Network and Partnership Building

Building networks and partnerships is at the core of everything we do. We know that working together more efficiently and effectively is the best way to tackle many of the major issues faced by food producers and rural businesses.

As well as the formation of co-ops, we help facilitate more informal collaborative groups, and build better networks within supply chains, supporting these groups with the development of strategies and action plans, helping develop shared goals. Here are just some examples:

Collaborative Groups

Flowers Grown in Scotland group

This group was initially brought together through the Rural Innovation Support Service (RISS) and facilitated by SAOS. On completion of support through RISS, and with additional funding through the Collaborative Group Fund, we continued to work with the growers to create a communication plan and develop guidelines for their own brand marque and the Flowers Grown in Scotland website.

Scottish Apple Producers group (SAP) 

SAP came together to discuss the future for the apple sector and the feasibility of rejuvenating commercial orchards to offer opportunities for good farm management, reducing Scotland’s carbon footprint and providing new income for farmers.

In 2019 this group gained RISS support with SAOS working with the producers to gather research and insight, develop R&D opportunities for both growing and processing, and harnessing the wider sector’s knowledge and support to help re-establish Scottish apples as a key product in the Scottish food and drink offering. 

Scottish Honeyberries Growers 

SAOS worked with an innovative group of farmers and growers from across Scotland who were starting their journey growing and marketing honeyberries – a climate resilient, nutrition rich fruit with strong commercial potential as a 'super food'.

With support from Scotland Food & Drink and other supply chain and market development partners, SAOS helped with the group's initial formation and governance, allowing growers to come together to share knowledge and align growing practices. We also helped with facilitating access to funding and market development support.

Wider Sector Groups

Dairy Growth Board

We support the Dairy Growth Board to develop new opportunities at home and abroad for both large scale and artisan processors.  This includes logistics and sharing knowledge to improve sustainable production.

Scottish Venison

We work closely in support of both wild and farm venison production. This has included a significant contribution towards a refreshed sector strategy; research and development into the supply chain for wild venison and the logistics of getting the product to market; and developing new collaborative solutions and improvements in the delivery of quality assurance. 

Harper Adams' School of Sustainable Food and Farming

Our Head of Supply Chain Innovation, Helen Glass, sits on the steering group of the Sustainable Farm Networks (SFN) | School of Sustainable Food and Farming

The Sustainable Farm Networks (SFN) initiative is a community of individuals from a wide variety of organisations and diverse networks with a desire to see a profitable, productive and sustainable future for the UK agricultural industry, trying out new things to be more sustainable, seeing what happens and sharing the results. The group's aims are to: 

• Equip farmers with skills, knowledge and training needed to become fully sustainable on all parameters: economic, environmental and social.
• Be a trusted source of information to demystify the journey to net zero and sustainable farming - talk a common language about sustainable agricultural systems.
• Work to improve farm practice and the farm data to track progress on greenhouse gas emissions reduction, sequestration, and broader sustainability metrics such as biodiversity, water and soils.
• Encourage new entrants into the farming and food industry, and a diversity of entrepreneurial talent to support the aims.

The Cultivating Collaboration Network

Taking the idea of networks and partnerships into new territories for SAOS, we developed our C2Network to build on the power of co-ops to drive positive change in the primary agriculture sector through the building of broader, cross-sector, collaborative partnerships.

The C2Network brings together co-op members, industry organisations, academic institutions, technical and data providers to help enable change at a national level.

Find out more at SAOS | The C2Network

​

​