Meeting of the Parliament 23 September 2015
I think that we all agree that the agricultural sector is facing extremely challenging times. Crofters and farmers in the Highlands and Islands were already facing challenges, and the weather this summer has made those even worse. Feedstuff cannot be grown, which means that it needs to be bought in. The poor season has affected growing all over Scotland, which means that feed will be expensive and in short supply. As we have heard, for people who live in the islands, the shipping cost of feed is prohibitive.
Breeding has been affected by a lack of grass. Lambs are smaller, and there have been fewer multiple births, which again impacts on profitability. All that is happening when the sector debt is extremely high and has increased by more than 4 per cent in the past year.
Agriculture is very important in the Highlands and Islands. Crofting has kept people in our remote and rural communities, but that is now threatened because of the difficulties of making a living from agriculture in the area. Crofting law has been reformed to tackle those difficulties, but that seems to involve tinkering around the edges rather than making a lasting difference.
The bottom line is the need to make a living. If changes in the law do not make it easier to make a living, they are absolutely useless. The Government remains deaf to the real issues that face crofting. If young people cannot see a future, they will not stay in their communities. Last week, crofters in Sutherland called on the cabinet secretary to look at the funding of crofting and hill farms and asked for it to be on a level playing field with funding in the rest of the UK, where farmers in the sector receive over 12 times more in subsidy payments.