Ewing faces flak over lack of info on payment delays
The Scottish Government was once again slammed yesterday for failing to keep farmers and crofters informed on the timing of support payments.
Following the announcement by cabinet secretary, Fergus Ewing that £38 million worth of beef calf payments would be arriving in producers’ bank accounts from next week, NFU Scotland said that while this was good news, payments had originally been promised for last month.
Stating that both calf payments and the ewe hogg payments had, as recently as April, been promised for May, the union’s chief executive, Scott Walker, said a deadline had therefore been missed.
“If confidence is ever to be restored in the payment system, the industry needs to be kept better informed,” said Walker. “When did the Scottish Government know payments would not be delivered by the end of May and why weren’t farmers and crofters told?
“What we need is openness. If commitments are made, they should be stuck to and if they can’t, then we need to be told so business can plan ahead.”
Walker added that the union’s latest information also indicated that the Scottish upland sheep scheme payments- worth an estimated £6m to hill farmers and crofters – had now slipped to the end of June.
Changes to the beef efficiency scheme (BES) – which has seen a deluge of farmers quit the scheme over its lack of consideration for the practicalities of farming – should help address some of the underlying issues, the union claimed yesterday.
Livestock committee chairman Charlie Adam said that tags arriving at different times of the year for calves which were all born during the same period of time had been a major frustration for participants – however he said that the news this wouldn’t be happening next year showed that the scheme operators had listened.
“New flexibility that will allow farmers to get tissue tags sooner is also welcome and should make it now workable for more farmers to tissue sample their 2017 spring-born calves,” he said. “It is hoped that the same flexibility will be given later in the year for the autumn-born crop of calves.”
However he said that the Scottish Government still needed to improve its communication with those involved in the scheme – and stressed that more improvements were still required to take account of day-to-day farming issues.