Rural Affairs Committee - 16 September 2026

Okay. Uh, good morning and welcome to the fourth meeting of the rule affairs committee in session 7. Uh, before we begin, please ensure that all electronic devices are switched to silent. Now, our first item of business this morning is a decision on taking item three in private. Item three is consideration of the evidence that we'll hear from our witnesses this morning on the rural support plan. Are we agreed to take item three in private? We are agreed. Thank you. And now move to agenda item two uh which is a roundt evidence session on the rural support plan with a number of witnesses. We've scheduled two and a half hours uh for this discussion. Now we've had some really great discussions over the past two weeks covering a wide range of issues that are related to the plan. Uh this week we're going to take a short comfort break halfway to keep it so to keep us on time for this. I'd be grateful if both questions from members and also answers uh from our witnesses are as concise as possible. Uh I'll begin by briefly introducing the witnesses before moving then to the questions from members. And as this is a roundt session, members may direct questions to a specific witness or group of witnesses. Equally, if any witnesses to respond to a question, please indicate this by raising your hand and I'll bring you in to discussion at an appropriate point. So the aim of this as you probably know those of you who have been on a uh round table before is to encourage an open and constructive exchange of views while ensuring that members and witnesses all have an opportunity to contribute. So I'd like to welcome to the meeting uh Dr. Vera Yoyi uh reader in sustainable agriculture at Scotland's rural college uh Michael Holidayiday managing director of Scottish tenants farms association uh Artimus Pana who's national coordinator of Scottish rural action who's joining us remotely and Pete Richie director of Nourish Scotland uh we hope to be joined by Dr. Mike Robinson, chief executive of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. Later on, uh we also have Kate Ral, chair of Quality Meet Scotland, and Professor Steven Thompson, professor of agricultural economics and policy at Scotland's Rural College. And I should also note that we're joined by committee member Emma Rodic uh online as well. Uh so before we begin, a reminder that you don't need to operate your microphone. Uh we have broadcasting here uh to do that. and they will activate your microphone. Switch it on, switch it off um for you. So, we're going to start then with uh with questions and I'm I'm I'm going to ask the the first question and it's really just a an opener really to get quick responses from our witnesses about your the sense of uh this rural support plan. And um you know Steven I think in your written submission you made the point that uh stability must not become stagnation. So I'm interested in your view on on that. Do you think this rural support plan gets the right balance between change uh and and stability? So um the stability question is quite an interesting one from a from a farmer coffter land manager perspective. Stability is a a useful thing because it allows you to plan. It allows you long-term investment planning. We've essentially been in a period of stability since uh 2017 with stability and simplicity and now we've got another period of stability until 2030. Um and these are political commitments. um the plan doesn't evolve agricultural support um very much within the next four years and then there seems to be a big bang within the rural support plan where change is going to happen and there's probably quite a lot of different pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and it's a very complex jigsaw puzzle that will happen in the final year and I think stakeholders farmers uh industry possibly expected a little more of the what does the transition journey look like. So the transition journey is not explained within the plan other than in year 5 3031 that change is going to happen to budgets. There's no real understanding of what happens to uh the policy offerings the support schemes that are in situ how they're going to evolve how they're going to deliver uh against what the Scottish government and what the act um has set out. So the these are these are some of the real challenges but but that period of stability will be liked by the industry but it's difficult to then see how the detailed outcomes will be delivered until further down the track. >> Okay. Can I invite other witnesses to come in on this? >> Sure. uh Pete Richie >> I think from our point of view the rural support plan is sort of manifest failure of policym and I want to focus my evidence today on its place in the policym process and I think it as it stands it it effectively subverts the principles of the actual support plan which set strategic outcomes and which then connects those strategic outcomes to how the money is spent and it fails to do that there are some good strategic outcomes in there more fruit and veg, more producers, lots of lovely things in there, climate adaptation, but then the budget has nothing to do with the strategic outcomes. Essentially, it's a rollover of the cap. You know, up to 2016, we complain about the cap. It was ineffective. It was unfair. It was bureaucratic. And 10 years later, we're rolling over the cap for another four years. So, it's a complete failure of policym. And I want to you know and I think for this committee it t doesn't take the agriculture rural communities act forward in terms of what are we going to do to achieve the aims of that act which are very laudable. >> Thank you. That was me unmuted. So from our perspective stability is a critical point and so is the transition journey as Steven said. Um, but so is integration. And this links to what Pete was saying about how you make good policy. The four tiers, they could work, but integration between the tiers is is a real issue at the moment. Um, there is reason, as Kevin Cummings said last week, I think it was, that this is the rural support plan. It's not the agriculture support plan. In the same vein, it is the agriculture and rural communities act, not just the agriculture act. And the inclusion of communities from Scottish Rural Actions perspective is deliberate. It's a strategic necessity to achieving many of the objectives in the plan including objectives around food production and nature restoration and the just transition. And the plan while it recognizes this on paper as Pete says does nothing to integrate various aspects of agriculture or integrate agriculture in the communities bit. And this is a huge missed opportunity and not least because it goes against everything that's happening on the ground. You know the cooperation between communities and farmers and coffters that underpins food security and climate security. >> Thank you Michael. >> Um I think Scottish tenant farmers I think broadly welcome the four tier plan. we can see where everything sits and and how it's been mapped out. As Steven said, stability is crucial in farming. Um in terms of the stagnation part um it's I think it was spoken about in um in the previous meeting about moving forward slowly but correctly rather than quickly and incorrectly. Um if we look over the border to SFI and the carnage that that's caused in and my views overriding on the tenanted sector the problems that's caused in the tenanted sector which we could go into later but um I think broadly we are happy with what we've seen but the devil is always in the detail specifically we need more detail about tier 2 activities for farmers. Kate. >> Yeah, I think I I would agree. Stability is very very important. But stability doesn't necessarily mean that you have to stay the same. Stability for farmers is more about knowing what is coming, when it's coming, how it's coming, how it's going to affect them. Um I think farmers out there know that change is coming. It's been trailed extensively that change is coming. I don't think if you asked a hundred of them more than two or three would know what that change actually meant for them. They don't know what it means in reality on the ground. >> Vera spec specifically from the climate perspective. Mitigation and adaptation I would second most of what we've heard before. Uh stability doesn't necessarily mean that we keep the status cool. Stability means seeing what will happen in 10 years time, 20 years time and 30 years time because of the investment cycle in in this industry and that's completely missing uh from from this policy as well as divider policy around climate change the specific things and right now what's in uh the plan keeps what's been happening in the past years but doesn't give any direction on what will be expected or how will farmers is supported both to do more on adaptation but also to reduce their emissions and that's uh again something which is a missed opportunity. Thank you. >> Yeah. Um Andrew a follow-up question to Pete Richie's uh comments where you stated that you thought the plan was a failure in policy making. So what action do you think government ministers need to be taking now to correct that? Other than what you're saying about linking um uh strategic outcomes to the funding, there must be other things in your mind that you think the government needs to take immediate action on to make sure that this plan doesn't continue to stagnate into the future. >> Thank you. Yes. I mean the core thing is this disjunction between the strategic outcomes under the ARC act. You know, the government has to set out strategic priorities and those are set out in the rural support plan with indicators and some sub outcomes and there's some good stuff in that. But this disjunction between that and then how the money is going to be spent which is on legacy schemes which bear no relation to delivering on those outcomes. That's the major flaw in the plan. I could go through and other witnesses could go through all sorts of things they'd like to see in the plan. You know, I'd like to see more support for market gardens. I'd like to see stuff on glass houses. I'd like to see much more stuff on climate adaptation as Vera says because we've got a change in climate and making our farms resilient and future proof should be a sort of core purpose of agricultural policy and yet there's nothing in there to make that happen. Um, and because the budgets are being left exactly as they were and because we're simply rolling over legacy schemes, we would like to see the plan amended. The Scottish government has powers to amend the plan if in its view the plan is missing information. And I think the plan is missing information and we'd like to see the Scottish government amend the plan. And I know that creates yet more delay, but actually a better plan is better than a bad plan. Yeah, just um on that on that stability point and um and stagnation the um it's interesting how the Welsh government have have implemented change. Uh and of course the Scottish government have been really good at trying to consult and make sure that everybody's content and decision- making by consensus which is impossible. Um DERA didn't do that. They just went boom we've got a new policy set of policies. They've also got tripled the size of their civil service to deliver that. Um the Welsh government put an offering out on the table to which the industry revolted to which then they had to scale back their ambitions. They've launched their sustainable farming scheme which is optional whether you join it or you stick within the current scheme and they can taper down and as you taper down then coming into the scheme becomes more attractive. So there are options within this. Pete's point on on on objectives and outcomes is really important because for me one of the things that the plan could have and maybe should have done was was better justify why we're spending this money. Uh who is who is benefiting, what is benefiting, where they're benefiting and that then allows scrutiny to be h undertaken over a period of time by parliament by by industry by stakeholders. are we actually delivering what we established? And because they're not new schemes, there was no business and regulatory impact assessments. There's no environmental imp or strategic environmental impact assessments because they're rollover schemes. And it would have been good place to start at the starting point of the journey would have been here is the state of the nation. This is why we're continuing to support this. And by the way, this is why we possibly need to deliver more budget if you're wanting to achieve all of the outcomes that you've set out. Emma who's on joining us online. Convenor. Good morning to to everybody in the room. Um I'm keen to ask about um what's missing from the plan, but specifically uh animal welfare first of all. So I'd like to to go back to to Pete who seems popular this morning. Um but maybe also um if QMS or others have uh comments to make around what that could look like for that um I think for us you know animal welfare is one of the five key purposes of the agriculture rural communities act and it's really disappointing that there's nothing in the rural support plan about enhancing animal welfare which is is in the act about enhancing not just maintaining. um we'd like to have seen quite a lot of things um so that if you like Scottish farmers can get ahead of the curve on what's happening in terms of animal welfare expectations. So whether that's the better chicken commitment, I don't know how many of our chicken farms in Scotland meet the better chicken commitment, but if they need help to adapt their businesses to do that, we should be doing that. We eat a lot of chicken in Scotland. We don't produce enough of it. Um pork producers, you know, some supermarkets don't want their pigs on slats anymore. So can we help producers to actually conform with the the standards that are coming down the track from the retail sector and then things like cow with calf dairy? I think in 20 years time we're going to see a lot of cow with calf dairy. We should be supporting farmers to make those transitions and get ahead of the curve on animal welfare. So I think there's a lot we could do very practically to say for Scotland to be leading the world on animal welfare. Let's get ahead of the curve not behind it. >> Kate and then Michael. >> Yeah. Um I would agree that there's lots we can do particularly uh in things like pigs. You know adaptive pharrowing is something that the whole industry is is talking about. Um it's it's something that consumers would like to see, retailers would like to see, but also something that the industry are committed to to moving forward on as well. But there needs to be um a plan on that and there will need to be some some funding to help with that because ultimately it does mean that they're not competing on a level playing field with imports. So that's also got to be taken into consideration. And alongside animal welfare, of course, is animal health. And we all know that animal health um when it's at its best can also contribute to to emissions mitigation. You know, animals that are healthier and live for a shorter amount of time uh contribute fewer emissions. It's just how it is. So if they're healthy, you also get that saving on climate change. Michael, >> uh, the point I would like to make, I think, is that animal welfare's already built robustly into the system with cross compliance. Um, and it's it's a fundamental requirement of receiving agricultural support as as you have um, good animal welfare. It's also built into assurance and majority of farmers will be quality assured of some description. Um Kate's point on imports, I think you UK farming, Scottish farming is probably well ahead in terms of animal health and welfare. And that's not to say it can't be improved, but it needs to be remembered that a lot of the imports coming in are not to the same standard. and um especially imports coming into the the catering sector where we can't sell the story of um of how well these animals are looked after. People are buying purely on price. So if we are going to further improve animal welfare that that needs to be supported because our opposition and competitors aren't. >> Someone else want to come in on this particular point? If not, Emma, do you have follow-up questions on this? >> Yeah, can I can I just pick up on that last question actually because I I was keen to look into um whether animal welfare will increase on its own if if we aren't specific about uh the requirements or or the expectations in Scotland. But if it's, you know, competitors from other countries where we can't control um trade agreements or or standards, is is that a a huge issue and a a burden that we're going to have to to put on on farmers here? And is that going to end up being an overall net good if if we are still importing um poorly reared animal meat? Yeah, I think we can be really proud of the standards that we have in this country and quite rightly so and we don't in any way want to reduce those, but it is a reality that there are other countries that do things differently. And one specific key example at the minute is beef that is coming from Brazil um where uh the EU has banned it now. it can't go to the EU because Brazil cannot demonstrate that they have the right systems in place to prove their antimicrobial use, their other other um medical treatments in Brazil. So the EU have banned it. Uh the UK have have not banned it. Um and Brazilian beef at the moment at the farm gate is about half the price of beef here in Scotland. Uh so there is a a huge price differential there, a huge difference in regulation and uh the proof that they can give and and that makes it an an uneven playing field. And how on earth do our farmers compete with that? Um and I'm not saying we should reduce our standards. We definitely should not reduce our standards, but we need to make sure that our farmers are supported when they they maintain those high standards. >> Any other responses to that question? No. >> Yes. Um, Stephen. >> Yeah. And and this has been a long argument um in the EU cup and obviously the continuation of that in Scotland is that part of the justification for the support payments has been that we have maintained or Europe has maintained higher welfare animal health and welfare standards than perhaps other parts of the world. Um other parts of the world have comparative advantage in producing this. They've got grass growth all year. They've got lower costs of production. It's not all about the animal medication. Um there are different types of different points of differentiation between uh Scotch agricultural outputs and livestock outputs than other parts of the world. And I I would go back to Michael's point is that we can strengthen this through regulation through the animal welfare laws and the governing of those laws and the inspection regimes around animal health and welfare. Part of the reason it's possibly not in the rural support plan is because the pig and poultry sector are largely unsupported. uh and because they're largely unsupported, it is not within the schemes domain uh that are listed in the support plan to offer support for pig welfare for uh poulter welfare etc. And until we understand the need for those sectors which are large output sectors for for for Scotland on small on on a small number of businesses uh supporting them through capital grants and other other means uh that that's where we need to take the the scheme support if we're wanting to improve welfare and chickens or or or or pig meat. So just for clarification then those sectors are not included even under tier three or t tier four scheme. So if there was knowledge transfer and no welfare improvements that would be ineligible or >> no so they would be included there any pig farmer that has got land and entitlements can claim basic payment support but the amount of land they have might mean and the turnover that they've got mean that the support payments are a very small proportion of their turnover which might mean that the conditionality or environmental conditions and all of the the the things that go with support means that they may not choose to to um to apply for it. Same goes for a poultry unit. A poultry unit can be on a very very small holding and when you've got an area based support scheme. Then the the amount of amount of support that you can generate from it is it could be relatively little. So the the tier three and tier four can definitely target these sectors. uh but you need to you need to be a bit more uh clear in what those those support measures would be and what the conditionality on those support measures might be. >> Pete, >> even in I think Steve's right, but in the beef and sheep sector, measures like agroforestry and hedges are really important for shade and shelter and they're very good for animal health that be the cows and sheep can browse the trees. So, you know, trying to integrate these things and again the rural support plan is silent on those matters. >> Okay, I'm going to move on to Jamie. >> Thank you very much, Convena. I think something we've seen is a bit of a recurring theme and I actually think of also somewhat touched on this when she said, you know, this the rural support plan, not just the agricultural support plan. Is the plan too broad in its ambitions? And does this mean we're not having specific and quantifiable objectives of what success might mean for the plan come 2030? >> Ver, would you like to come in on that? >> Yes. Um, thank you very much. Thank you Jamie for that question. I would like to um bring up an issue which um which has been a problem for the CAP as well and to agriculture support schemes in many countries. And in my opinion, this problem is that it's trying to do two very different things, actually more very different things at the same time without separating the budgets. And one is some sort of business support, income support for rural areas for farmers. And one is environmental outcomes. And the two are often in contradiction. When you put them in the same bag, what you get out will not satisfy either party or either goal. And that has been eating the cap up for decades. And that's that's the same problem here in Scotland. And even within environmental goals, for example, climate goals uh mitigation especially and biodiversity, they often come hand in hand, but sometimes they are unfortunately uh contradictory, not synergistic, but trade-offs. Uh right now in these two schemes which contain some biodiversity and climate goals uh there are very very few climate actions um in the plan as it is but still most of them are my biod biodiversity ones and they are in the same pot that means whoever whichever farmer wants to apply for the scheme they will decide for example in the greening one or in the ex one they will decide which schemes they are going for. That means that that and that's a cost to the farmer and an effort they will not do everything. That means competition even between biodiversity and climate goals that if we are not separating the budgets if we are not set if and we if we don't have targets very specific targets not only on how many farmers and areas and animals and arable area whatever we want these schemes to be implemented how much money we want to spend and exactly what environmental outcomes we are going to get and monitor them measure them and feedback then we are not going to back to our goals as the past decades have been demonstrating not only in Scotland but elsewhere. >> Michael, >> um I think um I think Ver makes a a very good point there in relation to the tier 2 and biodiversity and climate competing against each other because there's no differentiation which is which is something I hadn't thought of before. So I think that's a good point. Um, past groups have talked about benchmarking now so we know where we are so we can figure out where we're going and targets. Um, there's been a lot of talk about um, outcomedriven targets. Um, I would just caution on outcomedriven targets because when you're dealing with biological systems and you're dealing with the weather, if farmers are given a specific target in relation to X, Y, or Zed, it just takes a beast from the east or a drought or a blue tongue or something like that to to cause havoc with outcomedriven payments. Um, so it's just just a caution on on how that's um dealt with. Artimus. >> Yeah, thank you very much Jamie for your question and I read your question in the previous round table or the one before that where you phrased it more around whether the Scottish government is deliberately choosing to keep things very flexible knowing that there's no universal answer to how you would best use Scotland's land. And I think that is such an important question and my comment to that is that if you are creating very flexible policy at national level which I fully support given the diversity of Scotland and island places then you do need to resource the decision-m processes that will translate that national level flexibility into a different but effective reality in each community depending on that community of place. Um what Vera said about conflicts is very correct. Those conflicts are more acute I think at national level than they are within communities where you do have to work together and figure things out. So the community element of the rural support plan in tier 4 which funds things like local action groups ac across Scotland does provide a model for more local coordination and networking bringing people together to talk about their different interests and needs and especially working with other structures that have been mentioned at these roundts like regional land use partnerships, river cachment partnerships, um farm clusters and cooperatives. So if these structures all work together then you would probably at local well you'd hope at local level to see that integration of those environmental social food outcomes and movements towards achieving those. >> You Mike Robinson I just really wanted to say sorry I was a bit late held up on my train but yeah no I I I tend to agree with a lot of what's been said there. I think other than I think at the national level actually there's quite a lot of understanding and cohesion. It's just about bringing that together under under a clear vision. I think um I think to some degree the vision and objectives do stand out as being reasonable and supportable. It's just there is a level of detail there that's lacking at the moment. So >> thanks Pete. >> In response to your question, you know, I don't think it's trying to do too much. I think it's not doing enough. You know, when when we pushed for the Royal Sport plan to be part of the agriculture bill, it was with the understanding that it would function a bit like a CAP strategic plan, you know, that would have a a formal strategic environment assessment, which the royal support plan has had, although I'm not sure if the committees had sight of that. Um, but and it would be reviewed, it would be consulted on, it would be a systematic look at what are we trying to do with agriculture and how does the way we spend public money support what we're trying to do. and and the Royal support fund doesn't do that. So, it's not comprehensive enough and it leaves out whole chunks of things that are really important for making Scottish farming more resilient. There's very little innovation. We have a pathetic amount of money spent on innovation in Scotland. In England, for all the faults, they freed up a lot more money for innovation, which is which will start to take root. There's very little on cooperation as Tim said last week, you know, which is again a sort of core element in trying to make Scottish farming more resilient by having farmers work together and supporting them to do that. So there's whole chunks of things which are just missing from the plan. So I don't think it's too ambitious. I think it's not ambitious enough. >> Um yeah, are there any other responses to to uh Jamie's question before we go back to Jamie? Yes, Stephen. Yeah, it it's coming back to this issue of who, where, what, when, how, which is understanding trade-offs and and the plan's probably not explicit enough on the the need to understand trade-offs within farms, within crafts, um, within the system, per se, because not all farms or crafts are expected to uh, focus entirely on food production or deliver to community well-being andor community structures. So crafting agriculture might have a different set of priority outcomes compared to the the very intensive commercial units that are pig and poultry and dairy industries, the fruit and veg sectors. They all have different types and mixes of outcomes that we don't ever seem to bottom out anywhere other than I hear farmers all the time saying I have to get to net zero and I'm going you don't need to get to net zero. The country needs to get to net zero. And that lack of understanding of of what an individual can contribute to the system is missing at all at all levels I think and we need to sort of bottom that out and that then gets back to the supply chains you know we're talking about agriculture that money flows out of agriculture because otherwise it would wouldn't all be mostly be lossmaking it flows out of agriculture into the rural economy and better understanding those linkages would be a re really important part, right? >> I think I absolutely agree with that and we need to take it down to really business levels and and and community levels. There are things that can be done on one farm that cannot be done another. There are farms with deeper soil who could um who possibly their soil isn't hugely um full of organic material at the moment. That could be improved a lot. They could have a target to improve what the the carbon the sequester in the soil. There are other farms who are doing all they can in that. They might have a different target but by diversity. Other farms might have a target about food. It's about those individual farms looking at what potential is there where they could get to it and then helping each individual farmer take the actions that need to be taken to get them to that point. And that all needs, as far as I can see, it needs people. It needs facilitators. It needs um advisors. It needs people to help with that. Uh um when you have cooperation between farms, that's great, but you very often need a person to help that cooperation happen. These things don't just happen organically, much as we'd like them to. You need people to actually grasp the the metal there and and take that forward because otherwise everybody is so engrossed in their in their own daily lives doing the things that need to be done um on each and every farm and each and every business that they that doesn't happen. >> Jamie, did you have a brief followup? >> Uh thank you Kina. I think Pete raised an interesting point around the word ambition and I think there obviously are headline ambitions in the plan but my perhaps frustration was that they are quite broad brush in their nature and I think they are quite agreeable but my point is more around you know they're not quantifiable they're not precise you know we would all like rural Scotland and agriculture to be in a nice place by 2030 but we actually have to have very clear deliverables of how we get there and my frustration and I think you know we've heard this in previous sessions I mean we don't even have really have a baseline to start from let alone where we want to be. It's that lack of clear what does our ambition actually quantifiably mean? So, a frustration of mine. >> Yeah. Finley, you had a follow-up in this area as well, I think. >> Yeah. Thanks, Convener. Um, I my belief is that that we were told that the framework bill didn't have any meat and bones because it was simply that. And then the legislation had something about a rural support plan. And all we're seeing now is a tick the box exercise that they've delivered the rural support plan to parliament, but it doesn't deliver anything at all. Uh Stephen, I'm going to put you on the spot. You you've continually and continuously argued for um clearer milestone milestones, stronger rural outcomes, more transparent policy design. This plan doesn't deliver any of that. Um I suppose we can draw a contrast between what we've got in front of us in the support plan with other approaches and uh uh rural policy. So um things like the island plan uh the rural and islands insight report that you were involved in did have uh clear indications about aging populations, workforce shortages, decline in agricultural participation, child care, housing pressures, poor transport, all these sort of things. But um you know the support plan speaks about thriving rural communities but actually provides absolutely zero detail about what uh a thriving rural community is. So I suppose my my question is does the rural support plan as it sits at the moment um have far too much emphasis on continuing uh you know existing support structures and is it your view that the plan at the moment if if we maintain the structures or the payment system is at the moment but we continue to lose young families and workers new entrance would that plan be a regarded as a successful agricultural transition? um in on on that. Artimus, do you want to come in on aspects of that question or >> I I think it does go back um to that earlier question around how the various tiers are integrated in the rural support plan. So, Lur support plan does mirror the European approach um whereby leader structures are integrated with agriculture development to provide that broader approach to thriving rural communities. And as I said earlier, in part that mirrors how things work in communities themselves, where farmers and coffters and communities work together to protect the land, to build businesses, to um set up community-led approaches to maintaining populations, um attracting new populations and all of that. So those things exist within the rural support plan at the moment. And what the rural support plan does is it offers 5% of the overall budget to um community-led local development and that again mirrors the European approach. Now we wouldn't argue that community-led local development needs a higher proportion of the budget. Um we would certainly agree with what witnesses have said in all the roundts and including today around the need for a bigger overall budget but it's more that we need to be arguing for that integration between what community-led local development can do and what agriculture can do and how communities and farmers and coffters can use that f 5% to really protect the places that they call home. Yeah, just coming back to Finley's um question. Um I suppose the we were we were commissioned to do that the the rule the islands the sea islands report um possibly because the local authorities and it was funded through CLLD. So it was CLLD funding. Um the the local action groups wanted to understand the state of the nation with regards to the islands, where the risk points were from a policy uh evolution, what their transitions might look like, what the options may look like in terms of support going forward. That's why we looked into redistributive support payment. That's why we looked at a small producer scheme because these are specific things that were unique characteristics to parts of those islands. Um should that have been or should that approach have been embedded within the rural support plan? Possibly if we were to follow the CAP strategic planning process. uh and I think a lot of the stakeholders possibly thought that we were going to be following the CAP strategic plan process given that we've got an alignment with EU wherever possible um or practicable. Um so so that so so there are challenges here the rolling over of the support I can't say what the outcomes are going to be. Will we lose more people young families out of agriculture? Will we change the agricultural output of Scotland? Erh, I I can't tell you that what I don't have a crystal ball. But what I can say is that if you don't plan these schemes or plan for your outcomes, it's very very unlikely that you're going to deliver the outcome that you want to achieve in the in the long term. >> Thank you. Um Finley listed a number of groups that are being disaffected new entrance. I I would like to put tenant farmers in that one as well, front and center. Um tenant farmer um population of the country's dropped from something like 75% post war to the current level of about 22% of agricultural area. There is currently in in in the current um iteration of of agricultural support policies and and funding that that dis discourage um tenant farming and discourage land land owners from letting land. Um and that is no blame on land owners for following um following the pound notes. But we've got a situation where something like 69,000 hectares of the best quality land in Scotland is um being claimed by land owners just out of the function of owning land with very very little requirement to do anything back. So that's land that's been lost from tenants and new entrance giving them the chance to claim support. Um if if we look more widely into some of the the hill farms um and I know of a number of um tenencies that have been brought to brought to an end with through retirement or or end of fixedterm tenencies which used to support a farming family and potentially staff families that are now being extensively farmed by one member of staff um with the bare minimum of stock. So, so there's there's people out there making the active choice to farm subsidy rather than to farm agriculture and that causes a whole rift of other problems. We've seen fuel loads for and wildfires has been a result of that. Um, I don't particularly think, although I don't speak for re wilders, that they see reing as just being the the growth of bracken and brambles and other and species like that on a hill with with nothing else happening. So these are just a couple of points to throw out um that need to be considered that there is issues with the current how the current funding is spent and and they need to be sorted out on a limited budget moving forward into the the next scheme. >> Yeah, I'm sure we'll come back to some of these themes later on uh this morning as well. Um, Emma Rodic, I just wanted to come back to you because I think there was a another kind of error questioning that you just wanted to tease out from a witness. >> Just just wanted to to go back to Steven on his last answer on on animal welfare and the the cost of of doing things correctly. The the examples there kind of sounded like oneoff capital costs. If there were funds available for things like moving away from borrowing crates, would that address um some of the the concerns that you have around the cost there? H I I'm no pig pig production expert but um others possibly have got more insights but um the the these sectors have continually said that the thing that's missing is the capital element capital grants that will help them make improvements to deliver against the the outcomes that society are looking for. Uh the these sectors have regularly said that they they don't expect to be brought into the direct support payment mechanisms. They're they're looking for the the the how they can leverage uh their investment to um enhance animal animal welfare or environmental outcomes uh is my understanding of their systems. >> Okay. Thanks uh Don. >> Yes. Thank you convenor and and it's already been touched upon slightly. So if we could start to dig down deeper into um funding issues and uh so your views on funding allocations between the tiers from now to 2030 and also the allocation from 2030 onwards and following the movement between those tiers and maybe you could add what your organizations feel about the potential of front-loading funding so that smaller operators are not proportionately disadvantaged um on business decisions based on ba land use change and how would you propose um the funding model could adapt to support all the needs of your operators including capital costs as has just been mentioned. >> Okay. Who would like to kick off on this one? >> Pete, you're happy to kick off. D I mean certainly the way the budget's been set is a massive opportunity cost because it basically locks in the the room for maneuver for the next four years and all the other things which we might want to do and you know we'd have a long list of people would have a long list you know can't get done we've come up with some Kate was talking about the whole farm plan we come up with some costed proposals for working with individual farmers and coffters taking their whole farm plan and making it into a plan giving them tailored individual advice and support to make changes on their farms to do something. Ver's talking about mitigation, adaptation, making their business more resilient. We can't do that because there's no money in the budget for it because it's all tied up in legacy schemes. And I think going back to Michael's point, we're still paying people for what they have rather than for what they do. And that's the fundamental problem with the CAP, which came out of the production subsidies, which are ended in 2000. Those are then converted into the landbased subsidies. And we've got a ridiculous system where we're paying people for the amount of land they have and not for what they do with it in terms of delivering for public goods for for Scotland. So the fundamental is wrong within that. There's certainly some unjustice and if we're if we're tapering down that scheme over time as Steven suggested like the Welsh government tapering that down and building up the sustainable farming scheme then sure within that period it makes complete sense to do a bit frontloading and it certainly makes sense as early as possible to do some capping because capping as we know would free up 50 million million pounds depending how tight you make it to do all those other things with and it doesn't really make sense that profitable businesses are getting a subsidy every year from the public purse for really not doing very much except owning land. They're not accountable for that. They don't have to submit accounts. They don't say what they've done with the money. It's a very odd form of subsidy and and fundamentally it's not helping us deliver our objectives. Michael, >> thank you. Um yeah, just Pete Pete mentioned capping which is different to front loing um which I think was the question. Um I think STFA while we're while we're not against capping we would uh sorry we're not against frontloading we would support the capping argument. Um the figures I've got here from March 24 show that the uh 50 of the largest land owner owners in Scotland shared an agricultural support pot of 48 million almost a million pounds of public money. um and the top 10% of recipients um receive nearly 50% of the budget. So I think that there's an argument in when is big big enough and is that the best use of a limited resource in the public in public money. Um, I would also just, it's in their submission, but the there was the agricultural holdings legislation review group report in 2015 that said the ability to cap the amount of basic payment that any one individual can claim in order to discourage land owners from taking tened land back in hand or simply holding land to increase their basic payment claim. goes back to my earlier point is that the current system is a disincentive to landlords letting land and um giving tenants an opportunity new entrance and opportunity um which has huge implications for for fragile rural areas and and local communities and services. Vera >> um speaking again from from a climate action perspective um in theory I don't see any problems on on who gets how much like whether the top top 10% or 50% that's in theory climate action that's not that is not a problem however what is a problem is that there are very very strong missed opportunities in strengthening for for example the cross clim alliance elements there is nothing in the plan uh Cross compliance might be strengthened so that whoever has larger land areas or smaller land areas for that amount of money which they now get only for having the land they should do more on climate mitigation and climate adaptation. Right now uh there is nothing on climate mitigation either in the geeks or the statuto management requirements apart from a tiny bit on NVZ very little on adaptation as well. And I would also add that this this problem with with large land owners getting lots of money versus what what else the money is spent on is a is a prime example of again the plan. the same budget trying to cover many many things without separated targets because it tries to do income support and it was developed in an era when most of the farmers were small farmers not so large so that was all right and of course farming structure changed but the money allocation rules have not changed with it. So we are having this conversation having had this conversation for a decade or more now about who gets how much. And my third point on this is is u clear controversial points even within uh the plan. For example um there will be budgetary targets uh in tier one to get 70% to tier one and 70% would be spent on on GG emissions uh reduction or and uh adaptation plans. That's um so that's the target. Sorry, my study again. The target is the plan says that the target is to uh spend 50% on nature restoration and climate action but still 0.7* 0.7. So 49% stays in um area based payments. So that means without almost no cross compliance. So that means nothing else is so either the whole money is spent only on the land-based payments and the climate action and nothing else which is of course not going to happen or there will be um a major limit on or uh a major fallout on not reaching uh the nature restoration and climate action even the budgetary targets not to mention any sort of environmental outcomes. Thank you. Artimus, >> thank you. Yeah, when we started work on the ARC act and then the rural support plan, we were expecting the principles of the just transition to underpin all actions. Um, I know we've been waiting for the land use and agriculture just transition plan since the consultation closed and I think the consultation responses were only published in February 2026. So that was far too late really to influence the rural support plan. So the just transition outcome within the rural support plan, I think it was David Ria who said that it's it just feels like an add-on. Um what you would expect to see across the tiers is what others have already mentioned is a focus not on business as usual but on managing that shift to net zero to climate resilience in a way that is very fair to people and communities and does not burden them with costs arising from this transition. And I want to go back to something that Donna, who's um the CEO of the Crafting Federation, said in the first session, and that is that you cannot get away from the fact that the smaller a producer is, the higher the input costs are. And that is especially the case in some of the more rural areas and island areas. And that is why you would expect to see, for example, a move away from land-based payment formula to a system of front loading and capping. You would also expect to see significant investment from now in tiers two and three to help that climate resilience and creating infrastructure for um local food economies and also a lot more targeted investment in um tier 4 to future proof land workers and community skills and that's something I think that's quite easy to forget that the just transition is a is a big opportunity for creating so new job markets. The last point I want to make covers the just transition element and the tiers, but it's a lot more broader than that. And I think we yeah others can correct me on this, but we would have expected a very comprehensive equality impact assessment on the rural support plan along with an island community impact assessment. And neither of those seem to have happened. They happened with the legislation but not the plan itself. >> Okay, Mike. Um I mean the main thing I guess just in terms of um some of the sort of split of the funding the first is that seems that most of the funding there is for stasis and we're not really in a position of stasis. We're trying to drive change. Um and some of that is a recognition of the need to do something differently but it's also a recognition that we're not sitting in a perfect environment where things aren't changing on their own. So there's a response required. think probably within particularly the environment side the agri environment scheme funding has actually gone backwards when it you know when a time when it should be going forward so um I think there's an issue with the way that the money is split I think we just need to be very very clear what we're trying to achieve but this feels quite uniquely in a way an area that we can actually deliver on climate and nature by simply reframing the way that we spend money in this just a slight fear that we are really just sending up with what we already had. >> David. >> Yeah. So there's there's a number of things that possibly need clarified here is that tier one is not just area based. So there are coupled support payments for sheep and for cattle. Um and these have got the the cattle scheme has got increased conditionality to try and address climate uh issues and improve productivity food production. Um so those are important things. less favored area support is also in tier one. Um, and it's to recognize the additional costs and disadvantage uh for production in communities that are dispersed across Scotland. Uh, focusing on community outcomes. Um, so so that you know we have to go beyond just the pure area based focus of the lens of BPS and and and greening. Um, and I suppose in in my mind and and others that I've talked to, um, the the split is possibly uh less important rather than what conditions you put on different parts of the split. So you could uh you could put far more uh cross compliance measures into tier one if you maintain the status quo. Uh you could make more of the environmental measures compulsory. you can make more of the climate mitigation measures compulsory andor if you move budget into tier two then that offers uh farmers and coffters across this country uh scope uh or or incentivize them to deliver more. However, you need to have more measures in there that are appropriate for climate because currently the list is very biodiversity focused. uh the published list uh from 2023. A lot of farmers and coffters ask me in 2024 when will I start getting paid for this because I've already done change. Um so the incentivization and messaging is important. You've got windows of opportunity with these people. Tier three is important but everyone has to recognize that it will come with a cost. The cost is uh applications to do this because most people will appoint an agent to do it. It is competitive. that means that it is h is going to be limited in its reach. H and it is really really important that we we make it so that small producers can come in here because the point on small producers is it's not just about they face higher cost, it's the compliance costs. So a single application form from a small producer 600 quid. Uh a whole farm plan potentially could be 600 quid or a carbon on it 600 quid. If you're only getting 1,500 pounds, that's a fair chunk of the support payments you're getting. And that's why we've seen potentially an acceleration of small producers dropping out the system. >> Thanks, Commina. Um, I just wanted to come in off the back of Steven's comments about tier one and VA's comments about income support. So on that kind of issue of direct support and the need for direct support to support food production um which was highlighted in a number of the submissions including the STFAS um I'm quite interested to hear how everyone's views on how important or otherwise you believe direct support payments to be in terms of continuing food production and ensuring food security. And Michael, you mentioned earlier about how that contrasted with the changes that have come in in England and what that meant that has meant for tenant farmers in England. So I'm interested in your views on that and how we can learn lessons in Scotland to make sure that those mistakes aren't repeated. Um so on that point particularly so the the SFI in England um I think basic payment has has more or less gone now. Um I'll not try and remember the figures but I think Jonie Hall in the first meeting quoted figures of a a farm in North Thland and the loss of support particularly in the tenanted sector where you had uncapped full farm environmental payments through SFI. Um that has seen a number of tenencies brought to an end. Um and we've seen land owners coming in and being able to claim large spaces of land uncapped with um without having to provide any agricultural activity purely a um purely an environmental activity. Now I guess for environmental reasons that that maybe has positive but for agricultural output reasons for community reasons I would say I think I used the word catastrophic in in my earlier mention on it. So it it's it's causing real damage to communities and I think we've seen the the tenant farms associ association in England have come out and called for capping on on the SFI payments to to avoid that type of behavior continuing. Um I think I just wanted to mention um the the just transition side of things as well particularly pot many tenant farmers will be on SLDT type tendencies which is a maximum of five years and the majority of new entrance will start their careers either farming without support because we've got land owners claiming the support because they own the land and blocking the the new entrance access to that and or on SLDts which is um sorry um seasonal grazing agreements which is up to a year. Now under the current tier three rules the minimum contract is 5 years. So if you're in any type of teny below a 10year teny because bizarrely we don't have anything between five and 10 years in Scotland it's 5 years or 10 um you're cly locked out of tier three you have no chance so if funds are moving and quite dramatically in the plan and I think 2030 from tier 1 and two to tier three and four that new entrance and um certainly types of tented farmers are are going to be majorly disadvantaged by that. Um and and as Steven said, I think for small farms and and probably your more productive farms as well, it's always been very difficult to get into agri environment schemes uh just the way the scoring and things work. Um they can't put enough of their holding under management to score the points. So these these are major blockers in terms of meeting the the outcomes desired in tier three and in terms of just transition for a tenant even attempting to take access they just aren't able to under the way things are currently set up. >> A vera >> I would like to point out a few issues about food security and farming subsidies. um opist standing transition from any one system to another really needs careful management and long time periods and clarity so to avoid the fallouts. Well, there are there are few examples quite clear examples of farming which is done without any major subsidies and and works perfectly. If we look at New Zealand, they don't have a major subsidy system and their farming thrives. If you look at the monogastric sector, they don't have major subsidies and still uh they are in business. So giving subsidies to farming is not a prerequisite to having farming done and I think that's really important. Of course we've had been the uh subsidies have been going on for 40 50 years. So changing them now requires careful management but it doesn't mean that food production will suffer um inherently just because of that. The other point is food security especially in a country which is affluent and has a mostly urban population depends a tiny little bit on farm on production in that country. But it is massively the function of incomes and availability of food in the corner shop. food desserts as we know in some in some urban areas um knowledge time to cook at home and all these things and availability not not so much what is and how much beef is produced in Scotland when actually quite a lot of that is anyway going to export or quite a lot of barley is produ is used for whiskey production so I don't think the link between food subsidies and food security in Scotland is very strong farming subs. Sorry. >> Thank you, Kate. >> Yeah, to to return to that question of do tenant farmers um need support. Uh I would as a as a tenant farmer myself say absolutely there needs to be some sort of support there. Tenant farmers in particular um have more difficulties in doing a lot of things. Uh it's harder to invest in your farm because you can't borrow money. you don't own the the land to put up against the borrowing. Um, in our own case, the forestry on our farm does not belong to us or we none of it belongs to us, but the forestry is not under our control. It it sits with a with a landlord. So, there's less that we can do there. Um and I think I just want to point out that front-loading to go back to the previous previous question frontloading I think is a good idea but capping we need to just be very careful on capping. Uh there are big land owners who are not necessarily uh doing an awful lot to get uh um huge payments as Michael says, but there are also really big businesses particularly in the beef sector uh where the finishers are really really big beef farmers who support hundreds if not thousands of much smaller farmers in crops in rural areas in islands uh because they're part of that supply chain. So we can't forget the whole supply chain and they need to be able to uh run their businesses uh and and shouldn't should be looked at so we don't have any unintended consequences. Uh I would also say to Ver's point that 85% of Scotland cannot produce anything other than grass and the best way to produce food from that grass is from ruminant agriculture which when done in the right way can um contribute to uh biodiversity can contribute to a better climate can contribute to food security. I wanted to say this phrase we use income support is a total misnomer. Right? It's called income support because of WTO rules and Steven can tell you which box it falls into, but it's a it's a it's a dodge. It's a way of providing subsidy without breaching the WTO rules. So that's why it's called income support. But it bears no relation to what we commonly think of as income support, which is how can the state support households that are struggling for money. And to get income support, you have to go through the mail in terms of how much money you don't have. And you have to, you know, there's a whole process you have to go through showing that you're you're not well off and you need social security to give income support. This isn't income support. It's business support, right? And and so it's really important to be specific about that. So if you take Artimus' point, you could frontload and do all these things, but also you could legitimately subsidize the cost of inputs to remote and island communities. ELFAS is a really blunt way of doing that, a very ineffective way of doing that. You could have targeted subsidies that reduce the cost of fuel or cost of transport, whatever, to island communities so they can compete on a level playing field. And to Kate's point about there are big businesses that, you know, support a lot of other businesses. If you want to make the case for business support, show the numbers. Say, "Our business is losing £100,000 a year and has been losing £100,000 a year forever, but it's a very well-run business. So, you the government needs to give us £100,000 to keep doing what we're doing." Now, you could argue that case, but you know, the question is there's we have a system at the moment. You don't have to present any accounts, any projections, any rationale for why you need the support. And that's clearly unfair because some people clearly need support and others clearly don't. And we have such a blunt system. >> Seems to be me, but you can hear me. Can you? Um because it's on Jamie's. There we go. Just on we got there. Um on on that exact point um the the the support payments no the larger producers people people get hung up about how much money goes to x% of the businesses but when you look at the output figures in terms of agricultural production they're producing a huge proportion of Scottish food. I would argue that a lot of the other producers are contributing to that but are also delivering on the community side of things. the activity that maintains uh spend within rural communities, the the children that are going to schools, the the kind of wider fabric and also by diversity grazing or andor and andor and andor. So there are a whole series of things and it's a massive massive jigsaw puzzle that we don't do very well in trying to understand all of those interlinkages. Um which comes right back to activity. Who are we supporting and why are we supporting them? If we know what we're supporting and why we're supporting folk, then you can target you can you can better target this redistributive payments are are frontloading on the first X hectares. If you did 30, it would possibly benefit up to 120 hectare farms. So, it's not just the micro producers, they get the best, they get the biggest uplift, but so do medium-sized businesses. They also benefit from it. And that then means that they are in a better position in order to deliver against support andor we remove the regulatory burdens on smallest producers by making regulatory light schemes. Uh you don't have to go through the application process. I have a friend that just got a letter from the department. It would have cost them uh money to send it out. He was 00025 hectares out in his application. Why are we still sending letters out based on a European structure of audit given that we've moved on from that? So there's a whole series of things and Venus's point of food security is absolutely vital. We don't have food security in this country. There are people that are hungry. There are people without food. We don't have food security. We have lots of food production. Food production does not mean that we have food secure. What we're talking about is food sovereignty here. And actually the production of Scottish agricultural output generates wealth for the country, maintains people in communities and also contributes to UK, Scottish, EU global food. >> Come back very briefly. >> Um I did um it was just just to follow up on uh Kate's point on trees. Um it's incredibly difficult for tenative farmers to to plant trees. um it's you you're risking deteriorating the holding which is um something that you can uh you have to either rip out and compensate the land forward for at the end of the tenency. That's a that's a really difficult thing to do off off the bat in relation to trees. Uh and it was was a good point um in relation to trees in general and and specifically the the the the lump of money moving into tier three and and Scottish government's planting targets. Tenant farmers are particularly vulnerable to planting targets from Scottish government as short duration tenencies are easily ended to allow the planting of trees that have a an incredibly favorable tax regime and and again you know it's the system and you can't blame people for for doing that. Yeah >> I know that was an issue that came up during the passage of land reform bill particularly in relation to tenative sector. Um we're going to break there. Um we can come back briefly to this topic after the break. Um but we're going to pause for 10 minutes and we'll resume at 10:40. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Um, welcome back. Uh, so we're going to resume our round table session on the rural support plan. Um, we're going to continue questions from members. We've got about an hour and 10 minutes left. U, so if members could be concise and witnesses be concise, we can get through as much evidence uh as we can. Um, so just staying with that theme that we discussed before the break, Finley Carson, you've got a brief supplementary that you'd like to >> Thank you. When it comes to succinct, I think you've picked the wrong memory company, but anyway, I'll bang on. Um I I'm really pleased we're talking about redistribution again because it's I think it's really important and something missing from the plan. But but given we've heard that the smallest businesses uh account for a very small share of the total support but disproportionately important when it comes to to to things like sustaining fragile communities whether it's Crofting um we heard from Kate about the importance of smaller producers when it comes to local food production uh and also active land management when it comes to biodiversity or climate change. So, but rather than focusing uh solely on red redistributing funds, whether that's capping or front loading, should the government instead consider a distinct exemption or a light touch for smaller businesses and crafts? Um and and and then potentially design and support for the remainder of the the sector based on uh clear expectations uh around productivity, climate change and uh active farming. So effectively taking the the 30 or 40% of claimants for a very small part of the budget exempt them from a single farm plan a lot of the uh the compliance uh just to make sure that they can they can uh be sustainable. So was that that's a question to Stephen and Mike touching it as well. >> Well I was going to actually just bring in Laura as well because the question of active farming is an interesting one. So So this is obviously the discussion around active farming and moving to a scheme that incentivizes and supports active farming has been a key theme in the discussions over the last few weeks and also in the um submissions that we've received as a committee. What seems to be the case is that everyone agrees that the system should support and incentivize active farming and activity, but there seems to be little sort of agreement on what that definition of active is and what an active farmer is. So I'm interested in the witness's views today on how we define active farming as part of the scheme. >> Thanks. So questions about scale, questions about active farming and those definitions. Who would like to go first on those themes? Stephen, >> I can probably kick it off. Um going back to I'll start with Finley's uh pointed question first and I I produced a concept note with Andrew Moxy in 2022 or 223 I can't remember when simply because we thought that small producers might as we transition uh towards a a more compliant scheme or a more conditional scheme where things got tougher farmers had and coffters had to deliver more. We we were concerned that they would be blocked out or locked out um and would choose to opt out. Um and the reason we thought that they you needed to look at a separate scheme is the additional compliance costs are higher per unit of uh support that they receive. So we were quite clear in that and I think we're still quite clear the pair of us are quite clear that that is an option that we really need to look at. Um and possibly needs to be looked at before 2030 uh to make sure we don't have people opting out the system. Um, and this comes back into the idea of in Wales they're they're re they've rebadged the the terminology on support payments away from Pete's point of direct support payments to social value payments which covers the broad spectrum of expectations on small producers on large producers that you're talking about in terms of active farming. It is the B it is the key thing h in order to understand where we are supporting money where the base amount of support goes. All the other tiers flow from that. If you if you get your active farming definitions correct everything else can flow from it. The challenge we've now got is activity. What is the activity element? We all think if you go and speak to a coffter farmer they will tell you they're an active one. However, in the eyes of the the government systems, unless you've got a minimum stocking density of a leg of a sheet per hectare roughly, um then you don't meet that condition. We put higher conditions, activity conditions, on the poorest quality land with the lowest value support payments. It It's a bit strange and if you were to ask the public about this, they would possibly suggest that that's the wrong way round. on low ground land. Um Michael mentioned it earlier about um alternative practice and you are seeing more and more alternative practice being declared on region one high high value payment land uh in Scotland. So that money could be used to open up that land to new entrance tenants etc. But we need to define what we mean by activity on grassland on crop land and on rough grazing. and they may look differently in all these different types of land. H and the only way you can do it on the grazing land is possibly through minimum stocking densities. And we've got mechanisms that we can scale back the amount of support you got to meet those your your level of activity. There's lots of options here, but we need to investigate them very quickly. Michael. >> Um I think I broadly agree with everything Stephen said there. Um one of my other hats is is agricultural consultant. Uh and I definitely have real world examples of people dropping out the system due to compliance costs versus the scale of their of their claim or or the income they would receive. So that that's happening already. Um and we that's only having to meet two elements of the the whole FL plan requirements where by 2028 have to meet all five. So so we'll likely see further further drop off of the smallest farmers. Um on that side of things um the probably the if people do drop out then they're no longer subject to cross compliance or geek or anything like that. So any kind of control or steering that that government might might like to do in and in terms of biodiversity etc. climate change is lost because they're no longer in the system. Um but I think um yeah you know I agree with the Steven and that was just some additional points really. >> Yeah. Okay. Um Pete did you want to come in? We just briefly think responding to Finley's point about should we have a separate scheme and essentially sort of separate out small farmers from from bigger farmers. I think there's a danger in that. you know, it's a there's a risk, isn't there, that you say, well, these people aren't real farmers, so they don't have to do the things that real farmers do, like have a farm plan, um, like have CPD, and we'd favor if, you know, at least exploring the option of some sort of participation payment that says, look, you know, if you want to be in this within this tent of farmers and cfters who are producing food and looking after their farms and looking out the environment and adding social value, Steven said, then these are the things we need you to do. We need you to do a whole farm plan. Okay, it's smaller for your place and we need you to put measures in place on animal welfare. We need you to put, you know, have CPD. We need you to be part of that community of practice and for that we'll give you 5,000 a year, whatever it is. And and that's a flat rate across all farmers. So that you've got this sort of sense of everybody shares data, everybody's part of the same endeavor and we're in it together. I think the danger of sort of taking out small fund and saying, "Well, you know, you're not really in the club, but we'll give you a little bit of money to sort of go away." I think is probably unhelpful. >> Yeah, Mike. Um, I think there's a number of different issues here. Sorry if I'm picking up some of the other previous questions as well. In a way, um, the first the concern about sort of that principle of active farming is sort of a discussion about who's eligible and who who we might exclude if we're not careful. So, there's a little bit of concern around that. Um I'm interested in this idea of the sort of dropout. Um I wonder if that's a lack of facilitation and in fact one of the reasons that I ended up getting involved in the agricultural space as a co-chared an inquiry goal farming 1.5 with the previous president of the NFUS and actually one of the things that's interesting about that is a number of measures that are facilitating measures. So picking up on Kate's point about some of the advisory and skills and support mechanisms that we need to see if we actually want to see some of this stuff move. And I don't think we've actually spent I within Ariel and other things we haven't seen a huge amount of energy into the how do you actually facilitate this. I I guess one of the things I'm very conscious of um and I do wear a number of hats but one of them is um you know here we are talking about how do we actually make the best use of a pot of money that's a very significant pot of money and everybody wants it to keep broadening the criteria of why we use that money. You know, it needs to be everything basically income support, island support, deliver on climate change, nature, and food security. It's a fairly complex thing to do, of course, and and Steven's point about it being a very mixed jigsaw is absolutely correct. Food security is a difficult one. It's a little bit of a red herring because we're not really food security. We're not trying. So, it'll be quite a shift from where we currently are. But on a climate level, we don't think it's delivering really at the moment. It's quite um tokenistic. It's not leading. Um in some of the conversations I've had, the reference has been that we should go at the rate of the slowest uh person in the room. Well, that's not leadership. You can't lead from the back. I don't think there's a scale of response that we would expect. Um I know SECS and others have put in um lists of uh papers on this response on the climate asks and same with link on the nature side. So they also feel that they it's not being tackled at scale or anything else. And the other one I want to add is urgency as well that you know we haven't agriculture hasn't seen reductions in emissions for a very long time. You know we're talking last 15 years and the last five we've been talking about it and still not managing to deliver. So there's there is an urgency here and I think we're going to start to see that come to the four. A lot of the conversation in agriculture should be around adaptation as it would as it is with islands. We're starting to see the consequences now. So it's a bit of a ramble perhaps and but it's not meant to be. I'm trying to sort of paint a bigger picture. I guess the point is that everything I've just said is why this needs to be conditional. The money that we're talking about needs to be conditional. needs to give public good. There's a huge amount to be done on all of these levels and we're not going to get there if we're not really clear what the conditions for that funding are. >> Case >> um yeah I've got one or two points but just on that um emissions haven't reduced the question I would pose is have they not reduced or are we not measuring it properly? So that is something that I think we might come on to um on the on the um smaller producers that Finley talked about. I think QMS run the quality assurance schemes and I think there is a bit of an analogy here. We identified a long time ago that um smaller producers were dropping out of these schemes because of the amount of um red tape uh that might be involved. And we do run um crafting groups in the assurance schemes. So out in the islands and things where uh groups of coffters can come together to get through their quality assurance assessment uh to do things like animal health plans because again we don't want animal welfare. We can't we don't want the message to be it doesn't really matter if you've only got 10 cows only matters if you've got 30. So it still needs to be done but there are other ways to do it that don't necessarily involve using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Um, on the active farmer point, I don't have a specific definition or anything for you, but what I would like to point out is that everything that that we're asking for requires management. There's a kind of misconception out there that we only need to manage land if we're producing food. We live in a managed world on a managed island. If we want biodiversity increase, we have to manage that. If we want to reduce emissions and and put in adaptations, we have to manage that. So all of that is activity and we need to make sure that that's all recognized and not only reward one part of the outcomes we're looking for but make sure that it goes across everybody. And I'm sorry that's probably not very helpful. >> It's very helpful. >> Um back to the climate action and how the plan uh fits into the wider policies and and changes in Scotland. >> Come back to that later. I'm keen to get these specific questions answered >> um from Finn and and Laura around you know the definitions of active farming and the kind of the way that funding is allocated. So I don't I don't know if you've got anything to add on that at this point. >> Yes, part of that. So I will just focus on that that uh the SRP is is a big pot of money. It's the main instrument the government has and it's the main instrument um the CCP is relying on and it's targeting active farming. That means that all other land areas and land uses are out with that means no support. That means actually a per incentive economically uh for achieving the CCP's goals. >> Yeah, thanks. Um Michael, do you want to come back briefly on this? Uh yeah, it was just actually to go back to to Finley's question on um either reduced or light regulation potentially in the smaller businesses. Um why why I I I definitely agree with with Pete. You don't want the kind of people to be deemed pretendy farmers or or whatever. But there is in in ter I put my consultancy hat back on again there's a lot of people who are again dropping out due to fear of inspection um and they get or or they feel they have to pay consultants to complete every form for them because they're scared they're going to get it wrong uh and they'll be penalized. So if if there was scope for a light touch system for the smallest claimants, um whether that be uh a different penalty metrics for getting it wrong, so you know, if you make a a small mistake, you're not going to receive significant burden. Um that might be something that could work. Yeah, it was just coming back on Ver's point just to remind us that um the government have got monies um earmarked and increased budgets for uh woodland expansion but and also people restoration and the important bit is where does the active farming requirements sit within the four tier structure. Are we talking just tier one, tier two or does it matter in tier three? Is it less important in tier three? So, so understanding where that definition of active farming h sits is really important and I would argue that it's it's largely focused on tier one base and tier 2 enha enhanced. >> Yeah. Okay. Um I was just going to come in actually on a on a point that was raised with us in a written submission from the land workers alliance which is they're making the case that effectively there should be a kind of basic income um for farmers um set at a very low kind of level very low hectarage level. Um, I'm just wondering if if that is that something that you've got thoughts on because I think they they were frustrated that they didn't feel they were able to kind of get that particular point of view and that concept into wider discussion around capping and front loading. So, I was interested in your thoughts on that and again that brings in active farming if you get a basic income which you have to be an active farmer but on that specific proposal any any thoughts on that that's come from the land workers alliance. Um, Steven, you had your hand up. >> Yeah. Um, my my only my my kind of concerns with that is that like if you got a big garden, declare yourself a farmer and you get four 4,000 quid or 5,000 quid. Where where do we draw the boundaries here? And and that that is always a problem within this. So within the current system, we've got a three hectare minimum support payment. So our minimum min minimum area threshold. We can change that. We it doesn't have to be that. But we do then run run the risk of um lots of people coming into this system and getting relatively small amounts of money that don't underpin the agricultural activity. And if you read the rural support plan, the government are quite clear that it's not about income support. It's supporting sustainable and regenerative food production. So they've moved the the rhetoric away from income support in the s in the support plan and in the vision from income support to sustainable uh food production support in base. >> Pete and there's a a report coming out soon from that group because I'm not across the details of what they're recommending. Certainly from our point of view, we'd support a market garden scheme specifically around making it possible for people to make a modest living while doing market gardens. you know they typically under three hectares some are bigger but typically under three hectares and both on you know islands in remote communities supply fresh vegetables also in and around towns you know they add a lot of social value and I think a scheme which which topped up people's income but as Steven says you've got to have a business number you've got to produce accounts and there'd be a minimum threshold in our book for the amount of food you're selling you know once you get to be selling 5,000 pounds worth£10,000 worth of food a year then you can actually claim this because contributing significantly, you know, in some way to to to food supply, but also the social value element. So, so certainly for market gardens, we'd support that, but I'm waiting to see the wider proposals from that group. >> Yeah. Okay. Um Jamie, do you want to continue along the funding line? >> Absolutely. Thank you, Convena. Um I think we've talked about quite a lot in some of the previous sessions that in real terms funding has in effect decreased but at the same time farmers in Scotland being asked to do more and more and it's in effect they're being asked to do more and more less and less. Do you think government is being honest what it's actually asking from farmers or do we need to go to a point where the funding actually matches what's being required or we need to ask farmers to do less if the money is not going to be there? >> Okay. Um yeah reflections on on that from anybody? Uh I'm going to start with Vera. >> I think it is a really important and interesting debate. Uh because eventually if we if we want to have improved outcomes, food quality, animal welfare, biodiversity, climate and so on. Uh then it that means in most cases higher costs of production. who bears that cost and how that is spread across the society including including the consumers who are um abroad u getting the exports that's a big question and the transition what matters because otherwise the point of incidence the cost spreads across the val uh the supply chain also that depends on negotiating powers. So there comes the debate whether whether it needs to be a subsidy to ask farmers uh to produce something differently. Is it needs does it needs to be a subsidy to ask a car manufacturer to produce the cars differently? It's a big question and the the the plan itself says that it looked at and it um it followed the environmental principles including uh the polluter pace principle. Now, of course, if we read the plan, we know that there is nothing um alongside the polluttor pace principle in it. Um, and I'm not advocating necessarily right now for the pollutive p principles and we can debate whether it's the consumer or someone in the middle or the farmer, but some of the some of the polluters I us all will need to pay whether we solve that with increasing uh taxation or putting higher VAT on certain food products and returning that back to farmers or we put the burden on the farmers. ers for compliance without paying them anything and then they have to increase the prices the farmgate prices. That's a big question and this is a question which Scotland has not dared to address in the past 30 years and that's where why we are here because we haven't come to an agreement and there is no clarity and that's why even after five years once this plan ends there will be an even bigger cliffhand an even deeper cliff end when farmers and consumers there will don't know won't know what's going to happen because it still hasn't happened either higher subsidies or some sort of higher taxes and polluted payment scheme. >> Yeah, Mike. Um I was just going to say yes. I mean there's there not enough money in the system probably. Would we all like to see more money in the system? Yeah, that would be great. Um funding's fallen back to about 21 million from over 50 several years ago. We should be at least restoring that if we've serious about trying to deliver some of these outcomes. Um, I think it's the problem is there isn't that much money as far as I can tell. So the the point is this is even more reason to make the money work harder and I think this is it all comes back to the same thing around what are we actually trying to deliver? What are the conditions on that delivery? I mean I I the principle of a universal basic income I think is a a much broader conversation. I don't know if this is the budget that that should fall from but um the broad principle is great but again it's sort of unconditional and uh if we've got so many things that we need to deliver from this critical sector we need to be far more focused and targeted in the way that we do that. Mhm. Um Pete, >> yeah I mean if you compare what we're doing with agriculture what we're doing with other things like heating buildings you know we're subsiding heat you know um heat pumps we used to subsidize solar panels we try to make the market so that you know we can move towards net zero and government's been putting money into those transitional costs whereas with agriculture we've got a static falling budget in real terms and there's no sort of collective effort to say how can we reduce emissions from agriculture by investing in the change technologies that we need to do that. So I think there is a there's a mismatch here. If the subsidy scheme is needed to do what we're already doing if we want to get agriculture closer to net zero if we wanted to play it full part then there's a very strong case for saying this needs to be protracted government investment in managing that transition. Um I think um yeah we're asking asking farmers, land managers to do more and more with less and less. Um the figures have already been quoted I think in previous meetings but if if we'd kept pace the budget wouldn't be 670 million it would be 910 million just just from inflation. Um I think I go back to previous points about um you know if we make food more expensive or or if we have less farmers producing less food because they're dropping out of the systems because of environmental burden that's just going to simply be replaced by imports produced at a lower standard. So all we're doing is offshoring our the the problem to to other countries. Uh and I don't think that's really what what we want to do. Um you food miles just for 0.1 never mind other things. Um I think I think the plan talks about outside money and third party money trying to fund um some of the environmental gain. Um, today that doesn't look like it's been overly successful. We've seen examples of of companies buying land, planting forests, forests fail failing, then them selling selling again other other businesses or estates trying to set up and attract outside investment or sponsors for ambitious environmental plans. and and to date I'm not aware of really there been much of an appetite from industry to pick up in those to to try and prove their their green credentials. So um I I think probably the point I want to make is that farming businesses will need probably their their own improvements environmentally to offset against their own businesses. and having um multinationals coming in looking to to rew wild vast tracks of countryside to offset their emissions isn't probably what we're looking for or or certainly I don't think that's the way forward in terms of how we fund u biodiversity and um environmental improvement in this country. >> Any other comments? Yeah, Stephen then Kate. Yeah, I mean I don't really I I'm not a land manager but I always worry that the system farmers and coffters and land managers always worry what their neighbors are doing. If their neighbors are delivering against national outcomes that you don't then don't have to deliver again just let it go and let's let's not worry too much about the reing thing or the tree planting thing because these are all delivering towards the national outcomes. The industry itself needs to have a close look at itself in terms of how it reacts to land use change because land use change is part of agricultural emissions. It just doesn't in the right boxes within this thing that we call the national greenhouse gas inventory. So, so we need to be really careful about how we how we process all these things. The in terms of the budget and I've produced figures for this. If you go back to 2000, we are we are less we're probably down at 40% of the buying power that we were in 2000. But in 2000, we had unintended consequences of overg grazing uh environmental damage. So there is a real balance in here. We've had 2,000 uh businesses drop out the system in the last decade. So the money that is in the system is going to fewer people h as businesses have expanded etc. And then the point that Michael's making is on the supply chains and Vito is making this point as well is that the supply chains in the dairy sector in the whiskey sector in the pig sector and poultry sector the standards that they're having to produce to in the private sector uh through the processing through the supermarkets and the requirements that those sectors are putting on these are increasing on a daily weekly monthly basis and we're already delivering. There is market failure still in things like the beef and sheep sector because those signals are not going through the stratified system. So that is where the government intervention logic actually remains very strong is we need to push sectors where we're not already seeing behavioral change through through reaction to markets that there's lots of parts of the jigsaw puzzle here. Yeah, I would I would absolutely agree with what Steven's saying there. Particularly uh in the the red meat sector, beef and lamb, the signals aren't coming through. So, uh I farm produce store calves. The signals that are coming from the retailers do not reach me uh in any way. They have to go through processors, finishers, maybe someday in between before they get to me. So those those market signals just don't get there as in in the same way as they do with something like eggs or poultry or uh dairy where you're talking you know you're talking fewer steps. Um, what I wanted to really to say though, that was just an aside, was to agree with what Pete said about investment. And I think we're always being told, um, and I quite agree with it actually, that once we get to this greener world where we've got reduced emissions and we're more efficient, um, we will have increased profits. I do believe that those two things go together. But to get there, we need capital expenditure on things like innovation uptake. We need capital expenditure on climate adaptation. So things like the preparing for sustainable farming investment, small as it was, were sort of building blocks to get to that point. And that's really where we need the investment. We need the investment now in helping move people to a place where hopefully we wouldn't need that same sort of support in the future because we were all doing things in a better, more efficient, more cost-effective way. >> And Mike, do you want to come back briefly? >> Very briefly. agree with an awful lot of that, but I don't agree with Michael that the only reason tenant farmers are dropping out is because multinationals are coming in and planting woodland or buying different bits of or or trying to rewild. I just wanted to put that on the record. The land owners and agriculturalists are being asked to prioritize delivery of nature, climate, and other things. And that's absolutely as it should be. If there's issues with how tenant farmers link into that process, that's how we that's one of the things we need to fix because everybody should be able to participate in that. Okay. Um I wanted just to move on to uh a specific question around the support that's available particularly under tier 4 and uh Michael you mentioned earlier about whole farm plans um and and I sense that whole farm plans could be quite empowering um for farmers um actually bringing together a whole range of of options and and consideration about how land management can be um changed over time and the business decisions that need to follow that. But we did get evidence last week um from RSPB about the potential cost of doing whole farm plans properly and having that level of support and advice that's available through tier 4. So I was wondering if there's any any further reflections on whole farm plans and where where you see them because at the moment the support for doing whole farm plans is in tier four. It's a requirement under tier one basic payment, but have you got a sense of how powerful they could be in terms of empowering farmers and making sure that their aspirations as businesses are are developed? Kate, >> yes, I will go back to when um ARob started uh and Pete and Steven will probably remember this. I think the concept of the whole farm plan came from what I was saying earlier that every farm needs to be looked at on an individual basis. Um everything everything they can do and could do and should be doing could be looked at on their individual basis. And that is where I think the whole farm plan came from. Unfortunately, because of various different things, presumably budget more than anything else. We've now moved into a place where farmers are doing them by themselves as a tickbox exercise and not necessarily getting any good from them. And I think in an ideal world, if the money was there, you would sit down at your kitchen table with uh someone from Nature Scot, someone from um SACE, Aonomist, Forester, whoever, work out what was best for your farm and map out a plan for how to get there. And I think that was the concept. Disagree me if I'm wrong, Pete and Stephen, but I think that was a concept what we talked about for the whole farm plan. But where it's got to now is is a shadow of its of its original intention, I would say. >> Yeah, Pete, >> just picking up on the I think that's absolutely right, Kate. And the the figures that came up from RSVP last week, they're based on the soil association exchange pilot done in the North Highlands with various groups up there, which basically found that you can build on the whole farm plan, but if you try and get people in a room together, it's quite difficult. You really need to do exactly what Kate says, sit down with an individual farmer or coffter, look at their particular situation and give them really high quality advice and doing that for a big chunk of the farmers and coft in Scotland was costed in at 17 million. To do it for everybody would be 52 million. That was the sort of back of the envelope calculation based on that pilot project. So, but I think actually empowering farmers through giving them tailored individual advice to the whole farm plan, it makes sense of the system and and it it then gives farmers a chance to think about what they want to do and what grants they might want to access or you know how they develop their business. Era for those who link this back this whole discussion to the lack of vision and long-term policy security and long-term very clear goals within this SRP and much longer from the government post 2030 because why it became a tickbox exercise is also because there is no clarity on why it's needed why do I need to do it now what do I need to do apart from certain things I could do but I don't know what I might be required in 5 10 15 years down the line. So I'm just doing it because I need to do it. But I can't think long term because I don't know whether my support whether the requirements any payments or whatever penalties I might have to pay in 20 20 years time or 15 years time. How does it depend on my farm structure? So what do I need to do now for biodiversity and so on. So there is no long-term clarity which would drive farmers individual needs to do something about their whole farm plans. >> Yeah. Michael and then Mike. >> Um quite often if you're the only farm consultant in the room full of farmers when everyone mentions plans you absolutely get it in the neck due to cost. it it's viewed as money coming out of the system that should be spent on the farms. Um there's a real danger I I think back to foot and mouth recovery plans. There was some very high quality plans done by consultants that were funded by government and there was some plans that would be very much to a template is how many plans can we do as quickly as possible get the funding and they sit on a bottom of a drawer. No one ever look looks at them. So that that would be to my mind a monumental waste of money. Um I think RSPB talked about 52 million for 17,000 odd. That's about £3,000 per business. Uh I think to get a proper individual meaningful farm plan that wouldn't touch the sides of consultancy time that that you would need. Um, and if that was a requirement for all BPS recipients, there is not the capacity of agricultural consultants in Scotland to be able to produce that. Um, so that's yeah, that's all. Um, in terms of whole farm plans, I think soil sampling, you know, why why farmers aren't soil sampling to start with is a major question. You should be sampling. you should know your phes. You should be applying lime because there's no point applying fertilizer if your pH is wrong. So that that that should be a given. Um and that so that that I guess that making farmers do that and look at that is useful. Whe whether a tier 2 measure is to do something about your soil pH rather than just know it's not good. That you know that's a question mark. um things like biodiversity audits, which is effectively a farm environment map. Are we looking to measure change? We're back to baselining. Where are we now? Where are we going? Um, and I think there was a point much earlier about um about us not reducing emissions and and and I would beg to differ because uh thinking back to my early farming career, the amount of fertilizer that got thrown around was significant and that is significantly reduced on a lot of farms now. Better use of slurry and it's just too expensive to to use it willy-nilly. So, but that's not baseline. So, we can't prove that. Um, so so sorry that that was my kind of points. Thanks, Mike. >> Um, just to say, yeah, the whole farm plans was quite a a big recommendation for the farming 1.5 as well. I just don't think anybody thinks the way they've been done has been particularly great. Um, but it does answer that question about flexibility, but not if it's not resourced. So, I guess that's the main part of it. Okay, Andrew, do you want to come? >> Can I follow up on that? I think the feedback that we're getting is the concept of whole farm plans is a sound one but um without adequate funding to enable farmers to actually undertake that process it's a rather fruitless um process. So if we were to go to government ministers um from this committee and say that we need a reprofiling of the funding to allow that to happen and they say no, where do we go from there? Do we say that the whole farm plan process is no longer fit for purpose and that we should no longer proceed or how do we um redesign it to enable it in the best way possible to provide the outcomes that the we were initially hoping for. >> Yeah. Um Steven, can I come to you on that? And can I also chuck in as well the fact that with the land reform bill we now have the requirement for land management plans of holdings over I think it's 100,000 hectares. So there is there is planning at that scale as well state scale that's that's going to be a legal requirement coming in as well. >> Yeah. And I I suppose the I don't think anybody disagrees with the concept of the whole farm plan. It's potentially um and I think everybody thought that it would provide a useful baseline for the for us to know where we struggling to see my reading glasses on um where where the the nation is with regards to baseline carbon soil soil pH soil carbon all of these things biodiversity that that was the concept I think the farmer groups farming for 1.5 had you start your journey by knowing where your starting point is not where the end point is. Um, so so those were really important factors. I'm not going to get too much into the detail of the different components of the whole farm plan other than we're not capturing that data other than the habitat assessment is being captured by our PID systems. Um, the animal health and welfare plans aren't captured. The carbon audit data is not captured. The soil pH data will sit in somebody's computer somewhere, but it's not captured. Um and farmers will be reacting to some of these and coffters will be reacting to some of these things and making changes but we're not documenting what those changes are. Uh fertilizer reduction is not through planning it's possibly through cost of fertilizer and long-term changes in fertilizer prices. Um and going back to Vicky's point from last week about the the whole farm plan idea that they have I did an evaluation of farming connect Cumbria in 20078 where they had an in an investment program so capital grants for farmers and a young chap called James Reebanks sat on the chaired the committee that made the decisions. He made sure that there was environmental conditionality on all capital grants, making sure there was wastewater capturing, slurry tanks were covered, making sure that environmental conditionality was at the heart of everything. Within that scheme, there was um 5 days dedicated business advice and environmental advice to come up with an integrated integrated sustainable development plan with a three-year set of goals and a 10-year set of goals that the farmer could then adapt. Those plans were seen as very useful for by the farmers themselves. Um but the quip pro here is that some big agency firms were just using templates and not doing the real detail. Smaller oneman band agents h were doing very good jobs at those those plans. That has a legacy h and the legacy is that the plans that those were done well have helped those or helped those business progress seeing where their future looked like. But the challenge you would have is how do you resource that? So we should have used the bu money. The b money should have been spent on on this as a strategic investment. Um and then we should have had already a situation where farmers and and and coffters all had a sustainable development plan invested over the last five years. We don't need to do everybody in year one. H and you can prioritize who needs to be done. So there there still is scope. But then the question I always have is do we then end up with individual contracts with every land manager in Scotland and under public sector reform that is going to be really really difficult to administer. Pete >> your question Andrew what Steven said I don't think it has to be either or what we're asking government to do was to invest in the next stage I think so associate exchange have done with 20 farmers go out to tender for 500 farmers or a thousand farmers see what happens you know 3,000 a pop if you spread it across a lot of farms can you do it for that or does it more expensive aggregate those the outcomes of those plans aggregate some of the data you'd learn a lot from that we don't have to do it all at once but I moving on to next stage with 500 or a thousand farmers would would teach us a lot. >> Yeah. Case. >> Yeah. Um we I don't know if the committee are aware that the QM HDB uh in England and HC in Wales are currently running an environmental baselining project which is pretty much what we're talking about here. Um a bit like the RSPB pilot as well. We've gone on to um 35 farms in Scotland. I think there's 160 odd in in the whole of the UK. Uh measured their carbon uh down to a meter. Done liar. Incidentally, we do have lidar in Scotland as well to find out what the carbon stocks are. And then the next stage of that is to work with the farmers to look at specific interventions to see what they can do to improve. It's it's mainly about um carbon rather than anything else. But um that could be you know that would be different across a different scheme. Um go back in three and five years time to do the same measurements again to see how things have changed to find out exactly what actions make a difference in different uh geographies and different land types and different farming systems. That's a small number of farms but things like that can then be rolled out. You don't necessarily need that level of detail for every single farm across Scotland. You can use data like that from us and from others who've done this to try and roll that out through things like again I'm pushing QMS here but monitor farm projects but there are other projects as well and what we based that um that project on was something that happened in Northern Ireland called the ARC zero project and they have used that ARC zero project and rolled it out across their entire policy in Northern Ireland and they've seen huge amounts of behavioral change in farmers farmers because farmers are given the information about their own specific farm. They're given that individual tailored advice and they can see why they're doing something, what the outcome is and then they can see it actually on the ground working and they have had huge success in that behavioral change and that's what we I think need to get to. Farmers absolutely bang into this. Going back to the whole farm plan, farmers do not understand why they're being asked to do this. And if I have a one-to-one conversation with them and say, "This is where we were with Ario. This is what we were thinking. This is what the plan of it is," they get it. >> But the way it is just now, it's just something that they have to do and it's making no difference. And the other thing is we do need to make sure that these things are captured. As Steven says, you can be doing things. So we are planting much more um diverse swards um herbrit grassland. Nobody's counting that. Nobody knows we're doing that. Nobody knows what difference it's making. So therefore we're getting none of the not even financial credit but none of the the moral credit for doing that. So it's that sort of thing that farmers don't see any benefit either financially or or in the eyes of the public and and others of doing these things. So, we've got to make sure that these things are measured, recorded, and people see the benefits for it. >> Okay, thanks for that. Um, I'm going to I'm going to move on actually to and bring in Artemis because um obviously with within tier 4 uh there's aspects of of rural development um funding and and program support. But I think in in uh your evidence, your written evidence committee, you said that, you know, rural development is seen as a kind of trivial bolt-on uh or or a sort of puzzling hangover from from CAP where we had the the leader programs. So, I I know you've mentioned a little bit about rural development already in this evidence session, but I wondered if you wanted to add anything in terms of um what what rural communities that you work with would like to see in terms of particular funding support or or measures coming through and integrating with other levels of support. >> Yes, I'm very happy to do that. And and the the response is quite complex and placed within a wider, I suppose, policy landscape. Um it it's important to note that from the perspective of rural communities, the riddle support plan seems to be filling an enormous vacuum at the moment that perhaps it should not fill. Um, and that is to I'm going to choose my words carefully here. During the past five years, with really the notable exception of the rural support plan and the national islands plan, there's been no rural strategy for Scotland and there have been two abortive attempts that rural communities have actively engaged with. One was a rural economy strategy that was shelved in 2021 and the other was the rural delivery plan which was about to be published in February 2026 and that was shelved. So it makes sense from our perspective that many of our communities are looking to the rural support plan and I think Steven touched on this and said to do a lot more than it should. What the rural support plan is about is it's about that cooperation piece between farmers and coffters and rural communities for the benefit of their homes, but it's not actually there to solve all of Scotland's problems or make good on all of the opportunities. So we need to see that integration between community-led local development um within the rural support plan and and between community-led local development and and that agriculture and crafting piece um in relation to to the wider piece of rural development and this does also apply to agriculture reform. We we should also be looking elsewhere to places like the newlyannounced rural renewal bill for example. Thank you. Um, other reflections around the table on wider rural development, rural communities. Pete, you look like you want to come in. >> No, not really on that. >> Okay. Any thoughts? Yeah, Kate. Um I think just a short point about infrastructure and supply chains in rural areas and we need to make sure that that infrastructure is there because without um small abattoars without um processing plants for for milk other commodities then then things just disappear. We have in the pig sector we have all admittedly quite a large abbittoire in in Brien. It is the only pig um abbittoire in the whole country. If anything was to happen to that that um abattoire at Brihan, pig producers in the northeast of Scotland would not be able to get their pigs to an abattoire within 8 hours. Therefore, the entire pig sector in the northeast of Scotland would disappear. So small abattoars, big abattois, other kinds of infrastructures, infrastructure which I'm not necessarily quite as with not being in the red meat sector, but that is also really important for rural communities. Stephen, >> yeah, the the I suppose the the CLLD question, the community-led local development or historically leader. Um I mean it it was a bolt-on in EU terms and um in many EU countries it was purely agricultural whereas in in this country we it was it was broadened out to include wider uh rural development um issues supporting communities supporting innovation uh supporting cooperation uh and innovation and learning um and there are elements of the the last rounds that are that are now being funded within Scotgov. So some of the the plans or some of the the the local action groups were supporting farm diversification, crop diversification. Uh there's a number of uh polycarbs on the western ales that have been funded through through this that are now supporting local food networks. Uh the government have also got their agri tourism um grants that have introduced. Agri tourism was supported through CLLD funds in the in the last round. Uh and then we've got the small producers pilot that is money going to support small produ small micro food producers uh that Pete talked about earlier. So there are elements of it that the government have main what you call mainstreamed back into their sort of main main support structures within the rural support plan that you kind of then wondering what well what is their thoughts for the CLLD bit. uh and understanding what that will deliver for rural communities uh is really important because it it it did act like a bit of a glue in these areas of providing some degree of coordination bringing like-minded people uh to come up with new ideas as to how we uh support them and quite a few of those structures are now possibly being used to deliver things like community benefit funds from uh renewable energy from the coastal communities fund uh which is Crown Estate Scotland money that's going to coastal communities and actually that wider suite of benefit funds that we're now flowing into these rural communities and that CLLD is potentially the model for for coherent governance of that >> do you want to come back on any of those points? >> No. Okay. Um I'm gonna move on. Uh Emma >> say no I I do agree with everything that Stephen said. Um at at the moment the the CLLD funding um or the CLLD program is not just funding it's a program of animation supports the work of 20 local action groups as well as another um number of different programs and those local action groups do bring together communities with land workers, farmers and coffters to identify where as Steven said there are opportunities um to build supply chains to invest in micro businesses that will support local um food production um and also that wider piece around community ownership and community leadership. >> Thank you. Uh okay, going to move on to another question from Emma. Another question from Emma Rodic. Thank you. Um, thanks convenor. I'm keen to ask about engagement and how members of the panel feel that this could be improved and what you would like to see moving forward now that we know that ARob is uh no longer in existence. >> Okay. Who would like to start on that? Um Mike, you were on ARB, so I'm going to start with you. >> Thanks. Um I get Well, it's interesting actually the area of I think ARob is maybe not entirely unique. I'm aware of a number of different sectors and we've just heard actually about you know the sort of rural development plan being shelved. It feels like there's a there are opportunities to discuss and debate. I'm not always sure that we're focused on quite the right question, but actually my experience of AROP was that there was a fairly good uniformity of opinion within the room and there's a lot of shared concern, shared values and and shared desire to see change and progress, but that hasn't really translated into progress. And so there's something else going on that's not really quite working. I mean I've been involved in a number of consultations over many years and I think there's frustration out there quite widely actually that people are inputting to significant processes to try to advise and support and offer solutions but there's a quite a strong sense that really very little is getting adopted and I think Ariel felt like well we put a lot of time and energy into Arib committed significant days to that development and put a lot of thought into it. Um, but it didn't really feel like it was shifting the dial very much. And I so I I think there's a I'm not quite sure why it's not translating into action. I think everybody wanted to see that. Everybody wanted to see urgency. Everyone everyone wanted to see a scale of response. But I think ultimately there was just uh uh that that was sort of his failure in my view. Pete >> consultation engagement on the rural sport plan wizory. Quite frankly, you know, this committee got an outline in June 24. There was nothing then discussed in Ariel, although I think we did ask a number of times when are we discussing the rural support plan until October 25 at which point we've got a draft version with no budget figures in it. And we made various comments, other people made various comments. As far as I could tell, none of those comments were taken into account. And then the budget figures were slipped out at the final stage of the process and it and it came to parliament on the last day of parliament. So I think the process was disar but I want to speak specifically about the strategic environmental assessment because that was something which was ruled out for the agriculture bill as a whole on the grounds that it was a framework bill. So we didn't need an environmental assessment. And then we pushed for a strategic environmental assessment for the rural support plan. And eventually that was agreed to that there would be one of those. But there was no consultation despite the fact it's good practice. It's in Scotland guidance. There was no consultation on that strategic environmental assessment. There were no responses from any NOS's, any farming interests. Nobody knew what was going on. And I think it's just an example of a process which was carried on under the radar so that we couldn't have that discussion about you know going back to Ver's points and Mike's point what is the strategic environmental impact of the way we're doing farm subsidies and what are the alternatives we could consider to to have a different impact. None of that happened. None of that consultation happened. So I think it was a very poor process. Michael >> um STFA weren't involved in Ari um which I think we were slightly disappointed about because we had in my predecessor someone that would be would have contributed very capably to that um with his past experience um we have been invited to be a member of the the land group although I know that's I know that's not a direct replacement for Aribob um in terms of um I guess further discussion and and information and and feeding into that. It's it's really yeah it's it's been given information clearly and and and time to to comment thoroughly on it. So um we would yeah request sight of um plans and um requests for comments in in good time. Yeah, same. >> Well, whilst I attended AROB meetings, I wasn't a member and I was in attendance through the the academic advisory panel to to AROB. But um what I would say is that the government have probably used lots of stakeholder groups to discuss lots of components of the rural support plan. So for example, the the Scottish Suckler beef cuffs support scheme stakeholder, there was a stakeholder group um that was advising or disc or or discussing the the changes to that scheme uh with a broad representation from across the sector and and they were fully cited on the proposals. Uh they discussed the proposals, they asked for additional analysis that was provided to them. So the government were very very open on the developments within that scheme. There was a small produ uh there was a a whole farm plan uh group set up within a subgroup within Aribb. There was a small producers pilot group set up. The government are very open to having discussions. It's how that then filters through into this wider thing called the rural support plan where I've got less I've got less I'm less cited on that. how how all of those bits flow through into what we're seeing in the rural support plan. But give give the government credit. They do discuss things with stakeholder groups quite extensively and getting consensus is really difficult. >> Yeah. Um Emma, did you want to come back? >> Thanks. Um yes. So can I ask any witnesses who did feed in whether through AROB or policy development any of these groups whether they can point to anything that is in the plan as a result of their feedback. >> Okay, various shaking and nodding of heads. Uh Kate, we'll start with it. >> The one example that I can think of is the caving interval piece. That was something that was proposed to arro which several of us were very strong on saying we should be doing this and then it went through. So I can see a direct link there. The thing I would say that Ariob did more than anything was probably stop or or slow down bad policy which is something that you don't see. So there would be unintended consequences that that members of ARO would bring up and then the policy that was suggested would possibly not go forward. So you don't see it, but I think they they stopped that. But as for positive policy development, that's the only example I can think of off the top of my head. >> Bring in Artimus online. >> I read too many P's there. Um so we had a really really good experience actually um in engaging on the development of the agriculture and rural communities bill and we felt that process in itself was very inclusive and perhaps it was in part because that bill which now is an act sat between government and parliament at the time and there were many many productive conversations at the time about that integration between communityled local development and um agriculture. when the bill became an act and we moved towards a rural support plan engagement um that became a very closed door from our perspective to communities uh and it was incredibly unclear to us how we should um engage with the process. what we resorted to and this is not just ourselves but it is also stakeholders willing communityled local development is um writing direct letters to the Scottish government to the cabinet secretary but but also um relying a lot on um academic colleagues who had um a seat at the academic advisory board and places like that. I think others may correct me but but the big question for today is that we still seem to be missing a governance and engagement piece with the current rural support plan. I mean I'm not an expert on this um but it doesn't appear that the new land group is going to have a specific remmit for the rural support plan. We've already in these round tables identified so many ways that the rural support plan could be improved or changed. Um who's going to be responsible for that? Is it going to be the agriculture policy development group? Does that have the right right powers? And these are all very big questions for us. >> Um Mike, >> if I may just trying to be constructive in terms of a I mean there's a couple of quick things I thought that were saying. One was actually it wasn't exactly as there wasn't an intention. I don't think that we've always formed absolute conclusions. It was more of a discursive thing. But I actually think that a future committee needs to be a bit more clear that it's actually making decisions or helping to come to conclusions more because sometimes it felt like something that was slightly inconclusive was taken out the room and then something else happened. So that that lack of conclusion I also think um clarity of the chairmanship is really critical too one in farming 1.5 we had co-chairs um and NFS were represented and and I was the other co-chair representing sort of other interests science and environment um and that worked very well. I I think that sort of structure would work well in any future committee as well. So >> Pete Pete did you come in? >> Respond question. Yes. >> Yes. No. I mean I don't think anything in relation to the rural sport plan. I agree with Arteimus. There was much more engagement with the agriculture and rural communities bill because it was a bill that came to parliament. There had to be that consultation. There was no real consultation or engagement process around the rural support plan. And it was seen by government as essentially you know mopping up or putting in one place what they were proposing around the tiers. So it became this very narrow thing about sticking you know the rationale for the tiers in one place and then sticking the budget on it. As I say the budget decision which came out very late in the process um you know there was certainly no consultation on that. Um certainly with with us I mean I don't know if there's consultation with with other interest groups but with Ariel there was no consultation there was no discussion in area about the rural support plan. >> Stephen >> yeah I mean I I can see I can see the handoff quite a lot of different discussion groups within the rural support plan. So as I said the the beef support scheme that that is entirely embedded within it with the enhanced green and conditionality um the Scottish government did do quite a lot of discussion and extensive stakeholder engagement on that piece. Uh the proposals for enhanced greening on permanent grassland that is uh not been taken forward in 2027 like they thought they would. All of these were discussed with uh with stakeholders and experts. a lot of the agents were called into the room um and the the seed merchants that would have to supply seeds to to to let the conditionality measures be uh undertaken. So there's a lot of discussion and then there's the things like the academic advisory panel that I can see the hand of the the panel in some of the elements of the plan and also some of the commissioned research that I've done and I would say that the ARB um had extensively discussed the budget allocations and whether there was agreement or not they were extensively discussed and actually also where schemes actually set a lot of the schemes that those kind of discussions were had but as I said before maybe not in the guys of this is all going in the rural support plan into this one document. It's it's through various different iterations. But give the government credit because they did discuss a lot of this with with people. >> Finley, I I guess I I get a bit frustrated because it's all it's all very good. But we've had decades of consultation. We've had decades of working groups. You know, Stephen, you've been one again who've been involved right throughout the process. Yet we've still got a final plan that largely resembles what we had before. No tartan cap. It's just a Scottish version of the common agricultural policy with very little genuinely uh new policies. Even even the the cav index um the government got wrong initially because it didn't recognize the issues there were with coffters and small farmers. So that that's not an overriding success either. But I suppose my question is whilst we we've had the one farming for 1.5, we've had the farmer climate change groups, but in practice it's had little effect on on the plan because it's we're sitting here and we've had three sessions already without one witness suggesting the plan is fit for purpose. So it would suggest that decades of consultation in groups has actually failed to some extent. So I I guess my question is what confidence is that is there that land or indeed the policy development group going forward are going to change anything and that some of the changes that have been discussed here that need to happen before the next plan we see a draft in next plan is is there any chance that's going to happen and and the groups that are being put in place actually going to deliver? >> Okay. Um brief reflections on that around the panel please. Yeah, Vera. >> Yeah, maybe a very quick one. Past examples or still uh to the current day on climate change action. It's been delayed, delayed. Ambition is going down, down, and down. I have no confidence of the plan or any further action without major rehauling of how we work and what we want to do that the plan will deliver and we will get the climate change goals. Yeah, I think entirely agree with Finley. It's a very disappointing plan and it's not fit for purpose. And I think you said earlier Finley, it was a tickbox exercise. In our book, it hasn't even ticked some of the boxes it should have ticked. So that you know, for example, as we mentioned our evidence, the guidance from the Scottish government on the climate change plan talks about what public authorities have to do to support, you know, the the move to net zero. The rural support plan doesn't do any of those things. It looks like they haven't had regard to their own guidance in drawing out the royal support plan. But I think most importantly, our understanding was the support plan would create the framework, create an intervention logic which would then allow this committee to scrutinize the secondary legislation that has to come in before the new schemes operate because at the moment we're operating on legacy schemes from 2020 and before and that's a legal basis. But if we're going to move the legal basis to the 2024 act, we're going to have to have secondary legislation. And at the moment, what you're going to get coming to this committee is a tier one scheme which will be full of flatsom and jetsum. It'll have headed payments in there which are an anacronism. It will have in there which is an even greater anacronism. And I don't hold Steven entirely responsible for Last, but he's got a finger in lots of pies, you know, but you know, it's going to put all this stuff into tier one and then it's then ask the committee to sign off on a tier which has no intervention logic and then later on you get tier two and then a bit later you get tier three and then at some point you might get tier four which as we've always said is actually the engine for change about corporation about advice to farmers about you innovation. That's where we should be starting rather than finishing. So I think this original idea about how this committee is supposed to scrutinize the secondary legislation, the rural support plan should have given you a framework for doing that and it's failing to do that. >> Which is why we started early with this inquiry in this session first weeks back. Um, Michael, >> um, I think the the four tiers has been trailed for quite a long time and I think a number of farmers are starting to maybe get their heads around it a little bit. Um, often slow to change. Um, and probably the fundamental concern is what's the pound notes look like at the end. Um, STFA, I think I've mentioned already, we've concerns about tier three and access to tier three funding for for all tenants um due to the expectation that it will be five-year contracts as per EEKES. um tier 2 a couple of years ago or three years ago maybe we had some options trailed um and if we're going to proceed with that format we need to see a real beefing up of the options availability and suitability for different farm types geographic types you know land occupation types um so you know we don't certainly don't want to throw the the baby out with the bath water. But there is that well the devil's always in the detail and and and we need to see the detail. >> I was scratching my head, but I will I will add um I mean I'm in a probably a very privileged position in that I sit in the policy development group. I'm I'm commissioned to do research. So I'm I'm privy to a lot of a lot of the discussions as to what is going on in terms of the the government's thinking on some of this. So I do have a degree of confidence that by come 2030 we will have some uh some new schemes that will potentially be able to deliver all of the outcomes of the plan uh as we transition. My my concern is has always been is I thought this in 2020 and here we are in 2026 and we haven't really delivered an awful lot in that period of time. So so the time time frames slip very quickly. Um and you know the by the by the government's discussions it'll take two years to design new schemes and get them implementable for delivery. So being able to get those decisions is going to be vital in the very near future uh in order to deliver this and go out to consultation uh and have wider engagement and give people the confidence that they know what's going to come down the tracks to them. And just going back to the the the wider question on engagement again I would say that the monitoring evaluation piece within the rural support plan was discussed quite a lot in our old circles and with stakeholders. So there again give the government some due here that there's a lot of elements that were discussed. It's people's memory of those discussions might be a bit lacking. >> I think I think what what farmers on the ground need is is just some clarity about what what is going to be expected of them when and how much it's either going to cost them or they're going to be rewarded for it. And I know we can't be absolutely accurate about that, but just for illustration, and many people in this room know this, but a cow in my farm, which is having a cal in April 2027, if it's a female, we keep it. It won't have a cal itself for another two years, that's 2029. These time scales um are are very very short in in farming mines. you know, things things are really long term and farmers just want to know what they're going to be asked to do the reason they're being asked to do it and how it's going to affect them. And I've always found that if you explain things to people and you can get them to understand what the reason is, they may not agree with what they're being asked to do. They may not particularly want to do it, but if they understand it, they're much more likely to go along with it. And it's that communication piece and to be fair to the government we have said that we said this Ariel from 2021 onwards communication communication and they have tried I don't know what the answer is but we need to we need to have farmers understanding this journey that we're on and what their part in it is and and we need to get better at that and government need to get better at that. >> Um Artemis any final reflections? Um, none from me. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, okay. We're running a little over time, but um, Dawn, did you have a final question to maybe one or two witnesses? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, if that's okay. Um, I just want to take advantage of the fact that we have two members of the rural college here. So um thinking about the education of our future generations of of um farmers and agricultural workers um and horiculturalists thinking about that traditional piece versus the biodiversity co-planting you know making sure that the biomes are good by doing co-planting all those kinds of things and ensuring that the food that we are producing is as nutrient-rich as possible and that market gardens um as uh as um have the attention to them as much as arable farming and livestock does um and then thinking about the environmental piece around that. So I mean how are you approaching that within the teaching within the college and also how that then feeds into the vision of of agriculture moving forwards as well. >> So we've got um a luxury of having two representatives from SRU and we had one on our first panel as well. So yeah, do you have any reflections on courses, Stephen? >> I I I would say that um so so with the college getting taught degree awarding powers and pushing for university status that that gives us a huge degree of flexibility to pivot that we've historically not had when we've got um traditional universities, Glasgow University um sort of accrediting our degrees. Um so so there are there are great opportunities here for the college to make sure that we're reactive to the new needs within the agricultural industry and you already seeing that within some of the project programs uh of of study h I'm less I'm less familiar with the horiculture side of things but I do know that on that side of things we've got a lot of a lot of um student intake and expertise on that side of things and on the agriculture side of things I'm sure that the the students are pivoting towards these newer techniques and understanding the land management requirements. uh the regenerative and sustainable agricultural stuff should be getting embedded within these the agricultural agricultural teachings about like policy is that it takes time to change and evolve programs of teaching uh and and actually making sure that we've got that capacity is going to be vital and and and the the sort of the feedback from the committee here would be useful in terms of supporting those those future directions. Mhm. Uh I mean it might be useful if SR could write to the committee um to give a breakdown of you know not just university courses but college courses as well that you're offering in different locations and how you're planning for the future. That'd be useful. Yeah. Okay. Um well that uh brings us uh to the end of our witness sessions um for this inquiry. So can I just thank everybody who's attended uh this morning including those who've been online. Um, we will be hearing from uh, I believe the cabinet secretary and the minister at a future session. We'll be asking them about the rural support plan. I think all the witness sessions we've had so far gives us a lot of questions, a lot of starting points for conversations with government ministers. Um, but very grateful for everybody who's contributed towards this inquiry, both being in person. I know we've had a number of uh written submissions as well which have been very useful and will be considered and included in our deliberations going forward. Um but that's the end of the public session for this meeting and we'll now move into private session. So thanks for joining us.