Looking ahead and working to create a better rural Scotland

By Stephen Young, Head of Policy at Scottish Land & Estates

Following a three-month consultation period, the window to respond on proposals for a new agriculture bill for Scotland concluded shortly before the turn of the year.

to support active farming businesses, and we’re pleased by that plan.

Eliza to the team and know that her skills complement mine and we will work well together.”

Eliza Hodgson took up her new role at the start of October. She is a sheep and beef farmer, originally from Rydal but more recently farming in Windermere. She has experience of assisting with a successful farm diversification business and website creation. She is a graduate in Agricultural Food Marketing and Business Studies, so brings with her a full suite of skills for her work with the Lake District National Park Authority.

The consultation was split into six parts to reflect proposals for possible inclusion in the new bill, which is expected in late-2023, but with implementation likely not to happen until 2025/26 at the earliest. While the proposals will give important powers to government, we and others in the sector have been vocal about the disappointing lack of detail as to how those powers will be used, with the emphasis placed on the ability to add this detail through secondary legislation, which we do not feel is the best way to ensure proper scrutiny and ability reach consensus.

Our broad response is in keeping with the thinking laid out in the latest iteration of our #Route2050 paper which we launched at the Royal Highland Show back in summer 2022.

In terms of future payments, we largely agree with the framework set out by government in the consultation, with four tiers of payments – albeit with some concern about how easy the system will be to understand and administer, along with a lack of clarity on what the total budget will be and how existing and future biodiversity and carbon outcomes will be measured. We have consistently argued that there needed to be a base level of support, with 50% of payments made

Other areas in the consultation include sections on delivery of key outcomes, and skills, knowledge transfer and innovation. In general terms, SLE has expressed a desire to see an integrated approach allowing businesses to have a mix of food production, forestry, carbon sequestration and natural capital benefits – and said that greater resources are needed to share knowledge and skills that will help farmers to innovate in the decades ahead.

There is also a suite of agricultural holdings proposals, headlined to enable tenant farmers to take part in environmental schemes and payments. While we are supportive of the principle, it does not seem to consider or analyse what is currently possible within existing leases, which must be the starting point for this discussion as more legislation for the sake of it is rarely a good move.

Farmers, land managers and owners will have entered their responses and we hope it will lead to policy that will allow long-term strategic planning. Land management is complex, and decisions cannot be made in isolation, but with the right support Scotland’s land can play its full part in fighting climate change, restoring nature and producing food in accord with each other, but it can only move at pace once we know what will constitute success – and then how success will be measured.