Meet the Consultant - Mhairi Dalgleish
I am Mhairi Dalgliesh, a Senior Agricultural Consultant in the Perth office. I have worked with SAC Consulting for almost eight years. The majority of the clients I work with are based north of Perth in the areas of Bankfoot, Dunkeld, Aberfeldy, Pitlochry and Blair Atholl.
Before joining SAC Consulting, I studied Agricultural Science at the SRUC Ayr campus, graduating in 2017. Between my third and fourth years I completed a summer placement across the Ayr, Dumfries and Stranraer consulting offices, shadowing experienced consultants, as part of the SRUC Trust Scheme. This placement allowed me to see the variety of work involved in a consultancy role and was one of the reasons I later applied for a job with SAC Consulting. In the spring of the following year, I was lucky to be successful in getting a job in the Perth office and moved from Thornhill, Dumfriesshire to Perth.
The principal element of my role is one-to-one support for Perthshire farming businesses which includes a wide variety of work including carbon audits, labour justification reports for planning applications, fertiliser recommendations as well as subsidy and other grant applications. Out with one-to-one client work, I am also heavily involved with Agrecalc, the carbon calculator. I validate carbon audit data from farms and businesses across the UK to ensure it has been correctly captured and is therefore suitable to join the benchmarking pool for the KPIs that all users of the tool compare to. I am part of a small team that delivers training on the tool for new users.
In addition to my work with Perthshire farming businesses, I manage the Natural Capital Topic within Scotland’s Farm Advisory Service (FAS) programme. In this role I oversee projects which help farmers and land managers understand and tackle the twin challenges of climate change and biodiversity and ensure that the topics covered continue to meet the needs of the audience. This involves developing and overseeing the range of outputs produced under the topic including working closely with stakeholders. This job is made easy by the wide range of knowledgeable and specialist colleagues from all divisions of the business who contribute to the delivery of outputs around water quality and availability, climate change as well as biodiversity and habitat management.
I have extensive experience in meeting facilitation including running the Perthshire Women in Agriculture group through FAS and a sheep discussion group. Most recently for the Farm Advisory Service (FAS), I co-ordinated the ‘Biodiversity Audits: Help with Habitat Mapping’ webinar to assist farmers, crofters and land managers in completing their Whole Farm Plan requirements. I always struggle with the question of ‘what is my specialism?’ but an area I have a particular interest in is employment legislation and helping farming businesses with the steps they need to complete to employ a worker. This includes the legalities and implications for employees, working under the header of self-employed contractors and also the duties and requirements of employers under the Agricultural Wages Board. I led the FAS ‘Employing People Roadshow’ around Scotland, which involved co-ordinating a roadshow of eight meetings on the legislative requirements relating to employing people.
Outside of work, I am heavily involved in the Scottish Association of Young Farmers Clubs (SAYFC). I was a privileged to win the Unsung Hero Award at SAYFC’s first 5 Star Award’s in 2021. I am currently Secretary of my local club, Bankfoot JAC, and I have also just been elected into a second term as Chair of the International Travel Committee that covers the international travel opportunities offered to members across Scotland. This latter role also gives me a place on the Senior Leadership team of SAYFC, a team of around 20 people from the length and breadth of Scotland who work together to develop the organisation, something I thoroughly enjoy.
Mhairi Dalgliesh, Senior Agricultural Consultant, Mhairi.Dalgliesh@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 12/05/2025
