SAAVA spring briefing
A deal of panel beating and some rough-and-ready roadside repairs look to have helped rescue England’s agricultural policy from the car crash many initially believed it to be.
But fears have been expressed that with Scottish policy development apparently still stuck at a red light, the break-neck speed of change required for the country’s farmers to meet fast approaching targets over an extremely short timescale could result in an even bigger pile-up.
Speaking at the Scottish Agricultural Arbiters and Valuers Association’s spring briefing, policy analyst and commentator, Jeremy Moody said that despite the passing of another year, the industry in Scotland was no further forward on policy details:
“It now looks unlikely that any new policy will be fully delivered before 2027 – and hard targets have been set such as a 32% reduction in agricultural emissions by 2031 and for 30% of the country’s land to be managed for nature by 2030. “And, the sheer scale and speed of change which will now be required to meet these targets, now only a few years away, will do far more damage than would have been the case if things had been better managed at an early stage to allow a more gradual transition,” said the secretary and adviser to the Central Association of Agricultural Arbiters.
Berwick-upon-Tweed farmer Jane Mitchell, who farms on both sides of the Border voiced a similar opinion, stating that the industry in Scotland had been starved of the information which it needed to make the necessary changes for too long:
“Farmers in Scotland need the policy makers to stop talking and start doing something about the policy vacuum which currently exists.
“In England, although the new policy was initially roundly criticised, at least it has spurred producers to focus on what is required and to start making the changes which we will all need to make.”
She added that the ongoing alterations and changes to ill-fated parts of the English plans had seen a more realistic policy evolve.
Ayrshire dairy producer, Tom Campbell said that most farmers in Scotland wanted to move towards change, but were constantly frustrated by the fact that the Scottish Government had not given a single indication of what businesses should actually be doing to meet the demands being made of them:
“The journey should have started five years ago,” he said – and pointed out that if clarity on what the details held, are delayed until 2027, then farmers would not be able to deliver:
“It’s a simple fact that if everyone is scrambling to get things done in the short time scale which will be left to us, there will be no way that there will be enough contractors, builders or advisers to go round, or trees available to plant or whatever else is required to meet the demands of new schemes.” Borders producer, David Seed, said that the ‘negative attitude’ which was often displayed towards Scottish agriculture by green lobbyists and policy makers was entirely misplaced.
Attacking even the term ‘regenerative farming’ Mr Seed said that while the term might rightly be applied to the degraded soils of dustbowl America, they had little relevance in Scotland, where diverse cropping and livestock enterprises had kept both soil health and its organic matter at globally high levels:
“You just need to look out the window to see that there’s far more biodiversity now than there was 30 years ago.
“Why do our own policy makers and civil servants keep using critical descriptions of our own farms with a view to imposing restrictions on home production and then happily advocate importing similar produce from countries with a far worse environmental record?”