Opinion: Why Scotland needs more radical land reform

It has been 21 years since Scotland first introduced land reform legislation, in an effort to allow communities, crofters and tenant farmers to take ownership of their land and drive local development.

Land reform in Scotland is the ongoing process in which the ownership of land, its distribution and the law that governs it is changed so that more people have access to land.

This has been pioneered over the past century by enterprising rural communities that wanted to secure their futures through owning the land they worked and lived on.

See also: Scottish Land Reform Bill ‘sows antipathy and division’

While there have been notable success stories of community ownership since the 2003 Land Reform Act, Scotland still has one of the most unequal land ownership patterns in the world, with half of the privately owned land held by 433 people.

This contributes to huge inequalities in terms of opportunities to generate an income, produce food, set up rural businesses, or fight the nature crises.

The fact that Scotland has a rural depopulation crisis, has upland farms being permanently turned into Sitka plantations, and has one of the world’s most depleted natural environments is a direct result of its unequal landownership patterns.

Absentee and corporate landowners are draining the life out of rural Scotland and undermining the resilience and sustainability of rural communities and farming businesses.

Sustainable economies

When communities own their own land, they are focused on creating sustainable and thriving local economies, and supporting local agriculture and rural businesses is key to this.

This includes building housing, croft creation, new farming opportunities, renewable energy and community facilities.

Land reform has been at the forefront of securing tenant farmers’ rights, while also keeping rents and wealth locally.

We, and allied agricultural organisations, see land reform as the key means of securing a sustainable and productive rural economy in which more people are living and working on the land.

The Scottish Tenant Farmers Association, for example, has welcomed significant areas of Scottish land reform, including the 2003 act, which enabled secure tenants to have a pre-emptive right to buy their farms.

Indeed, many of these changes, pioneered in Scotland, also became recommendations in the recent Defra-commissioned Rock Review of the English tenanted sector.

Diversification of landownership

The Land Reform Bill 2024 is not the radical or divisive legislation that some have depicted it as.

Instead, it focuses on land management in a limited way and will need significant amendment to deliver the diversification of landownership that is key to creating thriving rural communities.

The proposal for public oversight of land transfers of more than 1,000ha will not affect the vast majority of farms – only a handful of transactions will be involved every year.

To my mind, the potential for intervention should be broadened to ensure that there is public oversight over the sale and management of landholdings over 500ha.

After all, the large estate holdings that the legislation should cover are increasingly being used for speculative natural capital projects or to plant conifer monocultures, rather than for growing food.

Land reform has empowered crofters, tenant farmers and rural communities over the past 100 years.

We look forward to the Land Reform Bill, and future legislation, being substantially more ambitious in order to continue giving more people the chance to live and work on the land.