Speyside woman’s tireless work for Scottish agriculture
In the second of our series celebrating commitment and service to agriculture, Nancy Nicolson meets Jo Durno
It may be half a century since horses last worked the land at Auchorachan Farm in Glenlivet, but the Durno family still schedules lunch according to the traditional 11.30am break when the Clydesdales were fed and rested and the farmer also enjoyed an extended nap.
But little else has followed conventional lines in the Durno household for the past 25 years, ever since the now 61-year-old Jo took up the cudgels on behalf of Scottish agriculture and became a formidable campaigner.
She also promotes local food, bakes for her own stall at farmers’ markets, visits schools, and writes regular columns in the local press. And all of that is in addition to her considerable workload on behalf of NFU Scotland.
Jo’s relentless energy and terrier-like approach to issues has meant that she is regularly away from the remote Speyside farm. She travels to union meetings in Edinburgh and some weeks it may be as far away as Shetland, Orkney or the Western Isles.
She reckons that she originally became involved in farming politics “by default”, attending local NFU meetings. “I just believed we had to be represented so I went along, and very quickly became committed to attending every meeting.
“There were no other women at the meetings, of course, but if the men thought I was an oddity I didn’t notice. It would have been water off a duck’s back anyway, because I was totally focused on getting things done and ensuring the views of farmers in our area were fully represented.”
Raised eyebrows or not, Jo’s quiet determination helped achieve results. Extra European funding found its way to Speyside, the Cairngorms National Park was founded and the concept of quality assurance became an underlying principle in Scottish agriculture.
“I felt passionately that, as farmers, we have no God-given right to push our produce on the public if they don’t want it, and I wanted to give consumers promises and guarantees about the way our goods were produced,” she says.
But it was in 1996, in the midst of the BSE crisis, that Jo launched herself on to the national stage. Her daughter-in-law, who had just had a baby, brought her a letter she had received from Heinz guaranteeing that none of their baby food would contain British beef. She was outraged.
“It was like a red rag to a bull,” she admits. “And it gave me the courage to speak out at meetings, write letters to the press and launch a campaign which meant Heinz was besieged by people asking difficult and searching questions. From being a very nervous public speaker, I found my voice because I felt at the time I was fighting for the industry’s very survival, and that was all that mattered.”
As part of the Scottish livestock industry’s recovery strategy, she became involved in a two-year campaign to recruit farmers and crofters in a farm assurance scheme, and went on to inspect related hotels, restaurants, meat plants and abattoirs.
That done, she turned her attention to farmers’ markets and became involved in the embryonic Cairngorms market, where she now sells home-made tablet, vegetables, salad leaves and hand-crafted greetings cards.
Producing the goods is time-consuming, but, until the market is strong, she’d determined to take part. And she confesses to getting a kick out of dealing with the public while wearing her NFU Scotland “What’s on your plate” campaign sweatshirt.
“It’s hard work, and if I cost everything properly my return is £6 an hour on a good day. On a bad day it’s nothing like that, but I still enjoy meeting consumers and getting important messages across about the fragility of remote communities and the value of farming. And it’s a lot more fun than housework.”
The same top is donned for supermarket campaigns and her monthly visits to the tiny Glenlivet primary school where she helps the children understand farming.
But it is in the higher echelons of agri-politics, specifically as chair of NFU Scotland’s Crofting, Highlands and Islands committee, that she has made her mark.
Jo’s good-natured and measured manner disarms politicians and belies the fierce determination which has achieved such significant results. And while she respects competence, she is in awe of no one, a policy which reaped rewards for the children in the local school.
“I asked the Scottish government’s Rural Affairs cabinet secretary to visit the kids and hear about their project, and they got the chance to show off their knowledge of food issues,” she says. “I believe that securing a future for farmers in Scotland’s most disadvantaged places is all about building bridges between different groups, demonstrating the quality and value of what we produce, and emphasising that remote communities like ours wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for agriculture.”
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Farming Stalwarts is a monthly series celebrating men and women who have devoted their working lives to farming and the countryside