By Andrew Arbuckle, farming editor

SCOTLAND’S LARGEST agricultural charity, the Royal Scottish Agricultural Benevolent Institution, yesterday revealed that its income had decreased in the first full financial year following the foot-and- mouth epidemic.

The RSABI, whose stated aim is to provide assistance to those who have worked in the countryside, experienced a surge in income in 2001 following the plight of many rural dwellers affected by the repercussions of the epidemic.

Now, Arthur Anderson, the chairman of RSABI, writing in the annual report for the year ended March 2003, states that temporary increase in income has passed and in the last 12-month period monies coming in have fallen by 100% to £1.3 million.

Despite this fall in income, Mr Anderson states that the RSABI is still having to deal with the aftermath of the epidemic, with much of its efforts still concentrated in the Dumfries and Galloway areas which is where the Scottish outbreak was located.

At the same time as this reduction in support, the RSABI, like many similar organisations, has seen a fall in income from its investments. This, Mr Anderson takes as a temporary position and one which will rectify itself in the months and years ahead.

However, he warns that these reductions in income—temporary or not—have highlighted the need for the society to continue to develop new income streams to supplement traditional sources. Mr Anderson has himself raised £7000 from the sale of a video made on a year in the life of a sheep farm at Mains of Mause, Blairgowrie.

One project for the coming year will see volunteers each having raised £2500 in support and willing to pay their own passage, follow the Inca trail to Macchu Picchu in Peru.

Last year, throughout Scotland and indeed in England where a few former Scottish rural workers are living, some 1300 individuals were helped by the RSABI.

The annual report also pays tribute to former welfare secretary, Liz Brash who, through her 12 years in the post, became almost synonymous with the development and work of the society.

In a surprise move, Ms Brash tendered her resignation in January of this year, having previously given little indication that her work and total commitment to the charity was in any way diminished.

Writing in the annual report, Ms Brash relates how the work of the society developed over the years from purely operating with financial support for former farmers to the wider remit of looking after anyone requiring help in the rural areas of Scotland.

She also relates that one beneficiary made a comment on life on the basis of “love many, dislike a few, but in life paddle your own canoe.” Ms Brash adds that contributing to the “very hard decision” to resign “too many folk may have jumped aboard my canoe.”