Additionally there has been contact with many bodies and organisations with environmental, other specialist rural and professional agricultural business interests.The work has been taken forward in various ways: the publication in April 2000 of A Forward Strategy for Scottish Agriculture - A Discussion Document (over 3,000 paper copies distributed in addition to the text being available on our website); a major conference in June 2000 with over 170 attendees from over 70 organisations; over 80 public contributions in response to the Discussion Document (see Table 1 for a list of the contributors), and seven regional discussion meetings held throughout the summer months (see Table 2 for meeting locations).