Howie looks to future as family tradition continues

As the head of one of Scotland's oldest-established and most successful rural-based businesses - with an annual turnover of about £20 million and employing more than 280 people - Andrew Howie is acutely concerned about the potential impact of the current farming crisis on the future prosperity of the countryside.

For that reason he urges both politicians and the public to give greater recognition to the importance of rural-based industries - including agriculture - to the prosperity of the overall Scottish economy.

"People want the countryside to look well, but they're not really willing to back that up with support for our rural industries," he says.

"Regrettably, as a result, the number of rural businesses is declining. I like to be optimistic, but in the light of what has happened over the past couple of years, it's very difficult to see where the future lies."

Mr Howie, who has been chairman of the family company Robert Howie & Sons, of Dunlop in Ayrshire, for the past 18 years, believes that the best hope lies in achieving more stable currency arrangements and a better balance between food supply and demand in Europe.

"If we are to be part of a common market, then a common currency is essential. From the agricultural point of view there is no doubt it would be in our best interests."

Certainly as one of the country's outstanding agribusiness leaders, Mr Howie's views on the future outlook for rural industries carry real authority, for there can be few better examples of the extent to which farming in Scotland is closely integrated with the wider economy than that provided by the highly-diversified family business over which he presides.

Such is the diversity of this multi-million pound company, which this year celebrates its 150th anniversary having been founded by his great-grandfather Robert Howie - a farmer's son who started in business as a joiner and cartwright in 1850 - it would be easier to list what it is not involved in.

Today the core activities include grain milling, animal feed manufacturing, saw-milling, construction, fencing, and quarrying. Add to that poultry and egg production, plus dairy farming, and you have some idea of the range of interests represented. "If we have a strength it is the diversification of our business which is sufficient, hopefully, to see us through the ups and downs," says Mr Howie. His agribusiness experience also includes 15 years as a director of the former Scottish Milk Marketing Board. Looking back he cites the SMMB as a good example of an organisation which actively supported dairy-type rural industries - a concept he claims is now regrettably dying out.

Mr Howie's links with the milk industry continue through the company's involvement in dairying with a quota of 1 million litres and herd of 150 milking cows - mostly black-and-whites but also a few Ayrshires - kept at Middleton, between Stewarton and Irvine.

The poultry business is based at Lainshaw Farm, Stewarton. Day-old chicks are reared to maturity and then transferred to laying units in the area where, 135,000 hens produce about 800,000 eggs a week. All the eggs are quality graded and packed for distribution within 24 hours of lay to customers throughout central and south-west Scotland.

Although the founder of the company, Robert Howie, was the son of a farmer, as a youth in 1842 - as today - the future of agriculture was not sufficiently secure to ensure that all the sons of the soil could follow in their father's footsteps. So he was indentured to serve as an apprentice joiner and cartwright.

His birthright and chosen diversion to a trade formed the base on which Robert Howie & Sons was established and today the fifth generation still has its roots in the farming and timber industries, with no fewer than nine members of the family - including the chairman's two sons, Jimmy and Allan - directors of the company.

"Each generation has been actively involved in farming, perhaps because of our ancestors, but also because, as the industry developed from very rural beginnings to the much larger sophisticated food production units of today, it was beneficial and necessary to have the practical experience to be able to speak with some authority to our customers," says Mr Howie.

"The problems to be discussed have never become fewer, nor indeed any easier to solve, over the 150 years we've been in business - but the principle remains the same."

Through five generations it has strived to stay in the forefront of developments, not only in products as demanded by the customers, but also in power sources from water to steam, to oil, to electricity, and from quill pen to information technology.

From humble origins, Howie of Dunlop has developed into a household name, with interests extending from Fort William (lime quarrying) to its saw-milling operations at Dalbeattie and with customers throughout the UK.