Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation
BY HAMISH MACDONELL
Holyrood in the balance The Scottish elections in May could bring a change our industry cannot afford to ignore
J
ohn Finnie is one of many MSPs who are standing down at next month’s Holyrood elec�on and I will be sorry to see him go. That is because he has been the only Green MSP in the Sco�sh Parliament I have come across who has been prepared to have a proper dialogue and discussion with Scotland’s salmon farmers. As far as the rest of the Green parliamentary group is concerned, I couldn’t get mee�ngs, indeed I could hardly get responses to emails when I tried to engage with them on behalf of Scotland’s salmon farmers. In environmental terms, that always struck me as odd. A�er all, fish farming evolved to help save wild fish stocks in our oceans and farmed salmon have a low carbon footprint, low water use and great feed conversion rates. If ever there was a green protein produc�on industry, it is salmon farming, so why wouldn’t the MSPs want to meet us to discuss this? But poli�cally I felt it was an odd decision too. For MSPs to refuse to meet with a sector they don’t like showed a narrowness of vision and a prejudice that, I suspected, could easily come back to haunt them. Not only that, but as far as our sector is concerned, they now appear blinkered, inflexible and intolerant – except, of course, for Mr Finnie – pursuing an opposi�on to salmon farming which seems based more on dogma than ra�onality. But that is why the latest polls should worry us. Under some current forecasts, the Greens could get as many as 11 MSPs in the Sco�sh Parliament a�er May’s elec�on.
28
Hamish MacDonnell.indd 28
Not only would that represent a bigger haul of Green MSPs than ever before but, with the SNP likely to struggle to get anywhere near a majority, those Green MSPs could provide Nicola Sturgeon with a lifeline. Get those Greens on board, she will be urged, and the road to another independence referendum will be secure. She will not need telling that the best way to �e the Greens in is with a formal coali�on deal, an SNP-Green government. If that happens, there will be Green cabinet secretaries, Green ministers and possibly even a Green Deputy First Minister. Ms Sturgeon’s SNP administra�on has been hugely suppor�ve of Scotland’s salmon farming sector. The government has long recognised the huge economic importance of salmon farming, par�cularly to remote rural communi�es and has backed it. Ministers have been cri�cal too: they have demanded improvements and they have
Salmon “farmers
cannot afford to lose the backing of the governments where they farm
”
www.fishfarmermagazine.com
12/04/2021 16:05:29
