On-farm assessments for cereal growers to go ahead

While those involved in Scotland’s agri-tourism sector might have been disappointed by failing to gain an early release from lockdown restrictions, Scotland’s cereal assurance scheme was this week granted a dispensation to conduct annual inspections on farm where on-line assessments had proved impossible or impractical.

The assurance scheme, Scottish Quality Crops (SQC), last week issued a warning to growers that without completing their annual farm assessment, grain passports – which are required by most buyers before grain is moved off farm – would not be granted.

While more than 1,900 of the 3,300 members had undergone the required farm audits before lockdown, a significant number still had to be carried out. And although online inspections had been ongoing since March, uptake had been slow with only 200 being completed over the past two months – leaving a considerable number of growers still to complete the task before harvest.

“The vast majority of producers would have no trouble conducting the virtual inspection on either their laptop, tablet or even phone,” said SQC executive director, Alistair Ewan. “But we recognised that a number of growers simply lacked either the necessary broadband provision or the required computer skills to do this.”

He said that producers would struggle to sell their grain without assurance passports – so the issue had been taken up with the Scottish Government.

Following what he described as a “highly satisfactory” meeting with rural economy secretary Fergus Ewing, Ewan yesterday announced that the organisation had been granted a concession which would allow onfarm inspections to be conducted where there was no other option:

“The importance the movement and marketing of grain to the food sector was recognised by the cabinet secretary and his officials – and, while we will have to take all measures to ensure the health and safety of both assessors and members, we have been told we can carry out farm inspections where no viable alternative exists.”

“SQC is a robust scheme which is highly regarded by organisations such as the Whisky Association and they say they need to maintain the standards so the message to growers is to get booked in for their on-line audit – for we don’t want anyone getting to harvest time and then asking ‘where are my passports?’”

Admitting that the virtual inspections would never be as good as a real-life physical inspection, he said that the move was a worthwhile stop-gap measure to maintain the integrity of the scheme – and the dispensation to conduct some on-farm inspections had shown that SQC had pulled out all the stops to ensure that members could continue to sell their grain at harvest.

● Many self catering businesses in rural areas had felt that compliance with social distancing requirements could have been achieved, providing a safe environment for guests in order to allow an earlier start up.

However NFU Scotland said that while some might be frustrated by the midjuly start date announced by the Scottish Government, the move marked the first steps to recovery for Scottish agritourism.