Ringlink welcomes a new director with Peter Oosterhof joining us in December 2023.
Forty-year-old Peter farms at Savoch Farm, at Lonmay near Fraserburgh.
“I am really looking forward to taking my place on the board,” he said. “Farmer-owned cooperatives are important and Ringlink has a strong track record of serving its members.”
After graduating from Aberdeen University with an engineering degree, he joined a drilling contractor for five years, ending up working in Gabon in performance improvement and operations management. Peter then travelled and worked on farms in New Zealand for a year before travelling through South America.
He came home in 2012 to farm with parents Sjirk and Thyna, who hailed from farms in the Netherlands and New Zealand respectively, building projects such as biomass grain driers and solar panels.
In 2017, he took over running the farm in his own right and has since focused on expanding and streamlining the business on crop production and cattle finishing. In 2019 he was named Young Producer in the Marks & Spencer (M&S) Awards at the Royal Highland Show and in 2022 received their Farming with Nature Award.
He has been involved in a three-year sustainability project with M&S, creating corn bunting habitat trails with the RSPB and hosts a Hutton institute greenhouse gas emissions measuring station on peatland on his farm.
Peter is interested in maximising productivity on the good parts of his farm while seeking funding streams to manage the less productive areas for the benefit of the environment. He is married to Jane and they have three young children.
