I WOULD like to outline a few truths about the pastime known as crofting ("Unearthing the harsh realities of life on Scotland's 19,000 crofts", The Herald, October 17).
Despite the positive media spin issued by the Crofting Commission and others it does not take much to conclude that this system is hopelessly failing.
The Crofting Commission and others blame all the problems of crofting on a group called "absentees", a derogatory label relating to anyone who is deemed to live more than 32km from their croft. The image created by the commission of the hated absentee is of course one which it equates to neglect. However, any purposeful use the absentee has for his land can be conveniently ignored, giving the illusion that the land should be re-claimed for sustainable use. The solution is often to strip the absentee of his tenancy in favour of a "local" crofter. This local crofter could very well be someone living in a completely district, never mind village, and already working several other crofts.
This ruling is what creates decay, reducing remoter districts to wastelands while echoing the conclusions of Frank Fraser Darling's studies from 50 years ago about land deteriorating into wet deserts. Then, like now, these warnings were dismissed as unpalatable by the bureaucrats.
The issue of multiple tenancies often goes hand-in-hand with the convenient 32km ruling but there is a further question to be posed: who are the aspiring young crofters looking for land? Do they even exist? If so then why are there so many multiple tenancies?
State subsidy and benefits create nothing but poverty and the hectares of deteriorating land, neglected drainage and broken fences are testament to the utter failure of this system.
I ask myself the question: what would those who had to make use of the land to survive think of the present situation?
My forefathers in Uig had to create arable land from scratch. They toiled relentlessly over their scraps of land merely to survive. If they could have hired the Brahan Seer to inform them of the deterioration and pastime that has become of that land they created they would be devastated.
I am but a simple country boy who was brought up on a croft. I therefore have no academic background in reading about crofting from books or debating the subject with gentlemen in tweed suits and clean brogues. My only experience of crofting has been limited to the practical skills of land use, animal husbandry and the communal township life of my youth.
Angus Macdonald,
Gardeners Cottage,
Murieston,
Livingston.
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