Landward episode 20 2022: The Landward team are in Aberdeen for the World Clydesdale Show, the biggest single-breed horse show in Europe. Arlene witnesses the power of the eight-horse team class. and Dougie is in the forge as sparks fly in the World Farrier Championships. And we meet the beautiful stallion that has travelled 8,000 miles to compete.
Away from the show, Cammy discovers how horses are still used in Scotland’s forests, and Rosie goes on a traditional deer stalk in the hills of Perthshire with two Highland ponies. Scotland’s farming and countryside programme focusing on the issues affecting the community. Long-running Scottish farming and countryside magazine programme in which presenters report from different locations about agricultural and other issues affecting rural communities.
Landward episode 20 2022
Landward is a long-running Scottish television programme focusing on agricultural and rural issues, produced and broadcast by BBC Scotland. The programme was produced to replace the network agricultural programme Farming thus allowing a more Scottish focus on rural issues. The issues which Landward addresses are generally those within the rural public consciousness of Scotland, itself a country with a large farming community. Additionally, the show features stories covering Scotland’s vast landscape, with various stories covering the wildlife and nature of the country.
From 1976 until 2007, it aired Sunday lunchtime, replacing the similar shows Farming and then later Countryfile which aired elsewhere in the UK; In 2007 Landward moved to a regular Friday evening slot, and replaced Countryfile only when it could not be shown in its usual slot (e.g. because of sports coverage). From April 2009, both programmes now have guaranteed prime time slots and one will no longer be dropped to accommodate the other.
Agriculture in Scotland
Agriculture in Scotland includes all land use for arable, horticultural or pastoral activity in Scotland, or around its coasts. The first permanent settlements and farming date from the Neolithic period, from around 6,000 years ago. From the beginning of the Bronze Age, about 2000 BCE, arable land spread at the expense of forest. From the Iron Age, beginning in the seventh century BCE, there was use of cultivation ridges and terraces. During the period of Roman occupation there was a reduction in agriculture and the early Middle Ages were a period of climate deterioration resulting in more unproductive land. Most farms had to produce a self-sufficient diet, supplemented by hunter-gathering.
More oats and barley were grown, and cattle were the most important domesticated animal. From c. 1150 to 1300, the Medieval Warm Period allowed cultivation at greater heights and made land more productive. The system of infield and outfield agriculture may have been introduced with feudalism from the twelfth century. The rural economy boomed in the thirteenth century, but by the 1360s there was a severe falling off in incomes to be followed by a slow recovery in the fifteenth century.
The early modern era saw the impact of the Little Ice Age, which peaked towards the end of the seventeenth century. The closing decade of the seventeenth century saw a slump, followed by four years of failed harvests, in what is known as the “seven ill years”, but these shortages would be the last of their kind. After the Union of 1707 there was a conscious attempt to improve agriculture among the gentry and nobility. Introductions included haymaking, the English plough, new crops, crop rotation and encloses were introduced.
The resulting Lowland Clearances saw hundreds of thousands of cottars and tenant farmers from central and southern Scotland lose access to land and either become landless agricultural workers or emigrate to the growing industrial cities or elsewhere. The later Highland Clearances involved the eviction of many traditional tenants as lands were enclosed, principally for sheep farming. In the first phase, many Highlanders were relocated as crofters, living on very small rented farms which required other employment to be found.
