ONE of the first things Nicola Sturgeon did as First Minister was to announce further land reform, with landowners in her sights who posed a barrier to development, and the threat of an end to business rate exemptions for the shooting and deerstalking estates.

It's the kind of rhetoric which plays well even in urban areas. Where are the votes in Scotland in support of the big country landowners? As we used to say in response to the question "Wha's like us?" the answer to the above is: "Damn few, and they're a' deid."

But, the views of a certain section of those who read the Telegraph or Spectator aside, we do need a strategy for land use which encompasses taxation, planning, and the rights of those who live in the rural areas which represent where most of us came from, if not where too few now think of ourselves as empathising with.

That is a wrong view. Our countryside represents more than our mythic, imagined past and it's a real present for many of our fellow Scots. Which is why we should be concerned about the crisis at the Crofting Commission. Crofting is what has to keep taking place if Disney is not to take Scotland over above the Highland line, so the current breakdown in the commission matters.

It is a statutory body covering an area across vast swathes of our nation, so the commission matters greatly, and the current crisis smacks of a kind of centralism bordering on imperialism.

There are nine members, six of them directly elected by crofters across the Highlands and Islands, and three appointed by Ministers. Why? Nicola Sturgeon is happy to lead troops into the breach against the unelected House of Lords, so why does she need to retain a third of the Crofting Commission membership as part of her own appointed fiefdom?

No doubt an argument can be made, central funds, MSPs' role, etc. But if the convener faces a vote of confidence because she is one of the three Government appointees we know which side The Herald is on.

No doubt Susan Walker is competent and is married to a Skye crofter, but she was appointed, not elected, to the body in 2012. Of the 12,000 crofters almost 11,000 voted in elections to the body three years ago. They expected that one of their elected commissioners would eventually take the chair, not one of the Government appointees and certainly not one who is now said to regard herself as executive chair rather than simply convener.

This is a fight we don't need. Land ownership and stewardship is one of the biggest issues Scotland has to face and in the crofting lands they need to trust the system which is in place.

Those of us from beyond that area, which approximates to the Gàidhealtachd, then need to learn their lessons for they lead the way in buy-outs and community ownership, models which could become relevant to those of us in the rest of the country.

Some of Holyrood's finest moments in its brief history of less than one generation have come in its dealing with crofting and land reform. As then Labour MSP Alasdair Morrison declared at the passage of an early land reform Act at Holyrood: "It is done." But it's not done yet.