'The future of Scotland's economy is rural' writes Cameron Gillies, head of external affairs at Scottish Land & Estates

If you want to understand the contradiction at the heart of Scotland’s economy, start with a simple statistic.

Ninety-eight per cent of Scotland’s land mass is classified as rural. I regularly wheel this stat out as a piece of geographical trivia. But it is more important than that. It reflects the reality of Scotland’s economic future.

The industries shaping our future prosperity are overwhelmingly rural: energy, food and drink, tourism, forestry, natural capital.

Cameron Gillies: 'The future of Scotland's economic success is rural' (Image: Scottish Land & Estates)

Yet just as economic opportunity moves outwards, our population continues to move inwards.

We are building a rural economy with fewer and fewer people living in rural places.

That tension sits at the centre of almost every challenge Scotland now faces. Take food and drink. Our two biggest exports, whisky and salmon, are born far from our cities.

Global demand for both is growing, not slowing.

But while Scotland’s brands are celebrated around the world, many of the communities that sustain them are ageing, shrinking and priced out of their own housing markets.

Without people, brands don’t grow. Supply chains don’t strengthen. Investment stalls. And economic success is not produced by landscapes alone; it is built by people who can afford to live where they work.

Energy tells the same story. Scotland’s net-zero ambitions will not be delivered from policy seminars or from city centre office blocks.

They depend on wind sweeping across our........

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