Gurkhas settling in Britain should be given Highland crofts, according to a retired brigadier who served with the regiment.

John Macfarlane, 69, said that because Gurkhas come from a background of subsistence farming they would thrive on the lifestyle and help to reinvigorate local communities. They would be perfect for some of the nearly 2,000 crofts that had absentee tenants and were lying fallow.

Calling on the Government to look at the idea, Brigadier Macfarlane, from Taynuilt, near Oban, said: “Most of the Gurkhas in the infantry battalions are recruited from the very high mountain villages. They are actually subsistence farmers and they grow rice and they tend buffaloes and pigs and sheep and goats. They take the beasts away up to the high alpine forests, so a croft in Sutherland would be a doddle for them.

More than 30,000 former Gurkha soldiers who served in the Army and now live in Nepal were given the right to settle in Britain last month after the Government was forced to overturn its policy under which Gurkhas who served before 1997 had no right to live in Britain. The U-turn could open the door to 36,000 former Gurkhas and their close relatives, although it is expected that the number who will take up the offer will be much lower.

A spokeswoman for the Scottish government said: “There’s nothing in the legislation to prevent former Gurkhas from becoming crofters. As with any prospective crofter, the Crofters Commission would have to approve their application to tenant or to have a croft assigned to them.”

The Crofters Commission said that there were 1,827 absentee tenants recorded in the register of crofts. “If there is a tenancy that is vacant, it is up to the landlord to apply to the commission to let that tenancy.”

Five additional crofts have recently been created on the Hebridean island of Colonsay, to try and attract new blood. Donald MacNeill, the island’s crofting project facilitator, said that applications from Gurkhas would be welcome.