News of community buy-outs in Scotland has become more common in recent years, as land from Assynt to Eigg and Knoydart to Gigha and South Uist has been taken into local ownership with the help of the Scottish Government in a bid to give control of the land to the people who live on it.

Now Scotland could soon have its first community-owned farm – and one of the largest community-supported agricultural schemes in the UK. Heather Anderson and Pete Ritchie, who own Whitmuir Organic Farm at West Linton in the Scottish Borders, are already almost half-way to their goal of handing ownership of their carefully nurtured 130-acre organic farm land to hundreds of individual shareholders.

The couple, who bought the farm in 2000 and became fully organic in 2005, launched the Whitmuir Community Farm Ltd Benefit Society last December and the first shares were issued in March. In just two months they have created 90 new shareholders who between them hold 2000 shares at £50 each. With pledges from around 40 other potential shareholders for a further £66,000, this means they have raised £176,000 of the first target of £400,000 to complete the land deal.

Now they are looking to find hundreds of new shareholders, because they want more people to own their land than the 608 private rural landowners who own half of Scotland, a statistic which they say is one of the greatest barriers to food production in Scotland.

The scheme is also the first share issue in the UK to involve people aged under 16: Whitmuir's youngest shareholder is just five.

It is, explains Ms Anderson, all about "citizenship farming".

She said: "The way farming is done on a large scale with artificial fertilisers and pesticides is destroying the soil and creating a terrible legacy for young people. It has totally divorced them from the land and from how food is grown. So involving them in the food system is crucially important.

"Young people are furious about what's happening in global food production. The horsemeat scandal has been a good thing, because it has acted as a wake-up call for us to ask more questions about what we're eating and where it comes from. At Whitmuir, we can see our supply chain from the window."

The journey towards the farm's community buy-in has long been in the couple's plans.

In 2006, the couple decided to start a Farm Supporters Scheme, where members of the public could pay upfront for regular home deliveries of a choice of 32 types of organically grown vegetables, plus organic beef, lamb, pork and chicken from the farm.

By 2007 they had 50 customers with standing-order accounts and now have 285, mostly from Edinburgh, the Lothians and the Borders who pay between £50 and £400 a month.

They have their own butchery, shop, bakery and cafe, built with £320,000 from the Scottish Rural Development Fund and a £500,000 bank loan. They recently launched the Whitmuir Project, a Scottish charity to help them do educational work and to develop the farm as a "living, learning space".

They are also in talks with the RSPB to create a bird walk, Zero Waste Scotland, the Crichton Carbon Centre and Edinburgh University.

But while the farm remains privately owned, it is ineligible for funding to help with this.

Ms Anderson said: "Community ownership will opens doors. Being a not-for-profit organisation means we could work collaboratively with bodies such as Scottish Natural Heritage, the Scottish Wildlife Trust and RSPB. At the moment, we can't fund the educational aspect of this farm until we are community-owned."

She insists organic is the only guarantee food is free from genetical modification: "It is not some retro hippy 1960s movement. Some people think organic is about neglect and letting things grow wild, but in fact we're growing food every single day, 24/7, in a way that doesn't destroy the soil.

"It's not the Good Life; it's just really hard work."

But with their three grown-up children showing no signs of wishing to join the family business, selling it to people who care about it was their best option.

Ms Anderson said: "Pete and I can't keep this going for the next 20 years.

"We have to hand it over to somebody and we'd much rather do this than have it put on the open market.

"This land is only safe if there's a lot more people than us that it matters to.

"We're terrified about losing control of it, but we know it's the right thing to do."