Don’t plant saplings on ploughable farmland

Farmers, food, forestry, funding and the future – all F words, but which will we run out of first? As ageing farmers, we see few opportunities for younger generations accessing the industry behind us.

Farms for sale are usually bought by large established farms or external City investors.

Some landlords are resuming leased land to grow large-scale tree plantations the Scottish Government seem keen to generously support in order to meet their planting targets.

Also, tree production potentially creates the opportunity to gain from the sale of the new carbon credits – a concept I believe is nothing more than masking the guilty non-eco friendly companies as allegedly being “green”.

My view on this is that not an acre of ploughable land should grow a sapling as this current practice is reducing the area available to produce our top-quality food and drink – whether it be berries for the table, barley for malt, wheat for gin, oilseed rape for oil, grass, vegetables or cereals to feed livestock.

Also, let’s nae forget the good old tattie to complement our mince or fish supper or even to manufacture vodka.

Consider the rapidly increasing population with more mouths to feed – this means we need all the ploughable land we can access.

Home-produced food is great for the economy and far more carbon-friendly compared with importing products and increasing food miles.

However, I do believe there is suitable farmland

available in Scotland for planting trees – we just need to make logical decisions of where exactly this is within our businesses.

Most of us have small corners and areas of less productive land within our farms, which we would be keen enough to plant trees upon. However, the rates payable for these very small areas are simply not adequate, hence why we do not carry out this practice.

It’s about the right tree in the right place at the right time, as the saying goes.

We must acknowledge that most deciduous trees do not have green foliage upon them for half the

year. This means that they are not photosynthesising and therefore not sequestrating carbon.

Grass is greener for a far longer period of time throughout any one year, so perhaps grass is a far better sequestrator than the tree?

That’s the first three Fs – now for funding.

Yes, we as farmers, crofters and land managers receive funding to produce a variety of high-standard products so consumers can buy them at affordable prices.

Perhaps the price of our food is not valued and respected properly. Is it too cheap? It’s certainly cheap enough to afford to waste

large volumes, which then costs taxpayers more to dispose of.

But where else does funding go – energy giants are benefiting from the grants also, producing green energy. But how green is our green energy?

Is it green to burn timber pellets that have been sourced, processed, dried and shipped around the world? Our straw has fallen victim to the burning as well, with the Scottish farmers outbid for it as it is hauled as far south as Lincolnshire to be rebaled and loaded into the burner because it is renewable.

As for the final F, the future, who knows?

What I do know is that 7pm on Wednesday will see the official launch of our NFU Scotland mental health film Unearthing Farming Lives, featuring our north-east farmer stars.

Mental health is a huge subject, and one which we must tackle.

I hope most of you will participate on Wednesday evening and, if nothing else, pay tribute to those who appear in this production and bravely speak so openly about their lives and experiences.

To register to watch the film visit nfus.org.uk

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TOP PRIORITY: A tractor ploughs a field in order to produce the farmer’s most precious commodity: food.