Meeting of the Parliament 24 January 2017
I will not at this point. I am sorry; I do not have much time.
I am convinced that there are large swathes of land in Scotland where sheep have already gone off the hill. Those areas have not been planted and are basically abandoned. They are a valuable resource and could be a real source of income for the landowner, but they are being wasted.
I agree with much of what James Mackinnon says in his report, but I disagree with his suggestion to have accredited agents who have the authority to certify planting applications. I believe that that decision needs to be taken by the FCS, but the FCS needs to tell its staff to be decisive and get on with it. I agree that informing and engaging communities should happen earlier and should be proportionate to the scale and impact of any scheme.
Although subsidies cover the first 10 years of planting, it takes decades more for trees to become mature enough to be valuable and to provide real income for the grower. How do we support farmers who are, in effect, losing income from their farmland over a long period?
Perhaps, when the cabinet secretary presents the draft forestry bill to Parliament, he will consider ways in which we could encourage the growth of farm woodland. That would assist in making farmers less dependent on volatile food prices by diversifying their businesses, and is vital if we are to deliver our tree-planting targets.
Brexit undoubtedly poses a challenge for funding new forests post-2020, but the answer is simple: the money must be allocated. Reports tell us that we are on course to import nearly 80 per cent of our timber needs by 2050. We must do better than that, so it is vital that we act now to ensure a strong forestry production sector for the future. Of course, we must ensure that we are planting the right trees in order that we create forest that is of real value for sawmills and will not just end up as expensive firewood.
Since around 2005, we have failed to meet our target of 10,000 hectares and, unfortunately, two thirds of the woodland that we have planted has been hardwood, which has limited industrial use. Those species are not the trees that our sawmills require; the failure to plant sufficient high-quality pine forests should have been seen much earlier and measures taken to rebalance planting. I am thankful that that has now been done.
I am fully on board with focusing on Sitka planting, as is outlined in Jim Mackinnon’s report, but we cannot just roll out Sitka and ignore other commercial species. There are clear advantages to Sitka. Its rotation age is only 40 years, rather than 80 years, as is the case with Scots pine and larch. However, I fully recognise that the days of blanket planting of a single species are gone, and that a well-designed forest will have open spaces and different varieties, in order to encourage biodiversity.