SCOTLAND’S first Ethical Farming Conference is to be held next year.

The Ethical Dairy in south west Scotland has announced plans for the event in May 2019.

The conference is designed to raise awareness of ethical and sustainable food production.

Plans for the event were revealed after the company hit its crowdfunding goal on Monday evening. With the crowdfunding campaign continuing to run until tomorrow, pledges received over and above the original £50,000 target will be used to fund the conference.

David Finlay, the farmer behind The Ethical Dairy, announced the conference plans in a video on the company’s social media channels and said: “We now know that this [cow with calf dairy farming] can work. What we have to do now is get that message out to the wider industry, dairy and other sectors.

“So what we’re planning to do is bring together all the innovative farmers that have been thinking outside the box in terms of how to produce our food ethically and sustainably in the future. We’re putting together a conference here on the farm and we’ll be inviting speakers from the UK and overseas.”

Wilma Finlay added: “Ethical and ecological approaches to farming are not exclusive to our farm and there is a wealth of knowledge, expertise and inspiration to be found on farms across the country. We have always said we wanted to freely share what we have learned about cow with calf dairy farming at scale with the wider industry. The Ethical Farming Conference is an opportunity to seek out and share knowledge across a range of farming sectors, and to look at how collaboration and supply chain development can support ethical food production.”

The farm’s “ethical” claim covers four areas: Fair work for people, high welfare for livestock, regenerative closed-loop production and economic sustainability. The conference will provide a platform for sharing research and innovation in practice and, through the bringing together of ethical and sustainable innovators, it will encourage collaboration across supply chains and between researchers and producers.

The conference is a collaboration between four Scottish businesses: The Ethical Dairy (Dumfries

and Galloway), Peelham Farm (Scottish Borders), Whitmuir (Scottish Borders) and Mossgiel Farm (Ayrshire).