The Scottish Government

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Agree with Alan Brown about the Scottish breakfast, but what about local free range eggs, wild boar bacon, home grown tomatoes and mushrooms, not to mention black pudding - b&b guests will not forget it!!!! And back to the original thread - Perhaps Visit Scotland could devise a local breakfast symbol?!!!

We seem to have a belief that good local food has to be more expensive.
This does not necessarily have to be so. Our agricultural support system with its bias against small local food producers is what creates the cost difference. Change the system and what do you think would happen if local organic food was cheaper than the globalised stuff. Don't use our taxes to subsidise industrial farming.

Totally agree,would like to buy locally and eat locally.We need a local guide which is freely available and kept up to date.

I visited Orkney last year and was pleased that the food I ate on the trip was all locally produced (and delicious!). When I visit places across the country I prefer to have locally produced food rather than something from 80 miles down the road. I wouldn't visit France and eat German sausages.

I also now use a local farm to get my vegetables delivered each week and feel that many B&B's and guest houses could do the same as it saves on the hassle of shopping and provides fresh, healthy produce.

Tourists want to eat the local delicacy but often shy away at the thought of a deep fried mars bar !
My mother has been doing B&B for years and it is the breakfasts that people remember not the bed well most of them, There should be an industry standard for the scottish breakfast and if you don't offer porridge then you can't be graded.Continental breakfasts are for continental holidays but again it is down to cost and consumer choice.We need to rebrand the scottish food thing giving it more appeal to the ever discerning tourist.....

I strongly believe that if we got rid of all the wasteful packaging of food we would automatically benefit from fresh produce not artifically kept 'fresh'. Children would once again recognise foods in their original format and not pre-cut, washed and pre-prepared. Fun cookery lessons in primary school and a more serious attitude to food at a later stage in education is essential for the health of our future generation.

It is extremely important that Scottish restaurants realise that many tourists visiting the area want to experience fresh, local, Scottish food. If more restaurants were realise this they would be able to help stop the supermarket culture that is currently occurring in Scotland and the UK as a whole.

Supermarkets are delivering customers with what they “want”, this is fruit and vegetables from all over world all year round. This means that the produce is travelling thousands of miles just to satisfy the customers visiting the top 4 supermarkets. This takes away from the taste of the produce and the excitement of preparing food that is fresh and in season. It also has an impact on what tourists see as Scottish food. Due to the fact that the UK, as a whole, has massive amounts of foreign restaurants tourists do not see local food as a culture of Scotland. There are obvious Scottish things that tourists do see but these also need to be available all season to satisfy their demands. Local producers need to show tourists the pro’s of consuming local Scottish food that is in season.

It is up to the local producers to help re-instate the passion of local food into local customers. This in turn would make tourists more aware of the joys of local Scottish food as if locals are proud of their local produce then tourists are going to be more likely to want to experience the food and the passion that the locals show.

I agree with everything that Tom Gray and Lisa Hawthorne say. It will be hard however, to get farmers to do anything on a small scale as "economy of scale" has driven them for so long in their fight to survive supermarket power. However, I did pass a small scale and very immaculate operation on the way to Thornhill in Stirlingshire which looked like it was growing vegetables for local sale.
We are trying to encourage local households, including farmers, to sell their excess seasonal produce at our village hall. We hope this will build to become a regular opportunity for the community to meet and buy local or simply swop produce with each other.
Those of us who have land and machinery have the opportunity to build partnerships with volunteers who have the time and enthusiasm to grow vegetables.

Before all the locally produced food goes to hotels and other areas of the hospitality industry, I believe local residents should benefit from local food production. If we love eating the foods fellow producers grow or produce, we will be more interested and curious about eating local food when we visit other areas of the country. And then the hospitality industry will really benefit. Local produce needs to be made abundantly available and promoted to the residents in every community in order to make us all proud of our local producers.