's farm.

'We gave him a camera to record what happened.

'And we could talk to him at the end of his road.'

We'd two places confirmed next to us on Sunday

and it's all around about us and...

We had sort of, you know... you hope and pray but...

..we knew it was coming.

'This is the first time Robin's seen the footage

'since the programme was broadcast.'

-Does it bring back memories or is it blocked out?

-It does, it does.

I'm just swallowing there.

It's quite surprising how it takes you back.

We rear livestock and look after them as best we can.

You know them individually...

or as a group but there's always individuals and characters in them

so you become very attached to them.

And they're quite disturbing scenes.

Yeah, well, that's that field there.

But it's one of the most moving bits for me -

I'm getting a bit choked up at the moment thinking about it.

It must have been horrendous for you.

This is the...the cattle burning.

Well, it was...

We'd a fantastic squad here for everything and they came and said,

"Would you like to light the fire?"

-And I sort of went, "Well..."

-HE EXHALES

And then I thought, well, no, it's my duty to...the final act.

I've looked after them till now, you know,

you're there to the end and you do everything that's needed.

But there was a huge degree of poignancy to it.

The sort of horror of such a huge fire and...

burning flesh and the smell.

Erm...

Very, very vivid imagery and... the sort of smell of it was the...

burning flesh. It's seared into my memory.

'It's hard to watch.

'But it's a great consolation to be back here at the farm

'in better circumstances and to see Robin still farming.'

There was no question we were going to restock.

I think the one thing I was convinced of, that we were going to get back to where we were,

but not just back to where we were, we were going to get things better.

I think also for the sake of the soul,

you wanted stock back because you weren't really complete or happy.

If you're a stocksman, you need stock.

Robin's spirit of resilience was mirrored across the south-west.

Over 1,000 farms were affected by the outbreak.

Most restocked.

So far, I've looked at how farming has coped with crisis

and adapted to changing circumstances.

What I want to do now is look at new industries that have emerged in the Scottish countryside,

and in some cases they've been pretty controversial.

Hello and welcome to the last of our series of Landward programmes

from Germany and Scandinavia.

In 1991, presenter Ross Muir travelled to Denmark,

pioneers in wind power.

The dominant features of a typical Scottish landscape

may be the mountains and lochs but in many areas of Denmark

it's a man-made feature that's beginning to dominate.

At that time, there were just a handful of wind turbines in Scotland

but the Danes Ross met thought there would soon be more.

Scotland has the greatest potential in Europe

and I have no doubt that we will see development in the next five years.

But the late Sir Michael Joughin,

then chairman of Hydro Electric, had his doubts.

I'm a realist and it is a supplementary form of power,

not an alternative form of power.

One windmill is fine, but you put 30 windmills together

and it's a very different environmental story.

I mean, they object to pylons.

What are they going to do if you've got windmills on every hill?

Well, as it turns out, they weren't very happy.

At least, lots of people weren't, as we found out over the years.

In Perthshire...

These are massive.

This is industrial complex, this is not touchy-feely wind farm.

I mean, we should get away from that word, farm.

..in Aberdeenshire...

There are spot developments of one to generally three turbines

and that explains how, at the moment,

there's in excess of 700 turbine applications.

..and in the Borders.

It has been reported from residents living very closely

to wind farms that it becomes, over time, intolerable.

You actually want to scream at the noise.

And wind turbines are still controversial

but now half of our power comes from renewable sources,

much of that from wind turbines.

It's a multi-million-pound industry and it's not the only one to

have emerged in the last 40 years, and I'm heading north-west

to find out more.

I'm on my way to Ardessie, near Ullapool,

but yet again Ross beat me to the story.

Salmon farming.

The salmon will spend around a couple of years in these cages,

growing to weights of around 10lb,

ideal for the fresh retail market, and do you know,

if the industry develops the way some people think it may,

then sights like these might be commonplace along the west coast of Scotland.

Ross got it spot on, even if his rowing wasn't up to much!

Fish farms are now a familiar presence all along the west coast.

Salmon are now Scotland's biggest food export,

worth over £1 billion to the Scottish economy.

-Gilpin. Good to see you. Where are we going?

-We're going to head out to the salmon farm.

-Let's get some gear on.

-It's going to be wet, is it?

Well, you know. It's the west coast. We'll enjoy it.

I've come to the oldest independent salmon farm in the country.

Owned by Gilpin Bradley.

-So, where's the farm?

-The farm is just up the loch here,

Little Loch Broom at our Ardessie site.

And you've been involved in fish farming, so has your dad, from right at the start.

Absolutely, well, my father was really one of the first in Scotland

to run a salmon farm.

He went into aquaculture

and started working in a research project with Unilever,

which was the original Marine Harvest site down at Lochailort.

'That was back in the late 1960s.

'Things have moved on a bit since then.'

In 1971, Scotland produced 14 tonnes of farmed fish in a year.

By 2015, it was more than 186,000 tonnes.

Gilpin, you've been in and around the salmon industry

-for 40-odd years, now, the period that we're looking at.

-Absolutely.

It must have changed a lot.

It's changed enormously, and it's been a really fun industry

to be involved with because it's seen fantastic growth.

Yes, there's been challenges on the way.

What I thought today would be interesting would be to show you

a smolt and the change between smolt and harvest-ready fish.

So, this is a young salmon?

Absolutely. You have a young salmon here.

This is a fish that was transferred to our Ardessie site last week

so it's about 90 to 100g.

This is the interesting thing. From that size, 18 months later...

-18 months to produce that?

-To produce that, OK?

Which is pretty good. We're quite happy with a fish that size.

So, that probably weighs about 3.5 to 4kg.

This is what we were happy with 20 years ago but today,

thanks to many, many improvements in lots of different areas,

-we're now looking at a fish of this size.

-Wow.

So we're achieving fish of this size

in exactly the same growth period at sea.

And we've done it for a variety of reasons.

Probably the main reason has been better strain selection.

So, we're selecting strains of salmon that grow faster

and are healthier in the farmed environment

and, ultimately, there's been lots of research done to improve diets

and we've learned a lot about how to use better and better

growing conditions and it's contributing to better growth rates.

'Over the years,

'salmon farming has come under heavy criticism for polluting the sea

'but Gilpin says they work hard to protect the marine environment.'

I think the important thing, Euan, to remember about pollution

is that people often forget we are the number-one losers

if we jeopardise our environment.

We are the guardians of this precious environment here

and the important thing that the critics often forget

is they seem to think...we're not caring.

In reality, our livelihood depends on this.

We now have many second generations working with us

and there are not many alternative sources of employment

where we are in the west coast today.

The salmon industry has experienced phenomenal growth in the 40 years

that Landward has been on-air.

But other, more traditional industries have, too.

Between 1965 and 2015,

the area of Scotland that is woodland has more than doubled.

These days, forestry is an important employer,

supporting 25,000 jobs, but its expansion has come at a cost.

I've come back down south to Ettrick, just outside Selkirk,

where you can really see that effect.

-Donald.

-Euan, good morning.

-So this is it, is it?

-This is Ettrick Primary School.

This is where I went to school in the 1970s

and I can remember the first day I walked in the door in 1971.

But it has changed a bit because, as you can see,

-it's all shut up now.

-It's a bit sad, isn't it?

It's very sad, because the school was the heart of the community.

Donald Barrie grew up here in the Ettrick Valley.

At one time this area was dominated by one way of life - sheep farming.

When Landward visited in 1976,

forestry was beginning to take over and the population was declining.

There are many housewives in this area who'll have to travel 20 miles

to the nearest shopping centre.

When there was a larger population, you had vans coming to the door.

They can't do it nowadays. The economy of the situation has driven the vans off the road.

Spell "again".

A-G-A-I-N.

-That's my brother.

-Really?

My brother, Jamie,

or Jim as we know him now.

He's looking very serious because...

he's doing his spelling and he's desperate not to get it wrong.

Did you have a good day today?

History, English, spellings.

Doesn't sound very exciting.

Surely you did more than that.

The little boy scoffing a sandwich is Donald.

I love this. That's my father going off to the hill.

The horse is called Charger

and he's galloping away down the lane.

-This isn't for show, this is working, is it?

-Oh, yes.

That was in the pre-quad-bike days.

My father had quite a long way to go to go round the hill at night.

That must bring back so many memories.

It does. It's deeply moving to have seen that footage,

especially of my father, actually.

My father galloping away down the lane on the horse.

-It's a lovely image, isn't it?

-Yes.

But it was part of our day to go and meet Dad when he came in from the hill

because he had probably three or four miles on horseback and then he'd come in just before six o'clock

and if he was in a good mood he'd let my brother and I

ride the last few hundred yards back down to the farm.

It must be an eerie sort of feeling.

Here we are at the foot of the glen...

..and all we've got is birdsong.

Absolutely. You don't hear any shepherds whistling to their dogs.

You don't hear any sheep,

so where's it all gone?

Well, in the 40 years since I first walked into Ettrick School in 1971,

that way of life was pretty much gone.

Donald wants to show me how forestry has marched along the valley,

finally, in recent years, reaching his childhood home.

That's the farm of Analshope, where I was brought up.

I spent the first 18 years of my life in that house,

and it's really a farm no longer, because you can see beyond the farm,

and the old woods that we called the Linn,

is young Sitka spruce.

This is new plantings, is it?

That's been planted within the last ten years.

In fact, probably within the last five years.

'Donald's family left Analshope years ago but it still devastated

'his father to see it planted up with commercial forestry.'

I may be being a wee bit negative here as we wallow in nostalgia,

but, you know, trees are an economic driver.

There are contractors, there's foresters, there's planters.

It's just a different way of making a living off a landscape.

Yes. So, most of the work that's done in the forestry sector

is done by contractors, and it tends to come in waves,

so you'll have a wave of planting,

and then nothing for 30 years,

and then you'll have a wave of felling.

But there isn't the continuity of employment in the forestry sector

that we've enjoyed in the agricultural sector.

There's a job for a shepherd to do every day of the year.

In the forestry context,

there might only be a job to do every five years.

This has really hurt the traditional farming community

who've seen a very good hill farm being taken away

and irreversibly damaged, and it'll never be a farm again.

You know, being up here at the head of the Ettrick Valley

is quite an emotional moment,

because you look at that block of forestry

and you can almost hear the echoes of the shepherds calling their flock

or the dogs barking in the hillside

and the sound of the schoolchildren in the local school,

and that's all gone.

Progress has to happen, but you feel that somehow,

a bit of the heart has been ripped out of this valley.

Throughout the last 40 years, as old industries have fallen away,

new businesses have emerged.

Woodland has replaced hill farms,

but more woodland has created different opportunities.

The growth that I've seen in outdoor sports over the few last decades

has been truly amazing.

I came down here to Glentress, near Peebles,

for the opening of the mountain bike centre in the late '90s,

and at that time, it was seen as the saviour of the tourism industry,

a boost to hotels, and I honestly thought, "Really?

"People are going to take a bike and go up those hills for fun?"

I was wrong.

The popularity of outdoor sports has created new jobs

and brought cash into the countryside.

It's also been great fun to report on.

And here we go up this hill straightaway.

I'll be filming with this camera. See you later.

Bye.

I could have stood up but, you know, time's marching on.

I've got to meet up with the boys.

Thanks to a new tourism initiative,

it's now much easier to take your horse on holiday.

And, sometimes, it wasn't quite so much fun.

Clyde Coastguard, this is yacht Josephine here.

Josephine, yacht Josephine, over.

'Josephine, Clyde Coastguard, go ahead.'

Despite that little incident,

sailing is still one of my favourite ways of exploring Scotland.

Everybody has their own.

But in the four decades we've been on air,

some people's choice of pursuit has fallen out of favour.

In 2002, Scotland became the first nation in the UK

to ban traditional fox hunting, and back then, I was being told

that the whole policy was being driven by sentimental townies

who knew nothing about the countryside.

But, of course, many people in the countryside

find the whole practice abhorrent.

The fox hunting ban could be seen

as the culmination of a shift in perspective

that had been developing over years.

Back in Landward's early days,

the public attitude towards hunting was very different.

In 1979, otter hunting was perfectly legal in Scotland,

and our team joined the Dumfriesshire hunt for a day.

Ahh, yes, now...

Killed, yes, you're dead right.

We've killed five otters in the last six years.

And I haven't got the figures on me, but I suppose...

..each year, we found...

..12, 15, 20,

and only killed one each season, more or less.

Can you imagine the horror, the public outcry there would be

if the hunting of otters was legal today?

It's a striking example

about how mind-sets have changed over the years.

And it's not just people's attitude to animals that have changed.

Back in the '70s,

producing as much food as possible from our countryside

was the clear focus.

Farmers responded to that drive a little too successfully,

leading to food stockpiles, the infamous butter and grain mountains.

At the same time, many people were also concerned

by the environmental impact of intensive production.

Policy shifted, and since the early 1990s,

farmers have been paid to make space for nature.

One farmer has embraced conservation more enthusiastically

than any other farmer I know, and to end my journey,

I'm returning to North Aberdeenshire

to see how his farm has been transformed since my last visit.

It's John Strachan, my very first Landward interviewee.

Many farmers are taking conservation increasingly seriously these days,

but perhaps none quite as seriously

as John Strachan here at Tulloch in Aberdeenshire.

Well, this was the first pond you took a video of,

and it was about 25 years ago.

-Changed a bit since then.

-Changed quite a lot. Certainly improved.

Do you remember us arriving?

-I do, yes.

-25 years ago?

-Yep.

A bit of a shock to the system, was it?

-It was a wee bit...

-It was a shock to my system. I was petrified.

-Aye.

But I'm kind of getting a bit more used to you now.

I'll do a few more bits in future years...

Back then, 20 of John's 380 acres were devoted to wildlife.

I'll have to leave myself with some land to farm.

He hasn't left himself much.

Since 1991, John has added another 100 acres.

Not many farmers take it this far, but in return for the subsidies,

all are required to consider the environment.

It was a big step, but I never thought about it at the time,

because I kind of started, and then things went...

-It took over your life, did it?

-Well, it did a bit, aye.

With all the hard work done,

John now loves to spend time filming the wildlife

that's attracted to this oasis.

Sometimes you see an otter swimming across the pond,

and little grebes, a brood so young every year.

You get the young ducklings and moorhens.

It's just a really good way to spend an evening, I would say.

I remember you said in the first programme,

I'll be gone long before the trees are mature,

but the trees are nearly mature now, some of them, and I'm still here.

If it had been all arable, I would have probably sold out

and stayed in a house in the village or something long before now.

But I'm certainly not going to do that now.

I mean, it's...

There's just no way.

I'm enjoying myself so much,

and hoping to live to be 120 to really get the good of it.

-I'll see you in another 25 years.

-Hopefully, you and I.

As we've seen, the changes across the last four decades

have been significant.

But coming back here to John's farm convinces me

that many people do strive to change our environment for the better.

I believe Scotland's glorious countryside

is one of its most important assets

and should always be treated as such.

I've always considered working on Landward as real privilege,

as we whizz through some of the most dramatic landscapes

in the Scottish countryside.

But for me, the real magic

is turning up some wee stony track in the middle of nowhere

and meeting some incredible people with amazing stories.

Now, Landward, like the Scottish countryside,

has had to adapt and to change,

but also to flourish when given the opportunity.

I'm not going to be working on the programme in 40 years' time,

but so long as there are people

who are passionate about the Scottish countryside,

both those who watch the programme

and the team that make it, who knows?

There could be somebody standing here,

somebody who's not even born yet, presenting Landward At 80.

Now, that's quite a thought. Goodbye.