51AVÊÓƵ

There may be many things other countries do better than us, but pomp and ceremony is certainly not one of them! Everyone was dressed up to the nines, and the setting, the decorations and, particularly the music, were spectacular.

There was lots of hanging around though, and it gave me plenty of time to think about how the King must feel after waiting so long for his turn on the throne — the equivalent of getting control of the farm chequebook.

I was incredibly fortunate to have a father who was always adamant that he would retire at 65 and was more than happy to hand over the reins to the next generation, while still content to help out as necessary and provide welcome holiday cover.

He's now 84 and still likes to be kept up to date with what we're doing -— offering his opinion if asked, but never trying to tell us what to do. I'm well aware, though, that not every farming business has such a smooth generational transition and, as a sector, it's something which causes huge amounts of emotional upset, angst and sometimes conflict.

At the recent Royal Highland Show, I spoke to dozens of people over the four days, and one of the themes of concern which really struck me was the increasing worry about the lack of young people in farming and the issues this is starting to cause.

We need to attract more non-farming youngsters into the sector, but we also need to work much harder to keep the ones who are already in it — the daughters and sons who have grown up driving tractors and feeding pet lambs.

Part of that is definitely about giving them the responsibility to make decisions and the freedom to introduce new ideas and trying not to be too slow to make that generational change.

And I'm rapidly realising that I'll soon have to practice what I preach. Out of our four children, there's only really one who is likely to want to farm in the future; the others are all pursuing other career paths.

He's only 19 at the moment and still in further education, so we're not quite there yet, but it won't be long until he'll (quite rightly) expect a chance to have a say in how we do things and not just be content with doing what he's told.

I think the hard thing is not that he's getting older, but that I don't feel any different inside from when we first took over from Dad, and it's difficult to admit to yourself that you're not 25 anymore.

There will likely be interesting conversations ahead, but I'm determined that we'll make things as easy for my son as it was for us. I certainly don't want him to wait as long as the King has to have control of the chequebook (or, in reality, the online banking password).