More than a thousand proposals from rural businesses and communities have been awarded £67m from Rural Priorities, as much as the previous three funding rounds put together, it has been announced today.

Successful applicants have included a dairy business in East Lothian who will use their grant to develop the business and give it a competitive edge, and a renewable energy project for a small company in Orkney.

This latest round of Rural Priorities funding was opened up in response to stakeholder demand and has been marked by an unprecedented number of applications for agri-environment projects.

The announcement came as Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead toured parts of Scotland with Mariann Fischer Boel, European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development.

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Mr Lochhead said: "Successful applicants have included a dairy business in East Lothian who will use their grant to develop the business and give it a competitive edge, and the Fair Isle Bird Observatory, a development which will completely transform the remote island community.

"I am also absolutely delighted to see that, even in the current economic climate, the appetite for agri-environment funding has not waned - far from it."

Mr Lochead said the government has received almost as many in this funding round as in the entire first two years of the previous Rural Stewardship Scheme.

"I have been particularly keen to ensure that, despite such demand, there have been resources to fund a number of high quality projects. However, high levels of demand mean that there may well be greater competition for funds in future rounds," he added

Other successes in this round include Orkney Preserves, who plan to use a modest grant to switch their electricity supply to a small scale wind turbine, a community centre in Coalburn and a woodland development in Ayrshire.

(GK/JM)