Hansard

As is Alex Fergusson—his recent departure from the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee has deprived the committee of a valued and considered contributor—I am concerned about the proposed redistribution of the financial support for farmers under the CAP and its potential impact on food production. I do not understand how such a move will in any way protect, let alone enhance, existing production levels.

At this point, I should declare an interest: I represent an area that will be adversely affected by redistribution of direct payments. However, aside from my obvious constituency interest, I come at the matter as a member of the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee who believes that there ought to be a demonstrable return on financial support that is provided under the CAP. I know that these days we skirt around the issue but, in reality, subsidies exist largely to protect and encourage food production.

According to the Commission, the early CAP focused

“on encouraging better agricultural productivity so that consumers had a stable supply of affordable food”.

Although, with environmentally sound farming coming to the fore, the connection between subsidy and production has been—at least at face value—apparently severed, does not that initial driver still remain? I accept that the existing system, which is based on historical criteria and is biased against new entrants, is skewed and should be rebalanced, so my question is this: What guarantee do we have that fairer distribution will do what we want?

Provided that active agriculture takes place, justification can be found for moving to area-based payments, even though the English experience has shown that such a move has its difficulties. However, as George Lyon told the committee,

“a move to an area-based payments system could drain a whole lot of money out of productive agriculture”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee, 30 November 2011; c 444.]

if subsidy is provided without some tangible return being secured. I would be interested to hear the views of the cabinet secretary, on whose watch Scotland’s food and drink has flourished, on how we can safeguard and build on existing production levels. After all, we must be concerned about this. If any reduction in support to areas such as Angus leads to a drop in production, what assurance do we have that the situation will be mitigated through more money to less favoured areas?

We need a proper regional framework that allows Scotland to set deliverable and appropriate criteria in different areas and to target payments flexibly across the regions in order to maximise return on subsidies while providing better support to vulnerable farming areas. We must not have a set-up that disincentivises efficient farming. Instead of working to some uniform diktat, we should approach the issue on the basis of what we are trying to achieve and how we might achieve it.

Although the move in the CAP to link pillar 1 subsidies to implementation of agreed greening measures is, in principle, welcome, the problem is in how we implement greening without jeopardising food production. As others have said, a prescriptive one-size-fits-all approach across the European Union is not what is required if we are to achieve the ambitions that we should have in this regard. In evidence to the committee, Alan Boulton of the Tenant Farmers Association said:

“measures need to be regionally appropriate, and to deliver some green environmental benefits”.—[Official Report, Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee, 23 November 2011; c 402.]

Other members have highlighted examples in that respect.

However, let us be clear: it is not enough for the agricultural sector to say that it recognises that the CAP needs to be greened and to embrace the principle; it needs to act. We should be in no doubt that agriculture, which is reckoned to be responsible for about 20 per cent of Scotland’s greenhouse gas emissions, must—willingly or otherwise—contribute to cutting them.

There needs to be better use of fuel, feed and fertilisers and we need to encourage innovative measures such as the filter fences that were designed by the James Hutton Institute and the Scottish Agricultural College and which have been, and remain, on trial in Angus. These fences can be installed for limited periods to trap harmful silt following the growing of tatties or other vegetables; I understand that the indications are that they might be particularly effective on sloping fields. During the initial five-month trial, a 70m-long fence trapped about 70 tonnes of soil and 40kg of phosphate. The cost effectiveness for mitigation of phosphate pollution was estimated to be around £30 per kilogramme. Individuals who are more knowledgeable than I am think that those results compare favourably with the results for many buffer strips. Should implementing such schemes not be considered to be a qualifying measure under the 30 per cent greening top-up?

There have been suggestions from some quarters that we should allow an opt-in system when it comes to greening, but how can Scotland, which has set leading climate change targets, go along with allowing a section of the farming sector to ply its trade in a way that does not pay regard to the environment while still receiving substantial public subsidy?

It should be acknowledged that, to a greater or lesser extent, many farmers are already seeking to be environmentally responsible. Right across the board, we need buy-in to the greening of the CAP, albeit with the assurance that what we sign up to will do what it says on the tin.

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