Rural Affairs and Islands Committee 17 December 2025
I want to go back to something that George Burgess said. We are continuing the scheme, which is to do with the fact that English producers could access the Scottish budget. That is not catastrophic, but it is concerning that they could tap into the budget. However, there is an exclusivity in the programme, because market gardeners or direct-to-sales people cannot get into the schemes.
10:15George Burgess spoke about the requirements for a £1 million turnover and for a minimum of five producer organisations. I think that there is also a requirement to contribute 100 per cent, or at least 75 per cent, of your production to the producer organisation. If you have a direct-to-sales set up and already sell direct to your customers, that will not work for you.
People are trying to access the funding, because it provides the support around production planning, quality improvement, and so on that would help them to develop and grow. However, they cannot access that because the producer organisation requirement does not fit their business model. More and more people are selling direct to the market or are small-scale market gardeners who produce locally. I know that the minister is very fond of farmers’ markets in Scotland, as he was involved in setting up the first one.
We have the design of an SSI. The minister is saying that the scheme is working for the three POs that support a number of farmers, but it is excluding many other people who are doing the best that they can and are struggling with climate and nature challenges. They also feeding people in Scotland; they are involved in the good food nation resilience that we really need. For me, that is the issue.
I also want to flag up the implication that, if you are not in a PO, you do not want to collaborate; I do not think that that is true. Some small producers cannot be in producer organisations and are incredibly collaborative. Some are in parts of Scotland where the geography makes it difficult to collaborate in some of the ways that POs would ask of them. I hear the need to pass the SSI, but I am concerned about why we are hurrying to do so. If there are existing contracts and the existing POs are okay for another 18 months or so—