Meet the Consultant - Craig Bothwell
Hi, my name is Craig Bothwell, and I’m approaching 10 years with SAC Consulting. I am a Senior Agricultural Consultant and Area Manager in our Edinburgh office. I was brought up on the family farm in Lanarkshire where alongside my parents, we run 70 spring calving suckler cows on a 300-acre upland unit. A Charolais bull is used within the herd to produce store calves, which are sold at around 10 – 12 months old, averaging around 450kgs. I thoroughly enjoy having the farm at home, with evenings and weekends spent helping parents who run the farm day to day. I’ve been able to take home and implement a lot of what I have learned from my career with SAC Consulting from both colleagues and other farmers. Having studied Agriculture with SRUC in Edinburgh, I graduated in 2014 and applied for a job as a Trainee Agricultural Consultant beginning my career with SAC Consulting in February 2015, just as the New Basic Payment Scheme was introduced to farmers through the new Rural Payments System. I joined with a great team of trainees and went through a robust training programme with my peers. It was steep learning curve for us all, with the first few months spent getting to grips with a new system for payments.
At the start of my career, I completed many applications through the New Entrant Capital Grant Schemes and the Young Farmers Start up Grant. This gave me the opportunity to start getting involved with farm and rural business work and today, I deliver cashflows and business appraisals for many clients. I like to work with numbers, so the margins and figures really interest me. I have developed many interests further from financial work to include beef and sheep systems and livestock nutrition. Feeding systems and rationing are key areas of interest. My role at SAC Consulting is very rewarding, I get to work with many different businesses and have seen them progress over many years. As consultants we get very involved in businesses and get to know the people and enterprises very well.
SAC Consulting has given me the opportunity to follow and develop my areas of interest and I have had the joy of working with not only farmers on a one-to-one basis, but also with other companies in the development of nutrient budgeting software. I am involved with a project alongside ADAS, Scottish Government and Defra, looking into developing a free to use Nutrient Budget software. This will give an update to Scotland’s existing PLANET software and will include all of the new Scottish Technical Notes recommendations into an easy-to-use system for farmers to optimise their use of organic manures and bagged fertilser.
In 2021, I took over the role of Office Manager for the Edinburgh office. Our office covers all of Lothians and Peeblesshire which includes a diverse mix of agricultural systems from hill sheep and beef farms to low ground arable farms growing cereals and vegetables. We serve a client base of around 270 businesses, supported by myself and two other consultants.
In the ‘nearly’ 10 years I have been with SAC Consulting I’ve worked with and learned from some very experienced and knowledgeable consultants. I feel as an organisation one of our strengths is our people and the expertise and knowledge, we can offer our farmers and clients.
As an office we are involved with facilitating many meetings every year including discussion societies, beef groups and subscriber meetings. For me, getting a group of farmers together for a farm tour or a technical meeting and generating some good discussion is very rewarding.
I was honoured to have been nominated by a client for Adviser of The Year in the Scottish Agricultural Awards and was surprised and shocked when I was shortlisted and then went onto win the award in Glasgow in October 2024. It was a great honour to have been recognised for the work I do, although, it would not have been possible without the support of my colleagues at SAC Consulting.
Craig Bothwell, Senior Consultant & Area Manager, Craig.Bothwell@sac.co.uk
Unearthed is the exclusive SAC Consulting members' monthly newsletter. Unearthed offers insights and tips from our experts on what we think is in store for farming and crofting in the coming months in order to protect and enhance your business.
Posted by Unearthed News on 13/12/2024
