Cameron Hartley

Navigating Uncertain Rural Futures

Nationally and globally, the environmental concerns of climate change and the biodiversity crisis form the foundational pillars of what is set to be a turbulent rural future. Specifically in Scotland, depopulation of the rural landscape, migration to urban environments and Brexit’s influence on subsidy change have left ‘fragile economic viability’ in historical agricultural landscapes (McCracken, 2015).

At the territorial and farm scale, examining dynamic processes on the landscape helped to identify a base or set of justifications for designing a framework that worked towards protecting the landscape from the ever-increasing frequency of extreme weather events recently seen in the Angus floods. Primarily, focusing on the movement of soil in various forms of erosion and considering the effect of the south-westerly prevailing wind formulated the grounds for the principal proposals. These components are the burn corridor planting, shelterbelts and hedgerows that are spatially arranged to deflect and, ultimately reduce, the effect of wind and soil wash erosion on the soil. Subsequently, the following proposals laterally connect those initial interventions for the function of ecological connectivity and biodiversity. Finally, there are also collectively identified areas of unproductive land for ‘the handover scheme’ where there are benefits to both the ecology and the farmer.

Brexit has prompted an array of unanswered questions for rural communities specifically regarding the discontinuation of the EU Subsidy scheme and a shift to a new national one. The new government’s plan for regenerative and sustainable farming, set to be released in 2026, provides a ‘replacement framework’ that places a greater emphasis on the issues of climate change and biodiversity (www.gov.scot, 2022). However, in rural communities that are often tight-knit and multi-generational, there’s likely to be a disconnect between the novel management that will be needed to qualify for those subsidy payouts and the knowledge required to do so. In response, the site scale considers ‘The Agricultural Futures Centre’ which aims to bridge the gap between innovation in agriculture, communication to farmers and implementation on a national scale. The surrounding landscape becomes a tangible example of innovative and optimal landscape management surrounding margins in meadows, shelterbelts, hedgerows, agroforestry and wetlands. All the while, continually improving, educating and testing various aspects of cultivation techniques, new machinery, new crops in a warming climate (Cameron, 2024) and generally new methods of increasing sustainability across the farm.