Three crop rule ‘inapplicable to Scotland’ and should be axed

While Scotland’s arable farmers appreciated the Scottish Government’s move to grant producers a derogation to the three crop rule for 2020, the industry took the opportunity to highlight the fact that with no large areas of monoculture cropping in the country, the requirement should be removed permanently.

The official Greening Guidance for 2020 was updated this week with the simple statement: “Following an extended period of wet weather, the Scottish government has approved a derogation for Crop Diversification 2020. The two/three crop rules will not be implemented for the scheme year 2020.”

Responding to the news, NFU Scotland combinable crops chairman Willie Thomson said that the weather had meant that the window of opportunity to plant and establish crops for 2020 had been narrow – and meeting the three-crop rule had looked to be almost impossible for many farmers.

However, with the Scottish Government promising to simplify the rules in the years ahead, he also took the opportunity to state that the union had consistently opposed the measure, stating that such a blunt measure did not fit the profile of Scottish agriculture, nor did it offer much in the way of environmental benefit.

“But it has added significant cost to many Scottish agricultural businesses and to Scottish Government in terms of inspections and compliance complexities,” he said.

Thomson said the union was proposing the removal of the crop diversification and permanent grassland requirements from the greening rules from 2021 onwards as they simply weren’t relevant in Scotland.