Positive benefits of carrying on through a crisis
There was a fair bit of amusement – to say nothing of a peppering of indignation – across the sector last week when First Minister Nicola Sturgeon highlighted farming as one of the businesses that could get back to work under her route map for the phased lifting of coronavirus restrictions.
While many farmers might have been privately wondering who had been sowing the crops and tending the stock over calving and lambing this spring, the inevitable troop of Facebook warriors saddled up their high horses for a quick cavalry charge.
Most in the industry, however, shrugged the issue off and probably used it as ammunition to wind up friends and neighbours.
As did my partner in crime in these columns, Andrew Arbuckle, who kindly contacted me to let me know that I could now get on with the rest of lambing, which had been so rudely interrupted when lockdown was declared.
But I did feel it was worth contacting the Scottish Government to get a better idea of what it had meant – and received the following reply:
“The production of food – and the operation of businesses which support that – in farming have continued as part of essential activity during the lockdown.
“As part of Phase 1, farming activity that is non-food related can now look to reopen once there is suitable guidance in place for workforces, as is happening with other sectors.
“We are seeking to restart activities such as agricultural machinery sales at auction marts and maintenance works on farms that are normally carried out by agricultural contractors etc which the contractors have halted for activities such as field drainage that they consider are not essential to immediate food supply, but will have financial and longer term impacts on food production in the longer term.
“It is important we do this to enable those businesses who considered certain elements of their work to be non-essential and chose to stop that activity to restart in a phased way, this will be supported by appropriate guidance developed in partnership with relevant stakeholders.”
So, despite what the sector’s social media rapid response force might have thought, there does seem to have been a realisation that we had been doing our bit towards feeding the nation throughout the crisis.
NFU Scotland seemed to be pretty relaxed about the route map announcement – and when I contacted it for a comment it chose to focus on the positives:
“We welcome the hard work of many stakeholders, including Scottish Government, in the past two months in keeping vital supply chains open and safely staffed to ensure quality Scottish produce gets all the way from farmgate to shop shelf to the dinner table,” said its chief executive Scott Walker.
As well as welcoming provisions to let the horticulture and nursery side get back into operation and letting more contractors get back to business, he expressed relief at the planned reopening of council recycling and waste centres.
This positive and appreciative approach has been adopted by the union throughout the Covid crisis – and a grateful tone has been taken towards most Scottish Government announcements and to the public’s support of the industry.
And it’s worth noting that Saturday was earmarked as a “day of celebration” by NFU Scotland, with a host of events to tell farming’s story to the public, but that was before Covid forced it to be shelved.
Although the idea might have been for some sort of big demonstration, this had morphed into more of a charm offensive to get the public on the industry’s side rather than the sort of disruptive blockades that were seen on the continent last year.
But while the Covid restrictions saw this “big day oot” for the industry converted to a short video thanking the public for supporting Scotland’s farmers, the effort continued to be positive.
And keeping the right side of our consumers might not be a bad idea – with Brexit negotiations breaking down and the looming threat of a onesided trade deal with the US, we’re probably going to need all the friends we can get.