Rural college SRUC has announced three senior promotions.
Richard Huxtable takes over as the boss of its eight farms, while Professor Davy McCracken is the new head of its hill and mountain research centre. Professor Richard Dewhurst has been appointed to lead the college’s beef and sheep research centre.
Mr Huxtable, who is based at SRUC’s office at Inverurie’s Thainstone Centre, will be responsible for a farming operation covering 9,884 acres and which includes 1,000 dairy cows, 400 sucklers, 4,000 ewes and 864 acres of arable crops from Dumfries-shire to Aberdeenshire.
He has latterly been an area manager for SAC Consulting’s farm and rural business service, and combined that role with that of senior organic farming consultant which also involved managing its organic farm at its Craibstone campus, near Aberdeen.
He added: “I am delighted to have this opportunity to lead the SRUC farms group at a time when the organisation is continuing to develop and grow together.
“Much useful information is generated by our current activities and the hope is that over the next few years SRUC farms can make a genuine contribution to the sustainable future of Scottish agriculture, be that through the hands-on training of the next generation of land managers, practical research messages or the sharing of best agricultural practice.”
Professors McCracken and Dewhurst succeed Professor Tony Waterhouse who is to spend more time focusing on farm systems research and in making sure that information then gets out to farmers and crofters so it can be implemented practically on farms.
SRUC’s hill and mountain research centre is between Tyndrum and Crianlarich on the 5,436-acre Kirkton and Auchtertyre farms.
Prof McCracken, who was born and brought up on a hill sheep farm in Ayrshire, is a professor of agricultural ecology and has spent more than 20 years researching the links between farming systems and the flora and fauna found on farms.
Prof Dewhurst formerly worked at SAC’s Auchincruive base at Ayr. He has latterly been with Teagasc, the Irish food and agriculture development board, New Zealand’s Lincoln University and the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research at Aberystwyth.
He has a long association with ruminant research, particularly non-invasive markers for digestion and metabolism.
Prof Dewhurst said he was looking forward to leading the efforts to develop easy to use ways of measuring particular livestock traits which could then be used to identify the right cattle to breed from. He added: “It is part of precision farming and could involve observable signs, simple tests or even devices carried on the animal.”