Farming Opportunities for New Entrants Group (FONE): information pack

About the FONE group

FONE group definitions

FONE is an acronym for the Scottish Government’s ‘Farming Opportunities for New Entrants’ group, and is made up of agricultural stakeholders in Scotland who work together to identify and develop opportunities for New Entrants into agriculture.

New Entrants is a term we use for people who have joined the agricultural sector within the last five years. This is often young farmers and crofters, but also includes career changers.

A brief history of the FONE group

In 2012, a new pilot scheme was developed to provide New Entrants the chance to lease part-time starter units on Scotland’s Forestry and Land Estate. As result, a total of nine tenancies were created across the Estate and the Scottish Government’s Rural Payments and Inspections Division also joined the programme, providing a Starter Unit near Inverness.

Following the success of this programme, the FONE group was created to find and develop opportunities and ideas to support New Entrants on all publicly owned land. The group presented its findings in a report in November 2016, and this report provided a clear picture of the barriers facing New Entrants to agriculture, including access to land and the amount of publicly owned land in Scotland.

Since 2016, the FONE group has continued to work together to find publicly owned land that can be made available to New Entrants, increasing the supply of land available.

In 2024, the FONE group was mentioned in a commitment within the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government; a commitment to ‘review government’s landholdings to explore opportunities to create openings for New Entrants into farming […] and encourage public bodies with considerable land holdings to also look at what opportunities they can offer’.