Scotland’s experts on farmer co-ops and food industry collaboration, we work with food and farming businesses to make them more profitable, competitive, and sustainable - #workingtogether to shape the future, today.
All our work helps facilitate farmers and food and drink businesses to work together effectively. Over the years we've expanded and developed subsidiary businesses - getting the right people together and making innovative advancements - to help benefit food, farming and rural Scotland.
Developing staff capability is one of the most effective ways to improve a co-op’s performance. Check out our events and training programme - most of which are open to non co-op members too.
As a development organisation, owned by our members, we provide a range of specialist services not available elsewhere, to assist them in developing their people and their businesses. Get in touch to find out how we can help you.
See below for all the latest news, views and updates from us here at SAOS. Find all our latest videos on YouTube at: SAOS - working together in food and farming
07 February 2023
If you missed the SAOS conference ,
or indeed if you were there and want a recap, you can catch up on much of the day below where we have provided links to PDFs of our speakers' presentations as well as video footage of their talks so you can look at both.
We'd a really good day and evening, and are grateful to our sponsors, NFU Mutual and Ledingham Chalmers for their continued support.
We started the day by taking a closer look at the impact of a couple of the major current challenges for food and farming businesses.
We heard from Mike Robinson, Chief Executive of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, who outlined some hard facts around Climate Change and it affects Scotland.
Mike Robinson's presentation slides
Watch Mike Robinson's presentation on YouTube
Next we heard from Andrew Niven, Strategic Market Intelligence Manager at Scotland Food & Drink, who talked about changes in consumer behaviour and how they affect farmers, producers and food and drink supply chains.
Andrew Niven's presentation slides
Watch Andrew Niven's presentation on YouTube
After examining these hefty challenges, we changed tack to explore some possibilities and new ideas to help to tackle them and provide future opportunities.
In this section we first heard from Professor Alison Hester of the James Hutton Institute about their HydroGlen project and
work on Green Hydrogen. We introduced Alison with a video we filmed previously with her on a visit as part of the C2Network.
C2Network's Green Hydrogen video
Alison Hester's presentation on YouTube
Next up was Adam Christie, Managing Director of Scottish Agronomy, who discussed the co-op's work and research and how they aim to offer potential solutions
for Scottish arable farming.
Adam Christie's presentation on YouTube
We had a double act for the last morning session as we heard from Richard and Ed Nimmons from Carbon Capture Scotland. We heard from them about their work in carbon capture and how they see the potential for the future.
Get in touch with the team if you've any questions - or suggestions for what you'd like us to cover next time at SAOS Conference 2024!
And please subscribe to the SAOS YouTube channel so you're first to hear if we add something new!
