IT is 20 years since I took two heifers to the World Simmental Congress. It was held in Alberta to coincide with the great rodeo, the Calgary Stampede.

The heifers sold well. They paid for the holiday and left something towards the overdraft.

So the Farmer enjoyed the study tours round the ranches and artificial insemination stations of the Canadian West. He was also impressed.

Scottish farmers are continually being told to diversify and we've nearly all done it. I had my Breadwinner computing away in Aberdeen. Big Hamish bought an old readymix lorry and is now in business as ''Big Hamix - If you've got it I'll cover it''. Mossie has the mobile barbecue and the star shot with which he tours the shows. He won't admit it but he's desperately disappointed that he hasn't been prosecuted for selling beef on the bone. Potions has a chemist's shop to back up his farming. The Red Rooster is managing director of a big co-op and has diversified into farming in Poland. The young laird runs a company which will put on an opera in your living room if you have enough money and a big enough living room. Young Ochyoch works as a relief dairyman at weekends and his wife has a business of her own doing small firms books. Hilly has a farm shop and pick your own strawberries. The

only dedicated farmer we've got left is Crookie and I'm sure that his wife will be back working as a nursing sister as soon as he can get to stop breeding.

But we have nothing like the diversification I saw on that trip to Canada. For Calgary may be the cattle capital of Canada but it is also the oil capital. And every farmer seemed to have his own little oil well. Even as the cowboy slept his pump swished up and down filling another barrel with every dip of the plunger.

It sounds ideal doesn't it?

And so it is for the individual who has the security of his oil well.

But, and it was one of those oilman/farmers who pointed out, the second income was a disaster for farming as an industry.

He was showing me his spread which was a real show. His handling facilities were like his own private auction mart and his bull pens were like a top-of-the-range artificial insemination station. It was a little like an oil refinery too, because the pens were not made of the usual timber or inch-and-a-half box-section steel. They were eight inch round steel pipes. My host explained that those were not as dear as they looked. Soon I would be able to afford as many as I needed of such pipes because they were second hand from the oil industry which was just getting going in Scotland at the time.

This man had just paid $29,000 for the reserve champion bull. a six-month old calf, at the world convention sale and, with heifers to sell, I was keen to butter him up.

''You must be proud of all this,'' I flattered.

His reply astonished me at the time but now I see the truth of what he was saying. ''No, I'm not proud. We are running this outfit as well as we can but it loses money. So are half the farmers in Canada. And its all the fault of guys like me with units like this. I make money in oil and I spend it on farming. I save some tax dollars but in the meantime I'm spoiling the industry for the farmers who have nothing else to live on. They can't compete with people who are willing to produce at a loss.''

It took a while for that to sink in but I see the truth of it now.

And we have the same problem in Scotland.

Everyone would like to have a few acres. Or at least to live in the country. Stockbrokers, accountants, lawyers and other parasites as well as self-made men who make fortunes in toon and fancy a place in the country. And if some land comes with it they'll farm that as well. If it makes a loss, at least it will give them an excuse to visit the Highland Show on a deductible basis.

The estate agents call that ''residential interest''.

Well residential interest is fine for the farmer who has struggled away on the land and wants out with a decent retirement fundle. But it is a disaster for the industry in two ways.

First it means dedicated farmers have to suffer competition from people who don't need to make a profit.

And second and perhaps worse, residential interest pushes the prices of farms way up beyond the values which can be justified by the income land can generate. This makes it very difficult for the real farmers to expand by buying other farms or to find farms for their children who, despite the lessons of history, would like to be farmers too.

And here is the Farmer, just retired after a working life made very difficult by people willing to produce food at a loss, joining the wreckers and doing a bit of farming for fun. He has taken a 10-acre field at a rent which should have been enough to buy it outright. He has bought steers at up to 25% per kilo above what they are likely to be worth when they are fat. And all to avoid admitting his farming days are over and so that he can offer the Breadwinner a stroll through the beasts in the gloaming.

The only escape from this shame is if the 21 steers make a profit. But hope is receding fast. As I write, the Irishman has just been on the phone. He has supplied the four steers I needed to fill the field at a cost of 115p a kilo. That stands against a current market price for prime (fat) cattle at 84p a kilo.

You could see that a working farmer like himself wouldn't want to have beasts like those on his farm for long.