 Rach Mendiel. Welcome to the fifth meeting of the Rural Affairs Islands and Natural Consider bigger Committee in 2023. We are no longer the Rural Affairs Islands and Natural Environment Committee and the Royal Affairs and Natural Environment Committee, well done if we're those who are spotted out, we're now the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee. Before we begin I can ask all those using electronic devices to ensure they are switched to silent. Mae'r ffordd y gallu oes yn cyfnogiadau ffordd ar gyfer y cyfurdiad yng Nghymru yng Nghymru i gymcydddiant i gyd yn gilydd, a'n eu ddod i willaidd yn brydgol am maesgliadau eich cyfurdiad. Mi roi'r ffordd, ddweud. Y cwmhaenartd bryddiant yng Nghymru yn ei ddigon o gyurfiedig yng Nghymru. Mae'r ffordd fel gwasanaeth o hyd wedi ddym ni'n ffordd o gyd yn gwybodol yn gwybodol. We have a number of sessions organised and visits planned to inform us ahead of our scrutiny of the agriculture bill expected to be laid after the summer. I would like to start the meeting by inviting all the participants to introduce themselves and set out their views of the key challenges and vision for the future of agricultural policy. I can ask you to do that in less than three minutes. I know that that is a big ask, but we do have plenty of opportunity to explore your concerns a little bit further as we move into the session. Once all the participants have spoken, I will ask members to pose some questions and pick out some of the key themes that we have identified within our papers. First of all, I will start on my right, Donald MacKinnon, who is the Scottish Crofters Federation Rep, to kick off, Donald. I am Donald MacKinnon, crofter from the Isle of Lewis and chair of the Scottish Crofting Federation. Crofting is obviously a unique system in Scottish agriculture, a unique system of land tenure with its own set of challenges, but it also has a lot of opportunities. Crofters are already delivering for biodiversity on climate and, importantly, on maintaining the rural economy in some of the most fragile and peripheral areas of the country. It is that that we want to see supported as the agricultural bill goes forward and as agricultural policy is developed, that we have a support system in place that is accessible to crofters and other small-scale producers and that where conditions are brought in, that those are proportionate to the scale of the business and give access to these businesses to participate in what will be a changing process. We are not saying that all crofters are perfect at the moment, so where change is required, we want that change to be supported and done fairly. We have called for, along with many other organisations in the past few months and years, to see more detail from the Government on proposals. It was good to see the route map that was published last week, but there are still some emissions that are particularly relevant to crofting, such as detail on how common grazing will fit in and detail on payment structures, and particularly on support to the less favoured area and on successors to the ELFAS scheme. I will leave it there just now. That was a good example of time-keeping to kick off. Stephen Young Thank you for having me today. I think that largely Donald has covered quite a lot of the points that I was going to cover. I would echo Stephen Young from Scottish Land and Estates. Our members carry out a range of land management activities right across Scotland, and what I would say is future agricultural policy is absolutely crucial for rural Scotland as a whole. This is not just about agriculture. This is about all the things that we want to see happen, including supporting jobs and rural communities. If land is also to play its part or its full part in dealing with climate and biodiversity issues, we need really clear signals and values to come from future legislation. An integrated approach to land management is key. If we deal with things in silos, we have agriculture in one box, we have biodiversity in another, we have the forestry in another, things will go nowhere, so we have to have an overarching view of how things will work. We also have to have businesses that are able to be agile and have the confidence to invest in what is required to deliver all those benefits and to deliver, particularly in terms of biodiversity and climate, at the scale that is required for us to meet the targets that we have set for us. We need clarity of thought, clarity of view and long-term opinions and views of how things are going to be. That will give the confidence to invest as well. Food production is hugely important. We are dealing in very competitive markets, so we have to make sure that Scotland is in a position to compete in those markets so that we have the scale of production that allows that critical mass, we have the added value happening in Scotland and we can retain as much of that value within Scotland as we can, which again then gets fed back to rural communities and benefits everyone in the rural areas. My final point is in that theme of siloed thinking. We have a plethora of different policy areas covering land management at the moment, having a really clear programme of what the hierarchy of what those plans are and how they all fit together would be hugely beneficial for land managers right across Scotland and really bring that clarity to bear. Nares Scotland is a food organisation. We look across the whole food system and we are very involved with the Good Food Nation Act. With the agricultural policy it has got two main functions. One is to provide healthy, sustainable food for the Scottish population and the other is to restore climate and nature. We want to see a Scotland where we eat more of what we produce and we produce more of what we eat. We are really clear that the agriculture bill has to be joined up. You have a big job as a committee joining up agriculture policy with food policy but also with national environment, with circular economy, with community wealth building, with public health. There is a big join up exercise that Parliament needs to do in the context of this agriculture bill. We want to see a greater diversity of crops growing in Scotland. We want to see more stuff growing in glasshouses. We want to see a wider variety of crops growing on our farms but also a greater variety of foodstuffs of food that is made in Scotland from Scottish ingredients. At the moment about 5% of the brands on Scottish shelves come from Scotland so could we do better on that in terms of processing and could we have a greater diversity of producers, more urban farming, more diversity of producers in our rural areas, more new entrants, more women coming in, more new scots, a wider range of people coming into farming should be part of our objectives in agriculture policy. We want to see a much stronger local food economy and we have argued for some of the money from the agriculture policy to go to local authorities to support their local food economies, indirectly supporting farmers by bringing, creating a greater demand for local produce. If you look at the American Farm Bill, for example, 80% of the money goes to cities, to nutrition programmes, it doesn't go to farmers but it sucks potentially, sucks in demand for local produce. We want to see much greater emphasis on circularity in the Scottish food system, we have a linear food system where we have inputs and outputs, we need to close those loops on nitrogen, we need to close the loops on feed, waste feed from the whisky industry needs to be going to our pigs and chickens and salmon, it needs not to be going to anerobic digestion, we need to be closing the circular loop on resources. We want to see low opportunity cost livestock approach in Scotland, saying let's have livestock to eat the things that humans can't eat, whether that's pigs and chickens eating waste food, eating byproducts but similarly cattle eating grass and trees which is what they're good at. So having an approach which says yes we want some livestock but we want those livestock to be efficient in circular economy terms. We want to see a halving of emissions from agriculture while maintaining production and that doesn't mean producing the same that we've produced already but producing the same amount of human nutrition and that probably does mean diverting some of our crops that are currently going to feed cattle into feeding humans so having a move back towards a grass-fed approach. Other people cover some of the other things we want to see, we want to see organics as normal, we want to see a lot more trees in the right place and to see a change in the landscape when the next 10 or 20 years in Scotland we're trees and farming are much much more integrated, we want to see positive and welfare as an explicit effective agriculture policy moving beyond negative you know not doing things for animals towards a positive good life for animals and most of all we want to see a refocusing of all our resources in terms of research, in terms of training, in terms of advice on this new paradigm, the new type of agriculture. So seeing a real shift in the way our universities work, our advisers work but also really investing in knowledge extended between farmers because what we've seen as narratives is that farmers want to do this and they're willing to make changes but they need support to do that. Thank you. Thank you Pete. Dr Gareth Haley. Do I need to press anything? No, you'll not need to operate the mic. Yeah, good morning. I'm Gareth Haley, don't bother about the doctor. I'm the incoming president of the British Veterinary Association Scottish branch and so obviously livestock is our focus. Just looking at the, from our perspective, the following on from what Pete said, obviously livestock are very much in the frame and part of the concern and the focus on climate change and a just transition I think are also key in that sector as well. There's a responsibility in all sectors to respond to that. We're very pleased as an organisation to have greater clarity recently on the importance of animal health and welfare. These obviously from our professional perspective are really important and the vet and farmer relationship are key to that working properly so it's good to see that that's there and we as a professional are ready and willing to help. We similarly have concerns about food and food chain resilience and also trade because we are, although Scotland's a small country, trade is a huge part of what happens and so ensuring that that process happens effectively and vets again are involved in that process too. I won't say any more at this stage but obviously we'll open up in the discussion. Hello, my name is Ross. I am a working dairy farmer from the south west, 200 dairy cows. I come here, we've been organic for more than 20 years now and I come here to represent the Scottish Organic Stakeholders Group. I'm current chair of that. You've read a paper, one of the things we want to do is, you know, Oscar Wilde said, talked about, I love the dairy that speaks its name, it sometimes feels like organics is the thing that you can't talk about without causing controversy. We want to mainstream organic farming in Scotland. We welcome the increase and the continuation of the schemes, the sport schemes. We welcome the lift and the cap in the area. We want to see organics brought into the, the documents that come out need to mention organics. We have to get the Scottish Government to realise that the targets they want to reach in terms of climate change in terms of biodiversity. Organics takes the box of all of these things under a legally binding framework. It's not like regenerative or grass-fed, which don't have any actual certification bodies behind them. We feel as if we've been pioneering the things that the Government wants for a long time, including at home school, zero antibiotic use in the dairy herd now. Those are things that the conventional sector are following on with. We're looking to get our movement across the board, fruit and veg, one of the biggest growth sectors, more time talking about organics as part of mainstream agriculture. Good morning. I'm Douglas Well, managing director of the Scottish Tenant Farmers Association. We're a membership organisation dedicated to representing and advising tenant farmers in Scotland. There's roughly 6,000 agricultural tendencies in Scotland covering just under 20 per cent of the farmed area, and that's if you exclude seasonal lets, so it's a sizable proportion of the farmed area in Scotland. We cover, our members cover a full range of farming types, predominantly though tenant farmers tend to be livestock farmers in the less favour area, which presents its own particular challenges. In terms of priorities from an STFA perspective, we're looking to make sure that we've got a dynamic and profitable tenant farm sector going forward. We've got to always remember that farming tenants are first and foremost people. They're running businesses in rural Scotland, playing the part and delivering those objectives in terms of quality food production and the other public goods that farmers deliver. Within the context of today, we are determined to ensure that the specific circumstances of tenants are catered for in the new legislation and the new measures are coming forward. There is scope for potential exclusion, depending on the detail of the design there, and making sure that tenants are part of the just transition. On the top of that, you'll be aware that there was a section in the consultation about modernisation of agricultural tendencies, so we need to make sure that agricultural tendency legislation going forward is fit for purpose to help us to deliver those previous two priorities. Like the other organisations that have said, we welcome the route map and the clarity that we've received there. We are still as an organisation frustrated on two fronts, with firstly the lack of detail, and also our ability or opportunity to engage with the policymaking process. It's something that we've been talking about for quite some time, that co-design and co-development process, as an organisation where we're struggling to engage. Hopefully, we can sort that. We have specific concerns just in terms of the conditionality that is going to be coming in, in terms of it being too onerous and too expensive, just the uptake might be very, very low, which is poor in terms of delivering Scottish Government objectives. Disaster is from an individual point of view, because livestock farmers in particular are very reliant on support payments, and potentially catastrophic for the Scottish economy going forward. I'll leave it there just now. I'm Chloe McCulloch. I'm the principal consultant for programmes at SAC Consulting for part of SRUC, and SAC Consulting delivers the farm advisory service on behalf of the Scottish Government, and I'm the programme leader. I see the challenges for industry, and also the opportunities from industry, from climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, food production and so on. There are clearly chunky challenges there, but I suppose my focus is on the people. I have no doubt that our industry is fit for those challenges. We have resilience, we have enthusiasm, we have skill, we have a committed group of people. I have no doubt that we have the capacity to meet those challenges and to seize the opportunities that those provide, but I think that it's really vital that we have a strong well-resourced advisory programme to support that, because that will make the difference between the changes that are coming feeling for individuals like something that they are not in control of and are potential opportunities that they're not able to take and instead turn those into opportunities for businesses to progress and thrive and for individuals to feel like they have control over that process. It's not just about giving individuals that control, and I think there's a generational thing here. We have the opportunity to make a generation feel like there was a change and they were in control of it and they took the opportunity versus something that has happened to them that will stifle innovation going forward. I think that a strong advisory programme will also support the pace of change that's required. We talk about the need for certainty and I agree that we absolutely need certainty for our confidence in long-term planning. We need to support people, but a strong advisory programme will underpin all of that. Thanks, chair. My name is Ian Muirhead. I'm the AIC Scotland policy manager. AIC Scotland represents the agri supply industry in Scotland. That covers the sectors of livestock feeds, fertilisers, seeds, crop protection products and arable marketing. Our members are a crucial part of the agri supply chain, providing farmers with key inputs and also, importantly, advice for efficient crop and livestock production and therefore contributing directly to the underpinning of food production and food security. Just for my opening remarks, it's probably really important when we're discussing future agricultural policy to set it in the context in which we're discussing it. As I'm sure everybody will be aware, Friday marks a year since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. That's obviously the context in which we discussed this and those impacts from last February in terms of the global supply chain continue to be felt. One of the things that those events highlighted was both the necessity and the importance of investing in our domestic agricultural industry from a food security perspective but also alongside the many other goals and measures that future policy seeks to address. I guess what I'm trying to say is that food production is no longer an optional extra when we talk about agri policy. It is absolutely central and must be central to policy considerations going forward. I guess one of the other reasons for that is when we look at other policy goals and aspirations, the delivery mechanism for everything, emissions reduction improvements in biodiversity, nature restoration, the wider food processing sector, our members and their businesses as farmers and having them on the ground to be able to deliver on the objectives that are decided upon and agreed by yourselves and by the Government. Those are some of the key points that we wanted to highlight. Dr Andrew Midgely. My name is Andrew Midgely. I'm Senior Land Use Policy Officer at RSPB Scotland but I'm here today representing Scottish Environment Link. Link is a collection of organisations of over 40 member bodies that work together towards the common goal of improving environmental sustainability in Scotland. Specifically with regard to land use, we want to see sustainable land use in Scotland. At the moment, land use is unsustainable. At the moment, we have a context where the land itself is a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture, which is a separate category, is the third largest source of emissions. At the same time, we have a biodiversity crisis. We have a metric called the Biodiversity Intackness Index, which puts Scotland at the 28th from the bottom on 240 countries across the globe. What it tells us is that we've lost nearly half of our historic biodiversity. The Biodiversity Intackness Index was created by scientists at the Natural History Museum, where they scored 240 countries around the world and recorded the degree to which they have maintained that some historic biodiversity in Scotland was 28th from bottom, with a score of 56%, which means that we've lost nearly half of our historic biodiversity. Agriculture policy has a huge role to play in this. We want to see the Government continue to invest in and support farming, but we do want the Government to change how it does it. We believe that the policy needs to change so that the emphasis on climate and nature increases, and that we're able to move forward in such a way that there is not a apparent contradiction between food production and nature and climate. Those things can be addressed at the same time. Key parts of that will be a strategic approach to land use change, so embedding agricultural policy within wider policies to do with land use, such as forestry, and thinking about how the whole picture fits together. A key part of that is also around the just transition, making sure that we think about how we accommodate change over time and how we support the industry through that process of change. Thank you, Andrew. We've also got three participants joining us remotely. First, Susan Robertson. Thank you. Susan Robertson, the regional officer of United Union, on social conditionality, the obligations on those who receive direct payments. Under the SNP, if it achieves independence, and if it was to set up an independent trading relationship, it would obviously have to abide by the cap, but without independence as part of the UK. There is still a question that is yet unanswered about UK divergence, that is, will UK farm employers have an advantage over EU farm employers? The UK farm employer will not have the same explicit link between subsidies and labour rights compliance. Will it be wholly possible to add to the agricultural bill at this point to make the connection between taxpayer money and fair work? In the long document on delivering our vision for Scottish agriculture, it is really disappointing that, in that very long document, there are little on workers. The section on the Scottish agriculture wages board in fair work first has little detail. The distribution of direct payments, we would like to see that to be fairer, as the case is now. Smaller farm enterprises are struggling and are at risk of going under, but, at the same time, they exist cheek by cheek with some of the richest farm and enterprises in the country, which also benefit from lucrative diversification such as shooting and fishing. There is wealth in farming on evenly spread and very little trick down. Lastly, we would fully endorse the report by Caroline Robinson. She wrote a report entitled, The assessment of the risks of human trafficking for forced labour on the UK seasonal workers pilot, which you can comment on further. A lot of her findings are cases that unite here on a regular basis from my workers who are employed on farms. Thank you, Susan. I now move to Denise Walton. Thank you. Can everybody hear me all right? Yes. Yeah. Great. Thank you, chair. Thank you for inviting the nature farming friendly network. I do evidence today. I am the Scottish chair. I farm in South East Berwickshire. Our vision is that Scottish farming becomes a force of recovery and repair with production of nutritious food through the adoption of agroecological principles working with nature on every farm and that this is supported and supported quickly and rewarded with a just transition. Do we have eight principles asked? We welcome the shift to a 14-year support system, but we would like to see that air-based subsidies are phased out within a transition period, but that the transition starts ASAP. With other signees of the climate emergency response group, we call for 200 million pounds to be spent over the next 10 years for the co-design industry-led partnership of regenerative and agroecological learning, research and development and regional peer-to-peer knowledge transfer. We call for targeted support for farms and crofters who farm 40 per cent of our valuable high-nature value landscapes. We want to see equity for small-scale farmers at one hectare, possibly even less, and a small farmer scheme that will bring greater diversity into our industry. We want to see whole farm plans rewarded and that they should be ambitious and that they will become tools for revealing the link between profitability, biodiversity and working with nature. We want to see if forestry integrated much more clearly with farming and that tree planting within the whole farm plan is part of national targets for agroforestry and hedger support under tiers 2 and 3. We must see food and farming policy coherence to realise the ambition of our good food nation. We need to have regional and local procurement from farmers who are practising established nature-based farming processes. Finally, the bill must support and incentivise reduction in reliance on petrochemical high-emission inputs and that they should be time-bound reduction targets. We are now going to move to Dr Tara White. I know that she is having some connection problems, so fingers crossed that we can keep you online, Tara. I think that the connection is a bit better today. Hi, everyone. I am Tara White from the Land Workers Alliance. We represent farmers and crofters who are using agroecological and more sustainable practices on their farms, as well as land workers and workers on farms who are interested in sustainable transitions. A lot of our members have already begun the process of transitioning towards a more regenerative and agroecological farming system, often with very little Government support at all and in the face of quite serious challenges, but I have led the way in showing what can be done in a Scottish context. The first thing that I would like to focus on is the transition aspect and the need for a large-scale transformation of our farming system. We would advocate that transition on changing the agricultural practices on farms so that we are not viewing any more nature versus farming, but looking at ways in which we can support nature and farming with nature on all of our farms, including reducing inputs, improving agrobiol diversity, implementing agroforestry and regenerative grazing practices, for example, which can support biodiversity and sequester carbon without reducing food production. We might involve shifts in what we produce and how we produce it, but we believe very strongly that farming and nature can go together and farming can support nature. The transition will require a strong advisory service and support system, including peer-to-peer, field sharing and training, to realise the scale of change that we need to see. The other thing that I wanted to talk about was the justice element of the just transition. A transition to a more sustainable food system needs to be just for everybody. At the moment, I would like to echo some of what we have heard about the huge inequality that exists within the farming sector. There is well than farming, but that is not equally distributed. The current payment system is making that worse and it is not making it better. We welcome the inclusion of some legislation around workers' rights in the agriculture bill, but I think that that could be strengthened further with the addition of social conditionality as well as environmental conditionality to conditions on receiving payments. The other thing that we would like to emphasise is that a lot of our members are small-scale farmers and crofters, and they often produce large amounts of food for local food systems, pioneer sustainable practices and help with community development in rural areas, and under the current system receive very little support to do that. We would first like to see a shift away from an area-based payment system, particularly in terms of the income support tier of the proposed agriculture bill. We would like to emphasise that having more land should not mean that you have a higher income, and that this is discriminatory against smaller-scale farmers. We will shift away over time from an area-based payment system, beginning with a mandatory redistributive payment, as we are seeing in the new cap system, and a capping of payments at a certain hectare age. We would also like to see a removal of the minimum hectare age to receive funding and grants, because we have a lot of members who, on much smaller than three hectares—for example, one or two hectares—are providing fruit and veg for 100 families all year round. There should be some support for people who are delivering this kind of public good. The other thing that I would like to mention is the diversity of farming. In the vision for agriculture, we welcome the focus on improving diversity and supporting new entrants. We would like to see more commitment in the legislation and in the agriculture bill to supporting new entrants and to improving the diversity in the farming network. Across our membership, a very high proportion of our members are women and a high proportion are new entrants. We have a good understanding of the challenges that are faced. We would be happy to speak more about how they could be supported. I would also like to echo what various other people have said about the need for more joined-up thinking about food and agriculture and land use and environment, because there are quite a lot of separate pieces of legislation. It would be good to have an understanding of how those are going to come together going forward. I have just put in record that there is a significant absentee here today, and you will have noticed that NFUS does not have a representative. That was, unfortunately, due to a diary clash. We will make efforts to get NFUS here in the future, because their partners' discussion is obviously significant. We are now going to move on to a more open discussion. The idea of this is to hear from the stakeholders and, for once, probably not from the elected members. Our role is to stimulate or be the catalyst for discussion on various topics that we think are going to have significance as we move forward. Could you raise your hand if you wish to be involved in the discussion at any point? I will bring in your name and those who are accessing us remotely, if you could put an R in the chat. The clerks will make sure that I am aware that you want to speak. When you kick off with looking at basic payments and other income support mechanisms, and Jim Fairlale of the first question. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning, panel. Well done at the clerks, for bringing in such a diverse range of voices around the table today. That should be interesting. I am going to turn to you first. I am not going to ask you to answer right away. I am just going to put this in your head, because I am going to go to one or two others as well. Then, hopefully, the conversation will just spark from there. Given the membership that you have, you are probably one of the more key barometers of what the profitability and possibly mental health of the farming community are right now, given the fact that you are trading with them on a day-by-day basis, and that buying and selling of product is going to be vital and important to see how resilient the industry is. Bear that thought in your mind at the moment. Ross, you talked about the organic sector should become more mainstream. I remember days when loads of guys went into organic, because it was easy to do, they got a five-year payment and they dropped out immediately after the organic process was finished, because they couldn't find a market for it. Should organic be what we are producing without premium, or should there still be a premium, and will people pay that premium? Hold that thought and we will come back to it if that is okay. Douglas MacDonald is saying that the tenant farming community, the account for 6,000 tenants covering 20 per cent of the land, is not taking up the opportunities that are currently available. You are sitting beside Chloe, who is there to provide that support. I will start off with that, if that is okay, because you have a £600 million pot every year that everybody wants a piece of, and I am just trying to work out how is this going to be divvied up, starting off with the agriculture community as it is currently. I will kick off with you. From our perspective, you mentioned mental health in the agricultural industry. I think that there is a general consensus that there is a major issue there. There is a lot of depressed farmers out there, there is a lot of anxiety, and there is a lot of loneliness. One of the things that we are doing is working with RSABI and they are developing a training course for mental health first aid, because as you have rightly highlighted, our members are out on farm on a daily or weekly basis, so they are a good barometer to pick up when there is a problem and refer individuals to various sources of help. I think that that is very important. It is good in the context of, when we are discussing this, we need to be cognisant of the fact that there are people out there and it causes real worrying concern with the lack of clarity about what happens next for them and their businesses. I just wanted to rewind a wee bit. In many ways, there are lots of good things about agriculture in Scotland and the wider UK as it stands in terms of our sustainability credentials. If you think about it, we are talking about the circular economy. In many ways, agriculture is the original circular economy. If you think about upland production underpinned by direct payments of suckled calves that are then finished in lowland arable farms and the manure is essential for soil health to produce malting barley that produces malt, which produces whisky, which produces a massive amount of revenue for Scotland and the UK and is a great export of success story, that is an example. As Pete had mentioned, the by-product of that whisky making process is sustainable protein in the form of draft for livestock, so there is a good loop there that also we do not want to disrupt because it is a success story for Scotland and for our members as well. One of the problems, an unintended consequence of policy, is because of renewable support for AD, massive amounts of historically sustainable protein that would go to feed livestock that became human food now goes as a waste product into AD plants. What that means is that it is higher feed costs for Scottish farmers, UK farmers as well indeed, and you are having to import or look for other sources of sustainable protein. It is an example of why we need to get the detail right and make sure that we do not create more problems than may or may not exist currently. What is profitability look to you right now, look like in the farming community right now, because mental health is directly linked to profitability? Others will want to comment on that, but it very much will vary between individual farm businesses and their circumstances. For example, the dairy sector has been enjoying higher milk prices, but that looks like global markets are softening. At the same time, there is a cost price squeeze there with increased costs for inputs. From a positive perspective, when we are looking at things like crop nutrition so fertilizer, I have to be careful what we say here, but if you look at the gas futures markets, which are an indication of the costs of fertilizer, they are coming, they are significantly reducing from their peak in 2022. From that perspective, there are reasons for optimism. Again, there is just a general volatility, and if you look back to earlier in 2022, there was extreme volatility in the grain market. Obviously, that makes it difficult both for farmers but for feed companies to lock in a set price. Likewise, if you are a fertilizer manufacturer, there is a really high risk in a falling gas market of when do you lock in to buy your gas to run your plant to produce fertilizer? If you do it at the wrong stage, the price is uneconomic for you as a producer, and likewise, if farmers cannot afford to buy it, then that is a knock-on impact upon their ability to continue to produce. Then you get the issue of scaling back of production, malting barley, and all those sort of impacts. I hope that slightly answered your question. I might bother myself anyway. Let's back a little bit. Can we just focus on direct payments going forward and income support and your views on an element of direct payments that are proposed to be retained as we go forward? Ross, you were asked about organics and direct payments. Can you give us your views on that and maybe open up more, if we focus on future support and direct payments? All Jim's question was very pertinent because we did see historically a Government supported expansion of organics 20-odd years ago, and there was oversupply in the market, especially sheep. That happened in Wales as well. Wales made the right mess of it by promoting organic products. As you say, a lot of health farmers thought that it would be quite easy as it is to convert to organic because they don't use a lot of inputs anyway. When the payments ended, the market wasn't very good, so they gave up. We're at a whole different stage than we were 20 years ago. Climate change and biodiversity loss are a whole different thing. We want the Government to take on board the idea of an organic action plan so that the thing is joined up. Payments are not a panacea. The market has to say that there is no right to a premium in milk or anything else. There has not been a premium for organic milk in the last two years. That is a market driven thing. The Government can't do anything about that. It is certainly true. It is difficult to persuade people to convert if there is not a premium. On the other hand, the smaller farmers like the land workers alliance people have shown that they are quite profitable in box schemes and vegetable schemes. I forget what the figure was, someone feeding 100 families from a hectare of land or something like that. Will the Scottish Government not just say, right, right, throw subsidies to increase the land area, or just having land-based targets that are quite easy to measure, but they are not always the best measure? I think that there has to be thought about funding, supply chains and helping with local procurement. One has to follow the other. There is no use of having local procurement if the supply is not there, because they cannot work like that. They must have guaranteed supply. On the other hand, there is no use of promoting organic agriculture if the market is not there. It has to be there. Governments cannot build abattoirs or whatever, but they can put support in the right places. For example, there was support for abattoirs from the Scottish Government a while ago, the two sisters, and also the pig industry at quite a lot of support. Now we find that there is no abattoir slot on organic in Scotland. That is a chicken and egg thing. If there are no abattoirs, people will not produce organic beef. If you go to support abattoirs, ask them to at least keep their organic certification there, because at least when the demand increases, the abattoirs will do it. That would not cost them an awful lot to just keep that option on the table when they get support for other reasons. We are looking for targeted support and thought-out support, not just area targets. Area targets are great, but the land in the States folk know that there is a huge difference in the quality of land. In doing area payments, it has to be looked at along with the market and along with supply chains. The change of people's eating habits and the export market, wherever we are headed here, organics have a huge potential for exports. The consumption of organic food in the continent is double what it is in Britain. It is taken as a given and it is up there. It is just out there. Everybody knows about it and everybody uses it. I have got people who have indicated comments, if you do not mind them. Thank you. I have got Gareth Hadley and then Andrew Midgley. Just a couple of comments on that. The basic question that I was thinking about in this was that, if we are dealing with area-based payments, those payments do not work. What we would consider useful is outcome-based payments. There is a drive towards what you do and the outcome of what you do. From our perspective, because animal health and welfare is key to what we do, it is also linked in with a whole lot of the other things that we have been hearing about. I would also argue that there is an aspect of farmers' mental health there, because profitability is literally the bottom line. However, for a variety of reasons, farmers cannot do what they perceive they ought to be doing, and that includes looking after livestock. Farmers are hugely driven by looking after their animals. If they cannot do that, that is a potential mental health issue. Organic, from when I was in practice a million years ago in Oxfordshire, about a third of our clients at one time were organic, including the current CEO of the Soil Association. We had a spectrum of clients who were highly driven, highly motivated, through to those who were motivated by the premium. The issue is that, if you have people who want to go into the organic sector for the wrong reasons, it will not work. You have to be actually bonded to the principles of... I am not knocking, absolutely not knocking, organic principles. I see those and hear those. However, if you do not do it for the right reasons, the wheels will literally fall off, and we saw that multiple times. I will bring Ross in briefly to respond to that. We have seen that in the dairy sector. There is one farmer who shall be nameless. The last time the price was low in organic dairy, he bailed out and went back to conventional, and that is just in time for the price to collapse in the conventional sector. He had to reconvert his farm and went back to organic farming. You have got to take a much longer view than that. It is a long-term job. Farm is a long-term job. Anyway, organics especially, yes, you have got to be committed to it. Not blindly, not some ideologue who is going to totally say that black is white, when evidence is against you, you have to go with the science. It is almost good to have shown that we can produce milk without antibiotics in the dairy herd, without increasing replacement rates, a hasten to add, because that is normally what people say will happen. However, we have proven that we can do it. The conventional sector is coming behind a lot of talk in the mainstream farming press about reducing the use of antibiotics. Yes, you have got to be committed to it. There should probably be something in there in the payment system to show at least a level of commitment. Usually, you get the five years at least, but it should go further than that. It should be outcomes as well. You cannot dictate the market. It is impossible. You cannot say that you must have a premium. I am sure that organic farmers do say that, but if you do not get a premium, what is the point? The conventional sector was really buoyant in the last few years simply because of global markets. Organics does not operate in global markets like that. It tends to operate in UK, Europe or some of us are selling cheese into America, but it is not a big global market depending on the Chinese. Therefore, it is a different product. Likewise, it is not a guaranteed premium. You have to convince people that it is worth the premium. You have to explain what organic is—no fertiliser. We have shown what can be done without nitrogen. A hue at the Crichton showed very well in conventional farming what can be done with a lot less nitrogen. Certainly, when half the R&D went into organic farming, it goes into conventional farming. The idea that it would be half the yields if we could not feed the world and all that kind of stuff, it is nonsense. We have been farming for 20 years and more and we can grow silage the same as our neighbours with clover and slurry. No nitrogen, none, zilch. I specifically asked the questions that I did and the way that I did to get a baseline of talking about the people who are actually going to be affected by this. That is why I went to Douglas Bell and Chloe McCulloch, because if we are talking about basic payment and income support, a lot of those guys are the ones who will be taking that basic payment and income support and it is not currently working. Can we go back to that bit first before you take it out to the wider? I think that people have indicated that they want to comment on what they have heard before. Jim, can you just let me try and bring everybody in? Thank you. I am sure that Douglas will get the opportunity to speak. I did have people indicating and that is what we are doing. We have a discussion. We are trying to stick to the basic payment and income support topic. It clearly direct support basic payments are really important to the industry and we have to start from that position. It is not a great place to be because it is a high dependency, so the industry is dependent to a large extent on that on-going support. Wherever we go, we have to move carefully because of that, but we have to recognise that we need to reduce that dependency. For Scottish Environment Link, our broad position on direct payments is that there is a poor policy tool. In 2001, we spent £473 million on direct support. That was 77 per cent of the budget. There is relatively little environmental conditionality associated with that. Clearly, in the context of what the Government has acknowledged is a climate and nature emergency, we have to think about how we are spending public money. We need that money to do more acknowledging how important it is for farming, but we need to change how that money is spent so that it delivers more. We support farmers and deliver more against nature and climate. In effect, I disagree with something that Ian said. He said that supporting food was an optional extra. Direct payments got 77 per cent of the budget, but in the same year, the Agri Environment and Climate scheme got 4 per cent of the budget. That is the optional extra at the moment and we need to turn that around. We should not use what terms come support. As Ian said, some farms are profitable without subsidies and some farms are loss making with subsidy. That is not a targeted payment to support farmer incomes. I absolutely agree that some farmers are under a lot of pressure. One of the suggestions that came up in the consultation work that we ran in the autumn was an occupational health service for farmers, which has been there in Sweden for many years. I support farms with mental health absolutely, but I give everybody a check based on the amount of land they own, which is a system that was set up 20 years ago to replace the previous production-based system. It is not a system with any interventional logic at all. It is just a poor use of public money. We need to phase that out, scale it down and target those payments where we need to support farmer incomes, particularly in marginal areas where there are good social or environmental reasons to keep people on the land, but we need a much more targeted scheme. Jim, if I misled you, there is no reluctance on behalf of 10-in-farmers or any other farmers to engage with support payments to the agricultural industry at the moment. My concern is the design of policy measures going forward. Particularly under tier 2, for those who have had a look, there is a potential for those measures to be out-based, as we have heard, possibly based on an income-for-gone basis in terms of the reward. Get into the bottom line. If it does not stack up financially for a farmer, then they are not going to do it. Given the reliance on the support payments that we have heard about, there is a potential major dilemma there that farmers will not engage because it does not make sense to the bank account. That will not help to deliver objectives on any front. It will be potentially catastrophic for that business who will lose a chunk of their support payment and the knock-on effects that we have heard about for the economy. It is not a reluctance just now, Jim. It is a concern that if the design is not appropriate, the engagement from the farming sector might be too low going forward. I just wanted to say about the income support perspective on basic payments. We are certainly very in favour of there being some level of income support. As we have heard, farmers are very reliant on very volatile markets in terms of profitability. That means that there is a huge amount of risk associated with farming, and it is very hard work. That combination means that income support is vital going forward, particularly in terms of mitigating the risks of trying out new practices as we go through transition to more sustainable practice. There are risks involved with that transition, and we need to make sure that everyone has an income to support them through that. I think that what we are seeing at the moment under the basic payment system is not an income support system, and it is just based on how much land you own. That is not income support. It has just been given a check based on how much land you have. That does not support the people who need it most. It supports those who have the most assets. In terms of the large percentage of the money that is currently going into direct payments, the reason that that has been an efficient practice is because of the area-based way of dividing up the money, which means that it is not going to the people who need it most and is going to people who own large amounts of land and have large-scale businesses. I think that it is either more of a universal basic income system for active farmers, which specifically looks at income, or, as Pete was suggesting, a much more targeted approach that looks at where that income support is needed would be far more efficient going forward, and it is also a much fairer assistance. Thank you. I am not sure why you have stopped or you have completed. A lot of what conditionality will hopefully deal with so that it is not just a payment on the area, so it is based on what can be delivered from that. I think that coming back to Kerr's point on outcomes versus practising, outcome is the ideal scenario if people are paid for what actually happens, but there are a lot of shades of grey within that and a lot of the work that we need to do, particularly around biodiversity and climate. Outcomes are fairly long-term things and they are fairly movable, so I think that there will be a requirement to reward outcomes certainly, but also there will be some areas where we are rewarding practice, which we know will eventually lead to the outcome, but it could be a longer-term scenario. That will be required as well. I think that a lot of this comes down to a lot of the conversation that we have had this morning comes down to identifying what is a market good, what can gain a return from the market and what are the things that we want to see happen that do not have a natural market appeal and how are we going to sort that? It is quite a complex one. There are a lot of shades of grey in there, but I think that the steps that have taken so far have helped. On Doug's point about the no-hesidents-to-take-up schemes and things like that, what we have seen in the last year anyway is a real vacuum of information. People have been effectively hearing rumours in the new endo as to what is coming and trying to make decisions based on that, and that makes people very hesitant to make those decisions. Once we have that real clarity and a very clear picture of what is going to happen going forward, you will see people really engaging more strongly, but at the moment they are a bit hesitant to do so because of the lack of knowledge and information. I have got Denise, Chloe and Donald, have all indicated that they want to make a response on that. Thank you very much, chair. I want to respond to Jim, raising the issue of mental wellbeing in relation to farming and then Ian's response. There is growing evidence of the relationship between low-input, low-cost, regenerative farming practices and improving health and wellbeing of farmers who are practicing it, not least. We all know the impact of farm debt on mental health, and I think that this is a consideration that the committee needs to look at is the capacity of farmers weighed down by considerable debt to change. So, there is growing evidence of the relationship between mental wellbeing and agroecological practices. I can respond to the issue of direct payments now, if that would be appropriate, chair. Direct area-based payments do not incentivise change. We are talking about a monumental alignment of our industry to global consensus for the need to respond to the climate and biodiversity emergencies. That is monumental. If we have a farming community that is weighed down by debt, a farming community that feels incapacitated because there is, possibly, insufficient communication of the need to change, we need to do a lot more. The issue with direct and area-based payments is that they tend to embed and force farming by route. We need to incentivise change, but, in that respect, the transition period, which needs to start at pace, needs to start right now to support us in our industry to make the change that we all know that we need to make. I just wanted to add a little to what Stephen said. Clarity will be very important. It is also important that farmers, crofters and other land managers have confidence that the early adopters of practices will not be disadvantaged by having gone early, as opposed to waiting for support to make a change. I would observe that there are lots of farmers who are ready to start making changes, but they are just not sure when to start making those changes. I just wanted to pick up on the point about the basic payment scheme and talking about area-based payments. Certainly, from our perspective, there is a lot wrong with area-based payments and how they are calculated and how that delivers support, but, without a viable option in front of us to replace that, we have focused on our agricultural bill response and the evidence that we have submitted to you on how we can make that system work better for crofters and for smaller producers, based on a lot of the negatives around area-based payments and how the flaws in that system at the moment. In particular, we think that redistribution is something that should be brought in, so the Scottish Government has committed to EU alignment. What is happening in the EU, as Tara mentioned, is that, as part of the new cap, 10 per cent of the total basic payment budget should be redistributed to smaller producers. We are not seeing any suggestion of that at the moment, and it needs to be explored further and looked at. That approach of front-loading is really important to consider so that smaller producers are better supported and that we acknowledge that costs that all farming and crofting businesses have are certainly—there is a disproportionate burden placed on those smaller producers and that they do not have the economies of scale that larger businesses have. At that point, it is also important that we explore capping and whether payments can be capped for those very large businesses that receive the most support. A bit of a defensive area-based support, I suppose, is that it is not perfect, but we can make it work better for producers. At the end of the day, we have to calculate how those payments are delivered somehow, and where we make the changes on the enhanced conditionality that will be added. As you mentioned capping, that will be the next question. As soon as you mentioned capping, I can see hands and eyebrows being raised. Basic payments are such a big topic that we could probably spend two hours discussing on its own. Before we move on, I would quite like to get the views of stakeholders on capping specifically. Please do not feel that you need to put your hand up and make a comment if you do not have anything to add, because time is limited. However, I have Stephen Cymru and then Ian Cymru, who would like to come in specifically to talk about capping. If payments are purely area-based, there is an argument for capping in that. If we are moving to conditionality outcomes based on practice base and we want to achieve scale of benefit for biodiversity, for wildlife, for environment, then capping payments does not make sense, because we want to move faster and go larger and have that landscape scale benefit. The only way that we can do that is by allowing people to develop those projects at scale, so capping would be counterproductive by those metrics. By moving to that outcome and practice-based payment scheme, along with conditionality, there should be no need for capping, because you are awarding benefit that is benefiting society as a whole. I would largely agree with the points that Stephen Cymru has made specifically on capping, just slightly rewinding to support Donald on direct payments. Our view, very much in line with NFUS, is very much about evolution rather than revolution. We have an existing system that directs money to active and productive farmers through the use of conditionalities, which we have talked about as a way in which we can, in the short term and the medium term, continue to ensure stability within the industry that support gets to where it needs to be, but also developing those outcome and action-based strings that are attached to those payments. It is very important that, when you speak to those who deliver the subsidy system on the ground from RIPID, it is about deliverability and the cost of, if you went to a completely different system, the cost of a new software system, to deliver it, reliability, you then get into a whole issue of, if that does not work, you have cash flow issues that affect the whole supply chain, so there are big issues there about that. We would argue for immediate capping as soon as possible to free up funds to invest in some of the transition that some of our colleagues have talked about and to move money into what is now called TF3 and 4 to accelerate the change programme at scale. We cannot run the next 20 years of agriculture policy on the basis that the computer system knows how to do the old system, we cannot allow the computer system to determine how we run agriculture policy in Scotland, and, thirdly, on Stephen's point about climate and nature benefits, absolutely, but there are also private markets for carbon and increasingly for nature and ecosystem services which the larger businesses can tap into, and we need to see a blended finance model going forward where private and public finances blended to deliver some of those public goods to. We also need to sharpen up regulation, particularly on things like degraded peatland. It is a nonsense in the long term that we are spending public money restoring land that has been degraded by private neglect. Capping is an active conversation within LINK at the moment. I cannot give you the definitive position, but there is a strong enthusiasm for it. The key issue amongst LINK members is the context. In the context of the nature and climate emergency, we have to move quickly. We have a large amount of money being spent in a particular way at the moment. We have a timetable for change where we are looking at something like an enhanced payment being brought in in 2026, but we have 2030 targets for climate emissions reductions in agriculture where we are trying to get a reduction in 30 per cent of agricultural emissions by 2030 from 2019 levels. We have to act now and capping is one mechanism for freeing up funds to help industry transition and reduce emissions. Maybe I am going out with my remit here from my organisation, but there are dangers on the flip side of that. There is anecdotal evidence of very large businesses for going single farm payments because single farm payments are a stick as well as a carrot if you cause environmental pollution or environmental damage that will withdraw your single farm payment. Now, some large farmers are saying that we will not take the single farm payment, and we cannot be punished effectively. I would ask the Scottish Government to look at polluter pays or legislation that picks up people on environmental damage that is not attached to the single farm payment system. I just want to say that we support immediate introduction of capping so that we can free up money for the transition process. I think that it might be worth noting in this discussion that when we are looking at direct payments, we are looking at tier 1 and tier 2. Tier 2 is obviously looking at supporting practices that deliver for nature and climate, whereas tier 1 is very much described as an income support tier. Those to me feel like quite different things, and capping on income support might be more stringent or more rigorous than on, for example, funding under tier 2, which goes for changing practices on farm. I think that it is worth making that distinction in this discussion about where that capping is coming in. On income support payments, we would advocate for capping to be brought in immediately. Thank you. We are now going to move on to our next topic, which is food production, profitability and resilience in the supply chain. Rachael Hamilton. It is a broad question, but looking at tier 1 of the framework, how are people is it to retain high-quality food production to feed the country, whilst ensuring fair work, animal health, a quality climate environment and nature, producing a land management plan and a carbon audit? On tier 1, do you believe that the proposal within the framework will improve the position of farmers in the food chain? Probably going to do a bit of a politician here and not answer the question. From our point of view, one thing that is very important is having joined up policy, and that has been touched upon by various people. Part of that is also about the regulatory environment in which agriculture operates, as opposed to just support payments. One of the things that we are trying to say is that the whole supply chain needs to have access to new and emerging technologies that can help them to meet a lot of the policy objectives that are going to be set in terms of sustainability and reducing emissions. When we talk about that, we are looking at things like plant breeding techniques. I know that we were here a couple of weeks ago at the cross-party group on food, and Colin Campbell from the James Hutton Institute gave a very interesting discussion about some of the future challenges and opportunities when it came to climate change and emissions reductions. One of the things that came out of that was about gene editing and the need to consider that. I think that there is an education piece about the difference between GM and GE, but it is certainly one of the essential tools that are going to be needed in the toolbox to deal with a more extreme climate, especially if we have less access to a wide range of crop protection products and more pest and disease pressures, depending on the particular season or year, particularly for economically important crops such as Malting Barley. If we are talking about a more diverse range of crops being grown in Scotland, then, as Colin Campbell said, it allows plant breeders to press the fast forward button. We do not have 10 years to create some of the new varieties that we need sooner rather than later, so it is a necessity. We need to have the right support policy, but we also need some of those tools in the toolbox to allow Scottish agriculture to flourish, basically. I hope that that helps. The position in relation to tier 1 broadly mirrors the current approach to basic pavement, which we dislike, but the Government is committed to doing it. The commitment to try and increase the conditionality in relation to tier 1 is an improvement on the status quo, so we support the suggestion of including whole farm plans. We think that that process is an important one to try and weave in environmental considerations into the whole business planning. The key issue around tier 1 is the budget, and that is what we do not know. As we go forward, if the vast majority of the budget goes into tier 1, we have a big problem because we will not be delivering very much for the money in the same way as we do now. If, over time, that goes down and more goes into the enhanced pavement of tier 2 and across the whole of the funding scheme to provide more money for advice, for tree planting on farms, for agri-environment funding and so on, that is a positive move. The key issue around tier 1 ultimately becomes one around budget. Could we also put a little bit more in terms of conditionality? If lots of money stays in it, then we need to do more for that, and we need greater conditionality on tier 1. I support tier 1 having the most amount of money because it has the most conditionality and to retain the current food production that we are currently outputting. You do not have the largest amount in tier 1. My question then would be, do you think that the proposal in tier 1 would improve the position of farmers currently within the food chain and sustain the amount of food production that we currently need to supply the country with? No, tier 1 effectively does what it does now. If you are trying to improve anything, then we need to change the payments and target them in improving those particular things. It is about providing support in the supply chain, providing enhancing business change, but at the moment it is just an area-based payment. That is not necessarily going to improve anything. There is, as other people have said, a question about maintaining people on the land. If we want to see environmental delivery, we need people to be farming. Farming delivers those things if we change the way that we do it. There is an element of maintaining people on land, but that is not necessarily a large area-based payment as it currently is. I have got Donald and then Denise. We think that tier 1 is a really important part of the support structure. As Andrea outlined, the Government has made its position on the clear that it was not to have enhanced conditionality placed on tier 1. We saw that change when the introduction of the whole farm plan came in and that was floated in the Ag Bill consultation. Scottish Groffing Federation is opposed to the introduction of whole farm plans. We think that maybe there is a place for that in other parts of the structure and in some of the other tiers. For us, it is an issue of proportionality and the disproportionate bureaucracy that that would place on smaller businesses for, we believe, little gain. Tier 1 is important for making sure that we have a transition here, that agricultural businesses and that crofters are able to carry on functioning so that they are able to take up the enhanced conditionality that will be attached to tier 2. Keeping that in mind that those businesses are going and that activity is happening in some of our most peripheral areas, like in the crofting counties, is absolutely key. We are nervous about additional enhanced conditionality in the form of whole farm plans and more conditions keeping in to that part of the structure. I re-emphasise that we would like to see a transition to tier 2, 3 and 4 and that we are confident that the movement to those tiers 2, 3 and 4 will provide the list of outcomes that Rachel has listed, not least high quality food, blurring emissions, responding to issues of biodiversity and climate. I wonder if I could possibly, in terms of the influences on our industry, I wonder if I can just bring in the role of lenders. We have got the global task force on nature-related financial disclosures and, equally, the global task force on climate-related financial disclosures. These are made up of key financial global institutions, including many of our banks. They are looking at the whole food chain. They are looking from farm to plate and they are asking questions about contentious inputs. I am aware of many farmers in Scotland who are being asked about contentious inputs by their bank managers. Obviously, it is very important that we are having the right legislation to drive the right change in our industry. I will rephrase that. This is a monumental change, a monumental alignment to make good where we have been and we can do it, but the lenders are also influencing us. I am absolutely confident that Scottish farming can deliver on those issues. Incidentally, I have to also make the point that genetic engineering or genetic modification is not going to provide us with the answers, but we can, on our farms, because we have got the answers at our fingertips and at our feet. We can make the changes without deferring responsibility to outside influence, such as GE and GM. However, I think that the committee needs to consider the impact of lenders on how we respond as an industry within a food chain. On the genetic technology point, do you agree that plant breeders should be allowed to create varieties using genetic technology so that we can keep abreast of disease resistance? It is a really good question, but we could spend a whole session discussing genetic. We need to focus on the forthcoming agriculture bill and what might be included in that. It will be something that we touch on in the future. I apologise, but we really need to move on. I have got Pete and then Douglas. Just to balance what Colin Campbell said at the cross-party group, we also said that they are shifting their emphasis on hattin away from high-output breeding towards more resilient, sustainable models of agriculture. That is a really important point coming from the hattin that we need to have the research and development, as Ross said, for organics but more generally for the sustainable and resilient breeds that we need in Scotland. There are lots of other technological innovations coming down the track, which we could talk about another day, but we have to recognise that some of the technology innovations are happening in agriculture at the moment. They are farmers at the cutting edge of trying new things but also trying old things that people have stopped doing, like putting clover in their grass. We have got 55 per cent of nitrogen in Scotland that goes under grassland. We waste half the nitrogen in Scotland. It goes into water and it goes into air. We are very inefficient in some of those ways, but to pick up a reasonable point about what could support productivity and profitability, it is advice, it is support. Sometimes it is funding, but we see a huge gap between the farmers who are making money from the same farm, the same situation, and farmers who are not making money. Sometimes that is about reducing inputs rather than increasing inputs and actually becoming more profitable. Advice and support is absolutely crucial to profitability. That is where we think the whole farm plan comes in. It gives farmers the opportunity to take stock, get some advice, look at where they are going, look at their numbers and think how can we deliver for climate nature, but also make a living. I was just to echo Donald's comments on the importance of tier 1 payments from STFA's point of view, particularly if we are looking at this as transition. The last thing that we need is a cliff edge for our farmers. The continuation of tier 1 gives that softening of that edge. I would also like to bring in the concept of the less favoured area support, which is very important to our members, whereby a lot of them, their less favoured area support will exceed their single farm payment. The four tier model that is laid out at the moment does not really deal with what is going to happen to ELFAS going forward in the same way that it does really deal with what is going to happen to voluntary couple support. All of that is crucial support for farming to keep businesses viable in the short to medium future. It is not strictly under tier 1, convener, apologies for that, but it is a very important income support, if I can use that terminology, which we are not really discussing. Just come back to the whole farm plan. We are broadly supportive of that, but as long as it has a very clear reason for being there, which is a business improvement tool, there is a danger if it becomes overly bureaucratic and it becomes too many regulatory elements of it, that it becomes a monster and loses focus as to what it is. If it becomes that regulatory tick box, then its value is lost. Also, the time of advisers, which could be spent driving that improvement in the industry, is spent filling in farms for people in its wasted effort, time and money, so we would really appeal for that to be a really focused tool, which is on about driving the improvements that we are all talking about around efficiency and wider benefits. A couple of other points, one picking up on Denise's point on lenders, I think that that is happening already and it is a really good point. Lenders are looking at how sustainable business models are, how forward-thinking people are and whether they are fit for the future. Also just on Pete's one of it, we have got a real issue around formal farm trials, which are largely paid for by companies that are manufacturing chemicals, manufacturing fertiliser and things. We have to look at how we have those formal trials, who pays for them and how we get that benefit and those replicated benefits and really drive that improvement through those low-input systems as well as the higher-input systems that have a large commercial benefit to them. Thank you. Gareth? Yeah, thanks. Just to follow on from what Stephen was saying, just to cancel a little bit of caution on although we would broadly support the whole farm plan, I think the key to things like that working are that they are dynamic. I wrote my first farm health plan, which is to do with animal health and welfare, back in 1986 and it sat in the drawer. It has got to be an active dynamic process where the farm is working with the experts, which may well be the vet, it may well be SAC and others, in a whole team approach to drive the business forward. Just to say that the British Veterinary Association has got plenty of experience in that sort of area, I am very happy to offer support and help when needed. Thank you. Chloe, and then Denise, to close off this part of the discussion. On the whole farm plan, I agree with Stephen that it is important that we are clear that this is not a bureaucratic box ticking exercise. The question that I would raise is whether the tier 1 is the place to put the plan. I think that what we know is that if you actively choose to embark in that kind of planning process, you are far more likely to then take action and do something with the information that you have. We could do these as part of the baseline conditionality for everybody, but would they then go on and take up the actions that are identified in the plan? It might be a more effective exercise to have in one of the other tiers than is this conditionality piece. Thank you. Denise. Thank you, chair. Just while sitting on the issue of tier 1, if we are talking about 2030 as our point at which we start delivering, and we have got fares delayed perhaps until 2027, that is going to give us only three years to make the change we need to do. We all know that that will not happen and it cannot happen, so that is giving us the time. Tier 1 is the beginning of this process. Tier 1 needs to start immediately with supporting transition, away from area-based, which embeds status quo, to transition immediately. What we would advocate because we are currently involved in it is a three-year rapid national farm to crop to lead peer-to-peer knowledge exchange on regenerative and agroecological principles. We are already taking part as an organisation with nourish and other partnership organisations in rolling out paid-of-supported peer-to-peer knowledge programmes, which are having very beneficial results. That sort of support needs to start immediately. We have got to start now with supporting transition, supporting farmers and gendering confidence in the monumental alignment that we are having to face. We are rapidly running out of time. What I am going to suggest is that there is a group of questions that I know I have three members who would like to address. We are going to try this rather than have three separate questions. Jenny, can I ask you to come in to open up on tenants allister to follow on on crofting and more series on workers rights? We will try to get those three areas covered, so we can just get one response from each of the stakeholders to try and cover that. I think that that hopefully will work. If we can try and keep your responses down to the key asks, the key concerns and your key aspirations going forward, that would be most helpful. Jenny Minto. Thank you, convener, and thank you for everyone that is here. It has been a really informative discussion so far. I will keep my question very short. Doug, I am going to direct it to you specifically. Ross said that farming is a long-term job, and I hear that all the time among Argyll and Bute. You in your introductory statement talked about making tenant farming the dynamic sector. I am interested to know how you think the new legislation can support tenant farmers specifically in food production and in just transition. I thank you for your earlier comments on ELFAS, because that would have been part of my question as well. Can I maybe get Allister to come in and pose his question and then we are serious? Doug, have you got a review on the three points if you could cover them at that point, rather than, because no doubt there will be supplementaries coming in the back of your response, Douglass. Allister, can you come in and give us a rough idea of what you want to touch on in crofting and then we are serious, and we will try to get each stakeholder to address those points that are applicable to them? One thing that I was going to ask immediately to adole here is that one thing that gets lost in this debate often is just how modest crofter incomes are. I wonder if you can say a bit about crofter incomes making them more viable in a new form of agriculture and where that would lie in the balance and also how that could be what we should be doing in your view to recognise environmental benefits of crofting. If I may, just on the back of that, Pete Richie raised an interesting question that you may want to talk about, which was about prioritising grass-fed livestock and how practical you feel that that would be as a policy in large parts of the Crofton counties. Susan Robertson, the United Regional Organiser, commented at the start about the need for strong workers' rights and having that be a condition of any public funding for agriculture, so I am just interested to hear a little bit more from Susan and anyone else who would like to contribute on how we make that conditionality work in the new bill in relation to the different tiers. Douglas, we'd like to kick off, please. In terms of keeping the Tennessee sector vibrant and dynamic, it's really about ensuring business viability. The tenant farmers are faced with paying their rent twice a year and that really focuses on their mind. Financial viability is absolutely paramount in terms of the rest of the delivery of public good. Our main focus at the moment is making sure that whatever policy measures that are introduced are actually feasible for the Tennessee sector. We have a raft of issues that we haven't got time to go into, but generally speaking we've got an issue with definitions. A typical agricultural lease specifies that the land is let for the purposes of agriculture. It's bound by the conditions, the rules of good husbandry. As we move to a more environmental orientated set of policy measures, there are real concerns that those, by moving that direction, tenants might be in breach of the lease. We need to look at this dilemma between definitions and new measures that might come in. Make sure that we can sense check new measures against the existing definitions. If it doesn't work, either change the definition or go back and look at the measures. That's our real focus. There's a whole heap of tenancy-specific issues that we'd like to see coming forward in the bill. I'll not go into the detail, but just to flag up that we are part of the tenant farming advisory forum, which is a really excellent forum to discuss things like that with landowners, with other interested parties. In that area, we're almost ahead of the game in terms of that engagement piece and having voices heard, Jenny. The core thing to remember is that we're talking about business viability going forward, and that's why I talked about cliff edges and the support for tier 1, making sure that the conditionality doesn't turn people off and ensure that business viability goes forward. It's more pertinent, perhaps, for tenants because of that focus on paying the rent. They don't quite have the flexibility that landowners have, so we need to make sure that we get it right for tenant farmers. Thank you Douglas Donald and then Susan. Thanks for the question, Alison. I think that that's a really important point that you've raised. They are about the actual income levels of crofters. Crofting is a difficult sector to make money in. Profitability is very low and it's difficult to make a profit. It's also important to point out the levels of support that are coming into crofting. Most crofting businesses are, well, 50 per cent of crofting businesses are receiving under £1,400 in support. So we're talking about some of the very smallest recipients of agricultural support here. As I've outlined in some of my other answers, there are some ways that we can address that and ways that we can get more money to these businesses to support them and reward them for the work that they're already doing, but also driving the change that is required to get those businesses delivering more. The other point that you made about biodiversity and the link between that and crofting is that most of—well, a lot of the crofting areas marry up very closely with what we would call the high-nature value farming areas of the country. That's not to say that all crofting businesses are producing their products in that way, but a lot of them are. It is really important that we support that and that we look at how we can make sure that that continues going forward. In a lot of cases, that involves grazing livestock and grazing livestock in a managed, well-structured way. Crofting is actually very good at delivering because of the legislation behind it and because we have regulated land. Most of the crofting area is common grazing, and it's land that is managed in common by grazing committees who have a set of regulations, which can be amended, which common grazing have found it quite useful to engage in environmental schemes already. Some have found that difficult to—the bar has been a bit too high to get in, but there is definitely an opportunity there to have a significant proportion of Scotland's land that is under common grazing at the moment. It is also a huge amount of the peatland that is so important as well, which is managed in this way and supported in that way going forward. Just very quickly, on the other point that you raised about grass-fed livestock, it's difficult to do in our part of the world—that's some fear you would know, Alasdair—but it's not impossible. There are people who are managing to do that and achieve that, but I would also make the point that crofting does not operate in a vacuum. We are part of the agricultural sector, and a lot of what our members produce is store lambs and store cattle that go out into the businesses that other members of the panel are representing today. It's really important for crofting that those businesses are supported to improve what they are doing as well so that we have a sustainable agricultural sector across the country that is able to meet all the ambitions that we want to achieve. Just something that you said that sparked the question. How do common grazing funds get distributed? If there are environmental payments coming into common grazing, how does it get split up among the crofters? It's a question that could have a lot of different answers, and it's quite a challenging one. I'll say that the payments are, once they come into the common grazing, because if it's for an agri-environment climate scheme, for example, they belong to the shareholders. In practice, what will tend to happen is that the shareholders will opt for their money to remain in the communal pot of the common grazing so that it can be then used to support improvements to the common grazing. The other point that might be linked to that is that it's important to note that crofters will put their common grazing share, their portion of the common grazing, on to their single application form and will claim that as a basic payment scheme, and that comes directly to them. They get direct support in relation to their share of the common grazing, but this is the environmental scheme that you're eiks at the moment, but things that would fall under tier 3 would still come into the communal pot. That's really important so that we're able to keep the permanent improvements on the common grazing in a good state and we're able to manage them, so having a good ffanc and having good fencing and all these kinds of things that are so important for the communal aspects of it. I hope that answers your question. Thank you, Donald. We've now got Susan and then Tara. You're looking at organised workplaces and that means collective bargaining among other things. You need a worker's voice in the workplace and I don't feel in this industry that there is a worker's voice. The food industry in a whole, as you know, is worth billions. Susan, I'm sorry. We didn't hear the start of your contribution. Could you start again? All right. To truly enhance stronger workers rights. Am I all right now? Yes, go for it. That's fine. You're talking about organised workplaces and among that, that means sectoral collective bargaining, a stronger worker's voice in the workplace. The industry that we're talking about today is worth billions of pounds, but agricultural workers are among the lowest paid. Employers in the sector continually complain about labour shortages, but at the same time, there is this to any pay increases beyond the absolute minimum. For example, just the other day yesterday, as the Antesco have announced an increase in their rates. Why would you use to work on a farm, which is difficult manual work, long hours, when you can get more money in a supermarket? Health and safety is what we need, obviously, for workers, and that would form part of a collective bargaining. I'll just refer back to Caroline Robinson's report, which I mean, I hope that you'd have a read of it. It was done in conjunction with Health Migrants Forum. Workers are reporting that they have been putting on safe housing in caravans. They are living in degrading accommodation. They are working under what's called a peace rate system, which I'm sure you'll understand what that is. If they don't meet the rates for the peace rate targets, they then risk losing their jobs. The Scottish Government doesn't regulate the calculation of peace rates. All that does is set a minimum floor for wages through the agriculture wages board. Many workers are on zero-hours contracts, despite the Scottish Government stating that that shouldn't be the case. That's me. Thank you. I just wondered how many unite members work in farming or are farmers. How many? I don't have that figure off the top of my head. Maybe you could let the committee know. Thank you. I move on to Tara and then Andrew. I think that Susan covered a lot of the things that I was going to say on equity importance of organised workplaces. I welcome the focus on the agriculture bill on introducing real living wage for agricultural workers. In terms of the conditionality aspect, we would advocate for social conditionality on all payments so that you wouldn't receive any money under the agriculture bill unless your workers have a certain level of right, which includes an end-to-zero-hours contract and a real living wage. It's also important to look at the specifics of the fair work framework and how that could be applied specifically in an agricultural context, and to look at the issues that are faced, particularly by migrant workers on farms in Scotland. That report that Susan was referring to has a lot of really good recommendations in that. The cope with the issue of workers being denied work in retaliation for not making meeting targets, for example. There also needs to be a system for communicating to workers what their rights are and how they can raise this with an enforcement aid. If they are not working in the conditions that they should be working in at the moment, that's all very unclear. That level of social conditionality should be included in the agriculture bill, as it is included in the EU agricultural policy. I also think that it's really important that we're encouraging more employment in rural areas, and that those are good jobs. One of the ways that we can do this is by supporting, for example, the small-scale horticulture providing a lot of food for the area of land. It also provides a lot of jobs for the area. It can be quite good, meaningful jobs that support better wellbeing. By supporting that sector, for example, the small-scale horticulture sector, other forms of small-scale agriculture, we in turn support employment. With a level of conditionality on that funding, which means that the employment is fair and that the upholds good workers' rights. We have three speakers. Andrew Gareth, then Denise and a supplement from Jim Fairlie. Very briefly and specifically in reference to how crofters are supported adequately going forward. Scottish Environment Link recognises that it's a critical issue. We need to ensure that the farming activity continues in the northern west and the crofting counties and that the farmers and crofters are adequately rewarded for what they deliver. ELFAS doesn't do it because it's a policy that is needing radical reform and replacement. One of the issues there is that ELFAS suffers from the same distributional problems as direct payments and that the highest payments go to the biggest recipients. The ability to help farmers and crofters is limited and the rationale for ELFAS of all about disadvantage is not necessarily focused on the beneficial things that that activity delivers. Scottish Environment Link would really encourage and would like to see the Scottish Government explore the concept of high-nature value farming systems and how those systems can be supported proactively. You recognise the system that the farming is delivering, high-nature value and we're going to reward you for that. Arath, and then Denise. In my world, one of the key things is animal health and welfare management. If you do that right, you improve the animal's response to greenhouse gas emissions. If you control endemic disease, you improve productivity, you reduce replacement rates and things like that. It's actually key and embedded in all of this. It's really just to reiterate that that's actually part of the equation and we'd like to continue to be involved in that. Grass-fed, yes. I think that the issue there is, it's appropriate in some places, not all, so I think the response to that is it depends on the individual farm situation. That's again going back to developing the health plan, the farm plan. Thank you very much, chair. I want to pick up on a point that Donald made and also to follow on from what Gareth has just said. In that forage-based livestock systems, and this is information off to the committee, forage-based livestock systems are the most profitable and also they have the least emissions and there are low costs. We here at Peel and run a partial for life system as part of the partial for life certified process and we can demonstrate higher biodiversity and high nutritional density of our meat. And arguably, strong argument actually, that our cattle benefit from a welfare point of view and other partial for life farmers would attest to that also. I wonder, chair, if I might invite Rachel Kidd-Pelham or to another venue to discuss the issues of GE and GM. Thank you very much. Thank you. I have a very brief question for Susan. Susan, do you know the difference in rates between what the agricultural wages order delivers compared to the real living wage? Sorry, not off the top of my head but I can find out. Okay, thank you. Okay, that completes that section. We're now going to, very conscious of time with your approval stakeholders, but we may run over the 11 o'clock somewhat and if you're okay with that, we'll see how it goes. Ariane Burgess. Thanks, convener. I've been given the task of opening the theme of nature and climate and obviously we've all touched on, heard you touching on it to some degree and it's heartening to hear the, I think, enthusiasm and keenness to actually move in this direction. It's just, I think, some of the detail of how we get there. So I'm going to open with two questions but please come in if you don't feel like these questions frame what you want to kind of come in on. I wanted to pick up on so two things. One was the landscape scale approach that Andrew spoke about and the other is a bit more about organics that Ross spoke about so I'll frame those a bit. In terms of the landscape scale, that's clear that we need to be looking at that. I had conversation recently with a young farmer who's working on 70 acres of upland and what they were talking about is that they're working now together as a farmer's group. So lots of farmers around their farm coming together and trying to look at this. I think it was right from the top of the mountain all the way down to the river and the riparian edge and the difficulties with that, the importance of it but the difficulties of that in terms of coordination and time. So I'd love, and I wanted to articulate that because I think we need to think about landscape scale not just as one estate doing their, you know, a large estate doing their own landscape scale but how do we get that collaboration piece. So that's, I'm going to throw that to Andrew first and I'm going to come back to Ross and afterwards I'd love to hear more about, you talked about organics need to be mainstreamed and that really that's the criteria through which the government can meet the climate targets and the biodiversity response but I see that there's different, so Link is calling for a target of 10%, Narish is talking about the EU average of 25% and so I'd like to see, you know, is there a likelihood that we can reach that? I know we can't do that in this session and that's why we've only got the small doubling of organics because there's not enough in the pipeline so to speak but if we were looking to the next session what do we need to be doing now to get us with farms and farmers to get ourselves to that place where we're really able to say in session seven we're going to have a much bigger commitment to organics so maybe we'll start with landscape scale and we can come to organics and I welcome anyone else to come in and we may go quite a bit over the time but please keep your answers to Sinked. More to Sinked in the question please thank you, Andrew. Okay so why do we need landscape scale, basically the bottom line is the is the widespread depletion of nature and our response to it has been to create agri-environment schemes and one of the challenges around agri-environment schemes is the potentially piecemeal approach to that where you have individual holdings getting into schemes and therefore limiting the ability to deliver the outcome because they're surrounded by activity that may not necessarily complement that outcome so some of that has been built into current some of the thinking to try and deliver that landscape scale approach has been built into current support mechanisms but as we go forward it's going to be really important that we do everything we can to develop a landscape scale approach then now one of the key aspects of that is going to be how you design the schemes and then how you support the activity so there's a couple of elements so one would be in the proposed tier 2 where farmers are asked to undertake certain measures there is potential benefit for sort of collaboration whereby measures complement each other and that requires that would apply communication and coordination because it's still being on an individual applicant basis but there's potential in tier 2 for delivering something additional that's more than just the individual when you get into tier 3 into whatever replaces the agri-environment climate scheme clearly there is an important place for it there for being able to deliver coordinated action but there are other examples in other parts of the country where there are slightly different innovative approaches where you create clusters of people working together and provide funding in a different way in order so that they work collectively towards a vision at their landscape scale that might require a sort of slightly more innovative approach the key to all of it though is around advice and facilitation and the support that's provided to the infrastructure that is supporting the industry so at the moment a very small amount of money goes to advice in future if we're going to deliver against the outcomes that we want to see delivered against so improving nature and reducing emissions we need to actually devote a bigger proportion of the budget towards advice facilitation coordination training those sorts of activities do you have that bigger that proportion of the budget just so we get clarity on that not a concrete one but you know i would pick something out of the air at the moment you're down at 2% but if you increase to 10 you'd be you'd see a significant increase in the in the ability of the industry to deliver that's me making that up i might can give some more thought thank you ross yes you asked about mainstreaming and targets as i said before that the idea of land targets it's less about the actual targets about the ambition and showing an ambition and we always contrast us up with europe they show the ambition to grow it by 25% by 2030 and whether that's a good benchmark or not it shows an ambition and we would like to see the scotish government be as ambitious as that for the organic sector because we're not we're a very small part of farming still and i think we've got a huge amount to offer and all all of europe under that iphone are are now adopting organic action plans and scotland to be fair is ahead of england england are absolutely nowhere in this yet but an organic action plan led but not led by the government i think the government fears that we want them to go and do it organizations like ours can do the legwork and help them but we want the government to take ownership of it and say this is our organic action plan we want to do this this and this to all the stuff jim talked about pull it all together so it all works rather than just be kind of oh here's a land target you know hust it all be thought through carefully and there's plenty of advice and there's plenty of stuff out there like christine watson works with us quite a lot and and she points out we don't need to have money for more research there's loads of research out there but it's all over the place it needs to be pulled together and fed to the right places and and that would these sort of things and just just talking about it more bringing it into the mainstream recognising it takes a lot of the environmental boxes it's not a panacea there are all sorts of issues with people we're talking about organic farmer but it is a standard to be adhered to and it brings results you know it brings results across the globe it's shown and it's not only that it is viable it's economic we're on a profitable business at home okay we're reasonably big but the smaller sector can do it too it can bring huge benefits to the Scottish economy in exports too there's massive potential for exports i know we're talking about local and feeding ourselves first they're not mutually exclusive they can both be done thank you i've got steven and chloe can i ask whether you maybe want to consider looking forward to the bill being introduced how much of these schemes or the the the frameworks for these schemes need to be on the face of the bill because we can talk about how we aspire to this and that and whatever but ultimately we'll have a piece of legislation that will take agriculture and the rural affairs forward can you reflect maybe in some of your responses how we can ensure that happens through legislation steven i'm dealing with that first point quickly the more the better in terms of face the bill i think a framework bill will create more of that frustration in the industry more of that vacuum of information and will delay things further so the more detail we can have in there which allows people to plan and allows people to to negotiate around that would be beneficial and just coming back to an emergency point of landscape scale and gets andrew mentioned a lot the points i was going to make around farmer clusters and co-operation before i work for scotland the states i spent eight years in working with rural cooperatives in a development role and and the short answer is it's really hard because you're trying to bring together different businesses with different outcomes and trying to mold that together but i think a lot of it comes down to land sharing rather than land spending so what can we do with a specific piece of land not specifically for one purpose but how do we meld those purposes together and on that landscape scale you can create a lot of those benefits so it's building that kind of integration but you are trying to bring businesses together who have outcomes and there's personalities and there's all these different things in there but it can be done but it's it's really difficult one thing i would say is around previous group schemes around agri environment schemes they've been really difficult to access because a lot of the binary scoring methods that have been there so accessing them as a group has been pretty difficult and pretty soul destroying to be honest but there are ways of doing it it's bringing like-minded people together and i think it's tying up with the points that were made about facilitation and advice there we've got wildlife estate scotland which is a certification that we have and they've brought together a cluster in the pentlands which are working together to deliver real benefits there so so there are examples of it happening just touching on the other point around organics i think there's really heartening to see scottish government lifting the cap on the amount of land that can go into organic conversion i think that's a great help for the ambition of the sector and i'll hopefully help to drive more more land into that style of management thank you stephen chloe and then peat thank you it's been really pleasing to hear talk of the importance of peer-to-peer learning this morning the current farm advisory service and programme programme in scotland delivers advice across scotland and a range of things including we've got 40 peer-to-peer learning groups established and this was a pilot we see the potential to do more also pleased to hear the the i think agreement that spend on advisory services is good value i think on the organic point it's important to i observe a continuum we've talked here about organic and non-organic practices we see a continuum of organic practices not everybody is ready to go the whole the whole way to the end and secure the paperwork and market as organic some of them do nearly the whole journey they might be stopped short because of the challenges that we've already discussed about markets but i think it's really important that we recognize going forward the things that the majority of farmers are or could be doing which would be adopting organic practices on big scales if we're talking about significant numbers of farmers as well as those who want to see the benefits of being 100% organic and being certified thank you i'm peat and then gareth so organics is a route to market whether there's premium or not at a particular point in time in general farms can get a better price for their products it's important to recognize Germany set a target of 30% organic land by 2030 Ireland's already doubled its area of organic land since going into this develop its organic from plan two years ago and it's very similar to scotland it was a similar level of low low productivity so i think there's a question about whether it should be on the face of the bill i think what we'd say is the key principles on the face of the bill have to reflect our international commitments and we've just signed up the coming montreal protocol which calls for a massive reduction in nitrogen use and waste and in damage caused by pesticides organics ticks those boxes so whether we put organics on the face of the bill or we put the coming montreal protocol on the face of the bill either on the agriculture bill or natural environment bill organics is a way of delivering on those policy objectives for nature and climate thank you peat gareth again on the on the face of the bill we would recognize that there are the bill establishes standards for animal health and welfare and biosecurity i think it's really important that those are strengthened and and made clear that the moment there's a little lack of lack of data there's also powers to collect and share livestock health welfare and biosecurity data and i heard on the radio this morning william haig and the former labour prime minister talking about the importance of data and getting ahead i really can't stress the importance of data really in all of this so framing that more i think would be really really helpful and understanding that and as i say we're very very willing to get involved and if there's a the things we can do on our job i think we'd be welcome to engage in that as well i know this is a yeah a piece of framework legislation but i think i'd like to echo the more detail we can see in it the better that would be the better for for farmers but also in terms of driving ambition i've been some targets on the face of this bill would be really beneficial in terms of what those actual targets end up being that feels like a different conversation but i echo the need for kind of more ambition around organics and in terms of having targets on this bill i think it's worth noting that the agricultural sector is already constrained by targets on other bills for example from the climate change act and it would be really important that the agriculture bill itself has targets included in it which will help us to meet the targets that we're that we're already on track for with other bills so that yeah having some targets around these kind of things that are pushing kind of for ambition and give us a metric to measure the transition by is really important thank you thank you Tara Ian and then Andrew on to in terms of detail for the bill more detail is welcome but at the same time we would be keen to ensure that that is balanced against ensuring that that the framework has sufficient flexibility for unseen circumstances going forward and obviously you know we highlighted the Ukraine situation and how that has massively changed how people think about food and domestic agriculture just coming back to the landscape scale issue and how that could be delivered i think there probably is a case for sharing and learning of best practice between the jurisdictions within the UK so obviously England had gone down the route of looking at landscape scale schemes and I think as I understand it they've had to sort of roll back on some of that and basically put it into existing countryside stewardship so there's probably a bit of an opportunity for us to learn and share where things work or don't work between different parts of the UK on that one and as you would probably imagine AIC our view is that yes there is a place for organics but it is by no means the only way in which agriculture can reduce its emissions and different things work for different businesses and obviously these things have to be market led as well from our point of view there's lots of easy wins that can be incentivised within policy we've talked about advice that is very important there needs to be a greater diversity of advice providers and we need to ensure that there is some sort of approved provider scheme so that farmers can buy an advice from a range of different sources they may well get advice on the sort of big picture from SRUC but that needs to be complemented with specialist technical advice to give them the tools to to make the changes whether that's soil testing analysis or looking at climate friendly rationing through precision livestock nutrition so there's lots of things there that we need to consider as well and finally on the piece about grass-fed livestock it works for some systems but also we need to recognise that not all for example cereals that are grown in Scotland meet the spec for human consumption or malting and therefore there's a natural market for them to be fed to livestock to help fatten for example beef cattle so that's all for me too thank you and andrew just on the point to do with what's on the face of the bill there's this tension around the flexibility so the government's intention is the frame give themselves the powers to deliver future schemes but don't put it on the face of the bill because if you put it on the face of the bill it makes it inflexible you have to change the primary legislation there's a halfway house which is put in the bill requirements that the government has to do certain things and so you could it would be interesting to explore whether or not the government should be required to have a strategic plan at the moment we have a vague vision which we broadly support because it's a move in the right direction but it's still vague but if you have a vague vision and lots of flexibility you can virtually justify any policy but if you have to write a strategic plan you have to decide what your priorities are and what policy tools will deliver against those priorities equally you could think about including some kind of programming period so that there isn't chopping and changing on an annual basis between policy so the government has committed to remain aligned with the EU that sort of way of working has been embedded into the sort of the programming periods of the cap it will be a way of at least you know a five-year period may be a way of giving farmers some certainty about you know what's happening for the next few years so able to plan it so thank you and Denise of the face of the bill I think that really the big issue now is giving our industry confidence and okay the ambition of the bill is moving in the right direction away from what at times looked like a wish list we need more communication every farm holding needs to have put through its letterbox a document which advises on the truck that the direction of travel in relation to this bill to give our industry confidence and and also what I might add is that we're organic farmers part of my farmers and it works for us it works for a wide range of farming systems and certainly we need to be able to identify and target how much we can do organically and our view is that we can do a lot and so the land sharing landscape approach is one way of doing it okay thank you Douglas yeah I just come on in terms of the face of the bill I agree with those that think the more detailed the better but we just have to balance that with the engagement that I think is necessary to get rigor in there in the timescales that we have you know I hate to say it but it is better to get this right than to get it to get ourselves hamstrung so you know while I echo the calls for clarity for for for individual businesses that that you could deliver on the face of the bill I think you know I would vote for a little bit more rigor and more engagement with organisations who have a lot of expertise and are very willing to give their time to try and make it sure we get it right thank you very much I think on that note as a committee we can give the commitment that we will engage as much as possible and scrutinise what comes before us and continue the work we've done today um that concludes our morning session thank you all very much for your time particularly those who've travelled some substantial distance to be in Edinburgh this morning it's very much appreciated and I think we've kicked off our pre-ledge scrutiny of the agriculture bill in a very good way we'll reflect on the discussions that we've heard this morning and and consider how we take things forward at a later meeting and I'll close this meeting and we'll now move into private session thank you