Every Oat Counts

The Booths are 4th generation farmers, having initially worked land on the outskirts of Aberdeen before moving to Savock Farms, near Foveran, in Aberdeenshire in the 1960s.

From strong farming stock, Andrew Booth worked the farm from a young age with his father and joined the family business full time in 1999 after graduating with a diploma in Agriculture and a post graduate degree in Farm Business Management.

Farming runs through the core of the Booth family and with decades of knowledge operating as a mixed arable and livestock farm, working and nurturing the land in a traditional fashion has stood Andrew and wife, Debbie, in good stead for launching and producing a range of exclusive gluten free oats.

The duo also has vast knowledge of the food industry, with experience in retail and wholesale meat production, so they recognised a niche opportunity to create a Scottish gluten free oat range and teamed up with the Russell family to grow the brand together.

Debbie joined the family business in 2003, and as an Accountancy graduate and a qualified chartered tax accountant, manages the finances for Savock Farms.

With Andrew’s farming background and Debbie’s savvy business head, the pair are — with their young family — a formidable husband and wife team, passionate about growing outstanding oats from the rich farming lands in the North East of Scotland.

Charlie and Jill Russell farm at Dams of Craigie Farm on the outskirts of Whitecairns, Aberdeenshire. They took over the ownership of the family farm from Charlie’s parents, Graham and Elizabeth, in 2008.

Initially the couple concentrated on growing organic oats and grass that supported beef cattle and sheep. However, they became increasingly concerned over the sustainability of their soil health and a farming business that was unable to replace and balance essential nutrients in their crop rotation.

In response to this, they evolved to a system of regenerative farming — concentrating on optimising growing gluten-free oats. They haven’t forgotten the lessons they learnt during the organic phases of the business, helping to eliminate non-essential herbicides and now they balance individual plant and animal needs to inputs.

Jill has farming blood in her veins — a farmer’s daughter from Easter Ross. She studied a degree in Agriculture at Edinburgh and a postgraduate diploma in Management Studies at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.

Charlie is the 4^th generation of his family to farm at Dams of Craigie. He studied Rural Business Management and a postgraduate diploma in Farm Business Organisation Management at Aberdeen, and then Advanced Farm Business Management with the Worshipful Company of Farmers. Charlie is a Nuffield Scholar, an associate of Royal Agricultural Societies and a winner of the Farmers Weekly 'Farm Manager of the Year' and 'Farmer of the Year' awards.

Charlie and Jill live with their teenage family, who — along with their appetite for Oat Co. porridge — enjoy a variety of outdoor pursuits and sports.

With a fantastic pedigree, a wealth of knowledge and deep experience working in various areas of food processing — including fish, meat and eggs — for many years, Oat Co. Scotland’s Production Manager Ray has been part of the team from the early stages of developing the dedicated production site. His experience and technical knowledge of plant and processes has been invaluable in this development.

He is exceptionally thorough in all aspects of production and has been responsible for much of the NPD and adoption of processes to ensure that Oat Co. Scotland products exceed expectations at all times.

Ray is originally from Germany, although the North East of Scotland is very much home now for he and his family.