This paper argues against claims that land reform would harm rural employment and seeks to illustrate the kind of jobs that could be created instead and the positive impact radical land reform would have on employment and on wages in rural areas
"It is argued that the reform of either land ownership in Scotland or its grouse moors would harm fragile economies by reducing employment opportunities. The paper argues that this is only true if alternative possible uses of the land are ignored and examines ten possible alternative uses and the jobs they could bring.
The current use of land is not efficient in terms of creating jobs and incomes. Scotland’s private shooting estates create 2,640 jobs directly and indirectly and an average income for those jobs of £11,401 - which is less than minimum wage for a full-time job. No hill farm makes a profit without public subsidy; the £11,052 average income for sheep needs £38,124 of subsidy and the average income of £24,378 for beef requires £46,268 in subsidy. These activities take up a large proportion of Scotland’s land.
Ten alternatives job types are examined - land manager, wildlife manager, commercial forestry, wood processing, deer stalking/venison, horticulture, crofting, energy engineer, housebuilding and ecotourism. All apart from crofting (which is best considered a supplementary income) pay more than the average incomes from current use.
In each case a conservative potential number of jobs is estimated. These cannot be summed to create a total as without mapping Scotland and allocating land for each purpose there would be double counting where land has more than one potential use. ― Nevertheless, the potential in jobs in rural Scotland is in the tens of thousands.
These are only the direct jobs created by these ten opportunities and this does not include the large number of indirect and induced jobs which would also be created in supply chains, services, retail and leisure, public services and as a result of growing communities, nor the potential for existing businesses expansion, home-working relocation and job start-up entirely unrelated to these ten job types which would be made possible as a result of significantly expanded housing availability.