“Will there be, you know, actual live coos at this event,” I asked the steward at Ingliston’s Royal Highland Centre. Because what’s the point of attending Scotland’s main Farming business event, AgriScot, if you can’t get to see these stalwart beasts of burden up close, all scrubbed and shiny and looking champion? And then seeing them getting bought and sold by big puce-faced farmers and hearing all their yins and kens and fits and affas.

And so, I immediately head for the back of Ingliston’s main hall where the Dairy Cattle classes are competing for 25k worth of cash prizes in a small arena carpeted by electric green-coloured sawdust. I arrive just as five massive heifers are making their entrance. You don’t see cows as big as this in the fields around the west of Scotland. Some of them are the size of small horses and look majestic in their mottled red and white livery. There are sleek, silvery, grey ones too that look like bucolic Bentleys.

As the cows are led around the arena the excitement becomes too much for one poor beast. Here I must crave your indulgence, but there’s really no other way to describe this.

A young-farmhand in the role of official shit-shoveller runs on to clean up the mess. It turns out that he’s the official arse-wiper too because, well … when the animals line up for their final inspection they must be looking their best at either end. And then you look around this wee cattledrome at all the farmers and farm managers and realise that many of them will be wiping their own cows’ fundaments before the week is out too.

AgriScot 2024 in GlasgowAgriScot 2024 in Ingliston (Image: Gordon Terris/The Herald)

And now it’s decision time. The chief judge is a Northern Irishman called Iain McLean who outlines in painstaking detail how he’s come to his verdict. Clearly, Mr McLean is a master of his craft and he extols the virtues of each cow in a rich Ulster timbre that could loosen rivets in a shipyard. It was worth attending the show just to watch this man in action.  

Of the winner, he had this to say. “She’s just so well-balanced; so dairy. I love her awesome udder. The height and width of her rear udder gave her the advantage.”

Of another, he says: “the definition of her ligament and her balance and that extra wee bit of rib gave her the advantage.” In deciding who would be fourth over fifth, he said: “I just liked the distance between the front and the rear teats.” Even the fifth-placed cow gets a gong for being “a sweet-framed animal”.

Upstairs where the seminars and politics are taking place, John Swinney is handling questions about last week’s UK budget and its small incendiary device for the farmers.

A state of generational mistrust and suspicion exists between Labour and the farmers and it seemed to be laid bare in last month’s budget when UK Chancellor, Rachel Reeves announced a new threshold for agricultural property relief. From 2026, agricultural and business property assets valued at more than £1m will be liable for a 20% inheritance tax. The farmers fear that such an imposition will threaten family businesses as well as efficient food production and the surrounding environment.

Read more from Kevin McKenna:

The suspicion that Labour wanted to punish farmers for their traditional support for the Conservatives seemed to materialise in this astonishing intervention by the former senior Labour advisor, John McTernan: “I’m personally in favour of doing to farmers, if they go onto the streets, we can do to them what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners … it’s an industry we could do without.”

Scotland’s First Minister has represented rural communities in Scotland for almost three decades and sharply rebuked both Mr McTernan and UK Labour. Mr Swinney comes into his own at events like these: professional, well-briefed, eloquent and genial. He spoke of the Autumn Budget having a “chilling effect” on farming and rural businesses across Scotland.

He said: “The Chancellor’s decision to reform exemptions to agricultural property relief for inheritance tax has led to unacceptable levels of stress, worry and uncertainty amongst farmers in Scotland” and that it “hadn’t been thought through”.

You got the impression though that it had very much been thought through and that John McTernan’s sentiments, though disowned by Sir Keir Starmer, represent mainstream Labour thinking. Their revenge, you felt, had been a long time in the making.

AgriScot 2024 at the Royal Highland CentreAgriScot 2024 at the Royal Highland Centre (Image: Gordon Terris/The Herald)

Scotland’s most influential land reform campaigner, Andy Wightman seemed to capture the generational resentment of farmers by the general urban public. “How many £millions should land be worth before ScotGov thinks that those who inherit it should be liable to pay half the rate of inheritance tax that everyone else pays,” Mr Wightman tweeted this week.

Rory Christie, who along with his brother, Gregor, owns a large pig and dairy farm in South West Scotland, rejects such attitudes and says they’re born of a fundamental ignorance and misunderstanding about farming in Scotland.

“You’re not really comparing like with like here,” he said. “Yes, many have strong conservative values, but they also include working very hard, dedication to a vocation and are extremely proud of producing the best of Scottish produce. They are not in any way comparable to Andy’s imaginary Downton Abbey characters. We are one of the few industries left that can say “made in Scotland” on what we sell.

“My milking team start at 4am work till  10am then rest and start again at 1pm till 6pm . The guys on regular farm jobs work 7:45am till 5pm. We work a 5:2 rota and try to make working conditions as good as possible; give plenty time off and limit the working week to 48 hours. All my team are paid above the living wage and most have tied houses on the farm. I have a very skilled, multi-cultural team from a diverse background.

Kevin McKenna (right) as John Swinney speaks at AgriScot 2024Kevin McKenna (right) as John Swinney speaks at AgriScot 2024 (Image: Gordon Terris/The Herald)

“Without food there is no wealth. Because we put food on the table everyone else can get on and play their part in society. They can do all of this because they don’t need to spend time or even think about where their food comes from. It is just there in the shop or the restaurant when they are ready for it. Farming is not a cash-creating enterprise. Most won’t have the cash to pay the HMRC bill. It is complex and difficult to understand for many not directly involved.”

When you’ve been reared in a west of Scotland, urban environment, your image of farmers is formed by those very rare occasions when you encounter them. They live and work apart from mainstream society and your childhood memories of encroaching on their fields and helping yourself to whatever they were growing are punctuated by ruddy-faced, angry men who looked like Father Jack chasing you off the premises. How often was it said: “You’ll never meet a poor farmer”? Yet, we’d struggle without them.

Mr Christie and his brother employ 15 people and their place in the south of Scotland’s supply chain will help maintain countless other local enterprises. “You can trust farmers,” he says. “We are valuable to society. We know how to make high-quality food and we look after our animals better than perhaps anywhere else in the world. Every day, we produce and deliver cheap food of an exceptionally high standard.

“You can also trust us to look after our land and the surrounding wildlife. If you want bio-diversity to improve and if you want to meet all our net-zero targets, then it’s the farmers who will deliver it. Labour’s farming inheritance tax will force many to sell land to pay it.”

AgriScot 2024AgriScot 2024 (Image: Gordon Terris/The Herald)

The AgriScot event attracts more than 4000 people involved in Scotland and the UK’s rural economy. On Wednesday, it was clear that they hadn’t expected Rachel Reeves’ tax plans, certainly not the extent of them. Among all those with whom I spoke – farmers and their suppliers – there was anger, but also a sense of betrayal.

Two older men, on the cusp of retirement, told me that whenever Britain is imperilled the farmers keep the country from going under. In wartime and during the Covid-19 pandemic, their labours and industry expertise were overlooked because, well we never really think beyond what appears on our plates and how it got there.  

“If farms have to be sold,” said Rory Christie, “you risk losing the knowledge and expertise that underpins all of the above. If you desire this then – by all means – tax them out of existence. But be careful what you wish for: because we’ll also lose the knowledge and multi-generational connection to the land. Farmers work the land for Scotland. If you hurt these workers then you hurt the country.”