Agritourism champion scoops top scholarship award

The Nuffield Bullock Award recognises the scholar who has made best use of their award in the 10 years since they were accepted on to the study tour scheme.

We meet this year’s winner and runners-up.

See also: How these young farmers got their farming jobs

Caroline Millar

Scottish agritourism champion Caroline Millar is the winner of the 2021 Bullock Award.

Ms Millar, based north of Dundee, runs the five-star Hideaway Experience, which promises couples “the VIP luxury of a five-star hotel, combined with the seclusion of a self-catering lodge and the gourmet delights of a farmers’ market”.

In addition, she is a consultant to other rural businesses looking to establish or develop a tourism enterprise.

During the Covid crisis, which saw the tourism industry across the UK virtually mothballed, she voluntarily led a Scottish agritourism support group, meeting virtually with other businesses each week.

In the past she has been a director of the Oxford Farming Conference (OFC), chairing it in 2018 and helping to strengthen ties between the Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust and the OFC.

This year she has been appointed as NFU Scotland’s regional chairwoman for East Central Scotland, and is one of the first two women to be elected to the NFU Scotland board.

‘Say no to nothing’

Ms Millar credits her Nuffield scholarship as the starting point for many of the networks she has built within the industry which led to subsequent opportunities, along with her “say no to nothing” attitude.

However, it is her continual championing of the untapped growth potential in Scottish tourism to politicians at all levels that led the judges to conclude she was most deserving of this year’s award.

A decade of work and lobbying that began after her study tour culminated in the publication this month of Scottish Agritourism 2030.

This is the first government strategy for the sector, which Ms Millar was heavily involved in drafting, and will be overseen by the cabinet secretary for rural affairs and islands, Marie Gougeon.

If executed successfully, the strategy will see farm tourism businesses across Scotland benefit from her work, a rich legacy that was kindled by her passion for rural tourism and shaped by experiences from her study tour.

A key pillar of the strategy is an ambition to fuse Scottish agritourism businesses with the promotion of Scottish food and drink to their mutual benefit.

Replicating Italian success

This draws on Ms Millar’s travels to Tuscany and Umbria in central Italy during her tour to visit businesses which have adopted the popular agriturismo model.

They are incentivised to promote Italian cuisine to visitors, enriching the experience of tourists while they are there and encouraging them to continue buying Italian produce long after they return home. 

This makes Italy one of the world leaders in agritourism, earning revenues of €1.5bn (£1.29bn) annually, and it is this success that the Scottish strategy hopes to replicate.

“The big breakthrough in Italy was the focus on food and drink sales,” Ms Millar says.

At a time when the industry really needs to highlight the value of local, high-quality food to consumers worried about their environmental footprint and animal welfare, she said that agritourism can sell UK agriculture in a non-preachy way.

Alongside championing the strategy, her plans include developing a second tourism business on a recently purchased additional holding near to the farm where the Hideaway Experience is located.

This will be an adults-only ‘health farm’ focusing on wellness and quality food experiences using local and homegrown produce from the farming business run by her husband Ross, who manages the sheep, beef and arable enterprises.

Other finalists

The judges praised the high standard of all the Bullock Award finalists and said each had made an excellent contribution to the farming industry in the decade since completing their study tour. Here are the runners-up.

Tim May

Hampshire farmer Tim May has implemented wide-ranging changes to his 1,000ha farm since investigating how to understand and implement sustainability for his Nuffield scholarship a decade ago.

This helped transform the Kingsclere Estate from an all-arable system to a diverse organic mixed farm.

He credits his Nuffield with helping him better understand how environmental and economic sustainability must go together.

The introduction of sheep, a dairy herd and a chicken enterprise has utilised the grass which is now a significant part of the crop rotation, improving fertility, weed control and farm productivity.

He refers to the addition of these business strands to the same farm area as enterprise stacking.

They are not run by employees, but as a share farming set-up, a model which he thinks will grow in popularity.

He has recently launched an online campaign to attract more new talent to the farm and improve the diversity of output still further.

Since completing his scholarship Mr May has also spoken widely at conferences about regenerative farming, and welcomed many visitors to the farm to see the changes he has made.

See also: Regenerative farmer seeks businesses to form sustainable community

Alec Mercer

Alec Mercer credits his Nuffield scholarship with playing a significant role in developing the upmarket pork and poultry enterprise he runs in Staffordshire.

The tour took him across the world to businesses of all types, not just farms, to study how others had successfully scaled up a niche product without losing its authenticity.

After returning home he rebranded and reorganised what had been a wide-ranging meat wholesale business into the Packington Free Range setup it is today.

This sells branded pork and chicken to independent butchers and other wholesalers, as well as supplying Ocado, the food service sector, and even Harrods.

The business has gone from selling some 2,000 birds a week in 2011 to 12,000 a week at present.

In the past 10 years he has also increased his involvement in other areas of the family business, including overseeing investment in renewable energy and more typical broiler chicken production.

Heather Wildman

Heather Wildman is on a mission to help farmers reach their full potential.

Since it was established in 2014, businesses across the country have called in her firm, Saviour Associates, to help them tackle the thorny issue of succession.

She also works with farming organisations such as the Scottish Association of Young Farmers Clubs and The Prince’s Countryside Fund to deliver one-off meetings and longer term programmes to groups on how to accelerate their personal development.

Her business was created after a Nuffield study tour to assess the best ways to influence behaviour and encourage change in the dairy sector.

It had been borne out of a frustration that many warm words about trying new things were spoken at discussion groups, she recalls, but few of these were actually taken on farm.

She concluded that discussion groups are still one of the most effective ways to help knowledge transfer, but only if they are run in the correct way that generates the buy-in of participants.

She says her scholarship played a big part in helping her get to where she is today – an internationally recognised speaker and trainer who takes huge delight in seeing other people flourish.