Anger of the farmer’s girl who says SNP bungles ‘will destroy our way of life’
A WOMAN who quit university to help keep the family farm afloat says the Scottish Government’s EU subsidies fiasco is ‘destroying’ agriculture.
Helen Stewart said delays in payments caused by the Government’s failed £178million IT system has brought the industry ‘to its knees’.
Miss Stewart said her father, Eddie, was under so much strain as he struggled to keep their sheep farm near Pitlochry, Perthshire, going financially that he developed a heart problem.
The 22-year-old was recently named Scotland’s Young Thinker of the Year after writing a withering article about the Government’s botched handling of EU payments to farmers.
Miss Stewart, whose family began farming in the area in 1599, said the farm was plunged into hardship when the ‘faulty beyond function’ IT system sent out subsidy payments late and at a reduced rate.
In her article, They Are Destroying Our Way of Life, she wrote: ‘Last January due to this disruption my dad had a heart problem. That’s when I decided to finish my studies and go home.
‘I knew the stress was bad when I visited my parents from university and would hear my dad getting up to redo his budgets at 1.30 every morning. There would be plan A, plan B and plan C, throughout the week.
‘Yet the sheep still have to be fed, vet bills still have to be paid, there is no telling the taxman you’re suddenly missing over half of your income. It hurt me to see my dad, after all his hard work, being put in a position like this.’
Miss Stewart said ‘often isolated’ farmers are ‘not fit socially to be bearing this level of uncertainty’ and many have given up on the industry.
She wrote: ‘This isn’t just a problem for now, a temporary ‘glitch’ as the Government attempts to reassure us – it is putting down roots.
‘Farms surrounding me have given up. They may not have walked off but they intend to retire and not pass the farm on to family.
‘There are no alternatives when we are not even told when the situation might be resolved.
‘When I complain about the dying farms people say, “But isn’t this great for you? You will have more land, more subsidy”. And this is what upsets me most. There are so few farmers in Scotland yet we are expected to turn on each other. It’s almost cannibalistic.’
Miss Stewart added: ‘It concerns me that our Govern- ment can bring an industry to its knees through an organisational “transitional” error.
‘The loss of the stability of farming is a loss in culture, a loss in mental well-being, a long-term loss. It hurts all the more when we feel it is a loss we bear in silence.’
Miss Stewart’s article won her the title from the Young Programme, a Glasgow-based body that helps young workers to develop their careers. It described her article as ‘a piece with emotional impact rooted in the hard practicalities of working life’.
Last August, 2,228 farmers were still awaiting subsidies as the Scottish Government failed to hand out Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payments by a strict deadline – set by Brussels – for the second year in a row.
It later emerged that attempts to fix the IT system had cost the taxpayer £2.6million in extra staffing costs.
Miss Stewart, who studied English literature and language at Glasgow University, has recently tried to diversify the farm’s output, launching a gin micro-distillery.
The Badvo Distillery opened in 2016 in a disused building.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘The introduction of our new CAP payment system did not go as smoothly we wanted.
‘Nevertheless, loan schemes for Basic Payment Scheme and Less Favoured Area Support Scheme (LFASS) went a long way to alleviating financial uncertainty facing farmers.
‘We have announced a further loan scheme for LFASS 2017 to ensure these vital funds reach rural businesses without delay. Improvements to our payment system are continually being applied.’
‘An industry on its knees’