If there was one thing farmers talked about with real passion at the Royal Highland Show this year it was the parlous state of the sheep sector.
Against a backdrop of a largely positive feel at the show with most sectors more buoyant on the back of better prices, many in the Scottish sheep sector fail to reconcile the arguments put forward by supermarkets such as M & S supporting the need for imported lamb.
"They just won't sell hogs," one farmer I bumped into told me, while another was far from optimistic about the future prospects for the world lamb market.
By contrast one New Zealand farmer I spoke to, who was on a fact-finding tour in the UK, put a different spin on things.
He felt UK farmers should be less concerned by NZ imports and more inspired by a possible uplift in world lamb prices.
"My personal vision," he told me, "is that biofuels are escalating grain prices. Chicken and pork are becoming more and more expensive, and the emerging economies in Asia are desperate for protein. Lamb is also becoming more appealing to the young - it's not just an older person's meat."
That, he suggests, points to a more rosy picture for the global lamb market, something he believes UK and NZ farmers can share in alike.
But is he right? Is this just one spin too far, or are we becoming too insular?
It's hard to say but one thing is clear: New Zealand's farmers now recognise they need to do far more to understand the intricacies of the markets they supply and consumer demands. No wonder then 20 or so Kiwi farmers are here in the UK trying to get a better handle on things.
"If you asked us two years ago what our markets were we'd have said Asia, North America and Europe," they tell me. "Now we say M & S for example."