Vanishing point: Scotland's crofters battle to save their ancient communities

Like such glorious weather in March, Neil MacInnes is a rarity. He is a crofter, one of a dying breed of farmers who have lived and toiled in the Highlands and islands of Scotland for more than 100 years. Since the late 19th century, crofters have been able to lease small strips of land from private landlords and the Government (since devolution in 1998, the Scottish government) and are subsidised by the state. This cash helps them to build their homes and live off the land by growing vegetables or rearing sheep and cattle. The image of the stone-walled crofter's cottage is almost emblematic of the Highland way of life.

One might think that crofters are more important now than ever. With the fashion for "growing your own" and consumers' interest in the provenance of their food, small-scale organic farming is coveted. Riding the bandwagon, last month BBC2 screened a five-part series, Beachcomber Cottage, in which a former Marine, Monty Halls, attempted to live and work on his own croft in the Highland village of Applecross. However, Halls was criticised for painting an over-romanticised portrait of crofting life. "To me, what Monty is doing in the programme is pure fantasy," Derek MacLennan, 45, told The Times last week. MacLennan lives with his wife, Caty, 34, on a 1.5-acre arable croft in Toscaig, eight miles from Applecross. "It is escapism that has nothing to do with the reality of crofting." It's one thing to show off for the cameras, it seems; quite another to live the life.

And crofters themselves, hundreds of miles away from the fashionable supermarkets of metropolitan England, are in trouble. Hit by the competitiveness of modern farming, as well as climate change, Scotland's 13,000 crofters are finding their existence increasingly precarious. Nowadays, they supplement their income from farm work with other jobs as handymen or barmen. They are divided over whether to modernise. Should they build holiday homes for tourists wanting to share the stunning natural landscape? Or stick to planting spuds? No one seems sure, and the position has become so difficult that the Scottish Crofting Foundation, which promotes crofting, is petitioning the United Nations for the right to classify crofters as an "indigenous people" in a last-ditch attempt to wrest control of their own affairs from the Scottish government.

"They gave you a croft because it was a place for you to build a house and have some land and do something with it. It was a great help," says Neil MacInnes, 78. "There are a lot of people around here who don't have very much, and fought for Britain in the trenches and at sea, so that they could come back to something that was theirs. It's ridiculous what is happening in this country at the moment. The present-day generation is letting their ancestors down."

Crofts evolved after the dissolution of the ancient Scottish clan system in the 18th century. Scotland used to be ruled by chiefs who divided their land among their clan. Some clan members grew food, others hunted. But as the system disappeared, the chiefs' land was broken up into smaller strips, the crofts of today. When the dust settled, those living on the land found they had no official rights over it. After a long period of unrest, the Crofting Act of 1886 was passed to give crofters security of tenure. Now, there are 17,000 crofts registered in Scotland, with an estimated 35,000 people living on croft land.

Neil MacInnes's home is a modern white bungalow. It sits on a narrow, winding road just south of the centre of Fiscavaig. His house is in the middle of a 13-acre croft, where his ancestors have reared sheep since migrating to Fiscavaig from the Isle of Harris, 20 miles off the north-west tip of Skye, in the 1920s.

MacInnes took control of the croft from his father in 1966. Two years ago, he passed his rights to the land to his 31-year-old daughter Joan. Joan rises at 5am each day to tend her sheep in the fields opposite the family's home. She grows potatoes and vegetables, which she sells at a local farmers' market.

In spite of this apparently idyllic set-up, the two are critical of some of the other crofters in the area. "I wouldn't say it is a strong local community here any more. There aren't that many of the locals left," says Neil. "The houses have all been taken over by outsiders." He gestures to a cluster of houses opposite his own. "There wasn't a house over there 10 years ago. Now there are three. On the road we live on, there were two houses in the early 1990s. Now there are eight. They are not crofters' houses."

Joan believes that the Crofters Commission, the state-funded governing organisation for the crofters, is not monitoring the situation properly. She says many of her fellow crofters are using good, workable arable land to build holiday villas and homes, which are then leased out or sold for profit.On the one hand, she claims, the organisation does not punish those who abuse their privileges. On the other, she says there are many people who would like to farm crofts but don't have the land.

"People are only abusing the system because they can get away with it. It's human nature," she says. "If they are not using their privileges properly they should be told [that the land] is going to be taken off them and given to someone who cares. This country needs affordable housing, but the kind of houses that are going up are not going to be accessible to ordinary folk."

A short drive away from Fiscavaig, past the foothills of the Red Cuillin hills, the village of Heaste looks over the expansive, clear surface of Loch Eishort. This sea loch, like many others in the West Highlands and islands, was once a popular source of prawns, herring and cod. But in the Seventies, an influx of trawlers decimated its fisheries, and now it barely supports a handful of fishermen.

One remnant of the local fishing industry is crofter-fisherman Neil MacKinnon, 77. MacKinnon's life seems more comfortable than that of other crofters on the island. He lives in an expensive-looking, well-decorated bungalow on a hillside just to the south of Heaste. Slim, with a mischievous look in his eye that suggests a fierce intellect, MacKinnon will happily give visitors a tour of his home, with its interior clad in local stone and a vast number of books. He shows photos of his son Niall, 34, a former Marine, now a prawn fishermen working off the western coast of Skye, and his youngest son, Ashton, nine, who is being privately educated at St Paul's School in London. Like all members of his family, MacKinnon was born locally. Aged just 14, he started fishing for prawns on the loch. "My family has no love of the soil," he says.

He says some bad luck destroyed his cattle-farming career. "I had a go at it in the 1990s when I bought 15 or 16 Hereford cows," he says. "But then the foot-and-mouth crisis struck [in 2001]. I had bought my stock through a dealer in Aberdeen. I'd read in the press that Scotland and Ireland were supposed to be clear of foot-and-mouth. No such luck. I found out that all my cows were born in Cheshire. I had to take the lot to Inverness to be incinerated. I found that awful. After that, I was done with it."

MacKinnon believes crofters need to adapt to survive. "If you went back to the indigenous way of crofting, of cutting your hay, say, to feed your cattle, you'd never get the weather today to dry it," he says. "The weather and climate have changed. It is much wetter up here than it used to be when I was a lad."

Since 1999, he has built two holiday chalets on land next to his own home. He leases each out for several years at a time, and is keen to stress how this has had a huge impact on his standard of living. "I think that tourism is very important for the area," he says. "I built the chalets on very poor land, which I couldn't use for anything else. I think crofters should have the option to build one or two of such properties... three at the most. But you can't go over the top. These kinds of foreign tenants can come in with their terriers and cause mayhem with our livestock."

He is, however, happy about tenants from other parts of Scotland or England coming to Heaste to lease crofts. Of Heaste's 13 crofts, each around 15 acres in area, only four are worked by active crofters, and only two of them have families with local ancestry. MacKinnon says there is a thriving orchestra in Heaste that meets every week. It has 50 regular members – but none of them are locals.

Leo Murray, 57, a surgeon at the Dr MacKinnon Memorial Hospital in Broadford, a nearby village, hails originally from Glasgow. He says: "Crofters perform a necessary function here by keeping livestock that make sure the ferns don't grow up on the hills. They maintain the hillsides. They also preserve some of the community, and as such should be cherished."

Crofters need to embrace the modern world in other ways. Patrick Klause, the Scottish Crofting Foundation's chief executive, is trying to get crofters to use a "crofting" label on the meat or vegetables they sell at market, giving buyers the confidence that such produce is reared or grown in an ethical, community-focused way. As well as his petition to the UN, Klause is pushing for the democratisation of the Crofting Commission, allowing the crofters to choose who manages their affairs. He is waiting for the Scottish government to consider his proposals.

Klause blames local planners for allowing crofters to build holiday homes. "It seems as though the planners do want people to stop taking the piss," he says. "There is a certain amount of co-operation. The planners are becoming more aware of this now. They will take all objections and build opposition on a case-by-case basis. But they need the ammunition. Additionally, what I think particularly riles crofters is when they see crofters who don't live in this country – absentee crofters – breaking up crofts for house sites. Plockton [a small village two miles north-west of the Skye Bridge, which connects the island to the mainland] is lovely. But I think 60 per cent of it is empty in winter, because most of its houses are second homes."

Another means of revitalising communities is to move people into them. In 2007, the Lochalsh and Skye Housing Association built 169 new, affordable properties in Portree, the main town in Skye, rehousing people from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Some locals were not happy. "They are thieves and vagabonds," MacKinnon says. "It doesn't work. It causes more problems than it's worth. People around here are so sheltered. The philosophy is that the people here will guide these incomers. But they drag the good people down."

Sadly, the Crofters Commission does not know the answers either. "We have a certain statutory power with regard to what people do with their land," says Drew Ratter, the chairman. "But the powers are strictly limited and have to be enforced within the Scottish government's law. Every decision we make in a regulatory process is subject to appeal. So there's no easy answer.

"Where we work closely with communities, we have taken significant action on absenteeism. But it is resource-intensive and difficult to sustain along with all the other statutory duties we have to carry out. I am, however, extremely sympathetic to those who want to see their community develop."

How does that sit with the crofters? On his hillside, Neil MacInnes squints against the sun. "This is good arable land which people broke their hearts to cultivate," he says, shaking his head. "Now there is one croft with cattle and sheep left in this village. There is one party to blame for that, and that is the Crofters Commission. They could have put a stop to it. But they didn't. They did nothing about it..." His voice trails off, and is lost in a gust of wind.