 Welcome to the Slightly Delayed through Technical Problems 28th meeting of this year of the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee. Remember that we should be switching off mobile phones etc, but if you use tablets for the business of the committee, either witnesses or members, that's to be expected and in some cases encouraged. Apologies from Cara Hilton. Agenda item 1 is the decision on taking business in private. The first item of the committee to decide whether to take item 4 in private, which deals with the work on Scotland's climate change targets. Are we all agreed? We are agreed, so we will take item 4 in private. Agenda item 2, Scottish Government's draft budget for 2015-16. The second item today as we planned to take evidence on the draft budget on the theme of SRDP climate measures. This is the second evidence session that the committee has held with stakeholders on the draft budget. Following today's session, the committee will also hear from the minister and the cabinet secretary on 19 and 26 November. We welcome, as witnesses today, Andrew Bauer, deputy director of policy, the national farmers union of Scotland, Alan Hampson, programme manager, land and freshwater from SNH, Lynn White, agricultural development manager at the soil association Scotland and David McCracken, professor of agricultural ecology and head of hill and mountain research centre, Scotland's rural college and Vicky Squales, head of land use policy at the RSPB Scotland. Welcome to you all. I refer members to the paper. I'll kick off with the first questions, which is about the legacy payments from the previous SRDP. How do you think the Agri environment measures budget line will deliver for climate targets, given that the Scottish Government has said that there is no funding for the new Agri environment climate scheme in 2015-16? You don't all have to answer, but please just indicate and I'll call you. Someone wants to kick off with that one. Sorry, I didn't notice. Right, Andrew Bauer. I think that the delay that there will inevitably be is going to be unfortunate. Once the scheme is up and running, there are some good items that we've had indicated to us. We'll be in there. A lot of the measures around tackling diffuse pollution in particular will be beneficial for both the water environment and climate change and farm businesses, so we think that's a really good multiple benefit. However, there are very tight constraints there. A lot of people are going to be disappointed because there's going to be some fairly strict targeting, so I think that it's going to be an interesting process to see how it rolls out. Anyone else? Yes, there is money identified for peatland restoration. Do you want to leave that just now, then? In terms of the legacy agreements, there are things in there that will be of benefit to the climate. Many of the habitat measures, for example, are positive, particularly in terms of climate adaptation, helping species adapt. There are other measures that will lead to some carbon reductions, but that's quite a limited pot of money. Historically, that has been more focused, and we think quite rightly on some biodiversity measures. This gap year is problematic. I have to say from reading the budget figures, it's very difficult to understand. It wasn't entirely clear from the figures presented that that didn't include agri-environment spend under the new programme for 2015-16. As I understand it, what's been put forward is the peatland restoration money, the beef pot and some other things, and the legacy spend. It would be helpful if figures were better presented in the future to understand what the expenditure was relating to. To add to that, at least throughout 2015-16, there will be the farming for a better climate programme running. It's a relatively small proportion of the overall pot, but that has shown proven benefits from a farm perspective, both from a financial perspective and an environmental perspective. There is some small consolation from a climate measure aspect, as well as the peatland action, once it gets up and down. Farming for a better climate, the budget is actually 0.4 of a million, not 0.3 of a million. It's actually £373,000, so that's a question of whether you're round up or round down. I think that sounds like up to me. Just with the legacy side of things, on the organic front it was very good to see that our organic farmers were given the option to take on transition money for a five-year contract, obviously, organic providing quite a few multiple benefits. We thank for that, that our farmers could get their maintenance payments for another five years. I should just perhaps at this stage declare an interest as a member of the soil association, just in case further questions later on relate to things that we might see as being partial or not. I'm trying to be as impartial as possible, because we have to close the ministers after this, and we want to get the best picture across the way. In oral evidence to the committee on 5 November, William McGee of the Forest Policy Group highlighted the need to increase the level of payment that land managers receive for carrying out forestry measures so that more land managers take up forestry schemes. Looking at the level of payments to land managers for measures under the previous SRDP agri-environment scheme, how do the payment levels affect the uptake at that time, and what can we learn from that in funding the forthcoming agri-environment climate scheme? There's a bigger question there in terms of how polarised we actually keep activity on farms going forward to address climate change, to address biodiversity issues. There's a need for much more integration between woodland management and farming on farms, and certainly the relatively small proportion of funding available in the pot currently for farm woodland creation doesn't really reflect the potential direction of travel and the potential benefits that could be achieved if more was actually done on farms. Not replacing farms with woodland but actually integrating woodland much more closely on farms. When you have the opportunity to read last week's official report from this committee, you'll see a lot of discussion about that. Therefore, once you've perhaps reflected on that and we've reflected on it, we may be able to take up these questions a good deal more. So, Vicki Swales and Lynne White. I think that the payment rates are obviously a critical factor in terms of uptake and whether somebody is going to go into a scheme or has gone into it historically or not. But I think there's bigger issues around the accessibility of the scheme and how easy or not it is for farmers or other land managers to get into it. We all know the challenges we've had historically when rural priorities was brought in and I have to say I think a great deal is being done for the new schemes to think about accessibility to improve it and to put in place a process that will actually mean it's possible for farmers and land managers to get into agreements. Going through right from an audit in the beginning and taking people through a process so that they know what they're understanding and what they're signing up to. So yes, payment rates are important but it's the whole package of the scheme itself that's going to matter too. We're hoping that modernised computer schemes make it easier because inevitably people have to learn as they go along I guess but we'll be asking the ministers about that as well for sure. Lynn White? Just on the practical side of things, I run Future Proof in Scotland's farm and in one of the events that we do run is woodland management and biomass and they've probably been one of the most popular ones and it has been commented along how do you get farmers along. I think obviously the payment rates are really important but actually looking at the practical side of things about what they can actually do in their farm with what they've got and the potential for where do they plant, why do they want to plant and what their overall objective is to be and obviously the new scheme has agroforestry in it. Obviously there's not more money for it but the potential to increase farm efficiency, productivity and resilience through agroforestry. We've already done two events on agroforestry and we've had good attendance in them as well and I think again on a very practical level we brought somebody up that was actually doing it from England but they got the experience across and did a good farm visit in the afternoon looking at an orchard and obviously looking at other woodland that could be adapted so I think yes obviously the payments are important but I think we need to get the practicality of these kind of things across as well to people to make sure that we're engaging on the fact that it's not just what they plant but what they utilise on their farm and they see the benefit all round. Issues that we may well come on to later on. Alan Hampson. I was just going to emphasise the fact that I mean the advisory service would be crucial in getting farmers to look at the holding as a whole and as people have been saying to the multiple benefits I mean of the 22 needs identified for the new SRDP, 18 of those are identified as going into the cross-cutting theme of climate change so I think we need both the advisory service helping the farmers to take that more integrated view of the farm but there's also I think in terms of facilitation an issue about co-operation as well because very often you get more benefit from lots of neighbours pursuing a similar objective particularly in relation to woodland especially if that woodlands say to restore a floodplain so I think the facilitation money that will come through the cooperative action fund will also be very important. Davie. Just to echo that I mean facilitation is key and when we're looking at the activity across SRDP we shouldn't think that it's only one type of programme that will actually make a difference as far as farmers are concerned. Farmers are very conservative with a small C like we all are and they have a tendency to actually listen to a wait and listen to hear what's been said by a number of different organisations and agencies before they'll actually take that plunge to go the right direction so key to getting as bigger bang for the buck in the next SRDP is having joined up messages coming from different directions in terms of what farmers can actually do on the ground. As I say I think we'll probably come on to some of that later on as well the interactivity. Right that's a good start. I'm thinking about the forthcoming agri environment climate scheme Claudia Beamish. Good morning to the panel. As the panel knows land managers will be able to apply for annual management and capital projects for a wide range of environmental purposes and there is currently not that much detail about the measures that will be funded under this future scheme for 2016-17. As they're not on the panel today I'd just like to highlight from Scottish Wildlife Trust a written submission that they argue and I quote this round of spend lacks ambition in terms of funding to truly deliver a carbon sequestering landscape that would rebalance Scotland's carbon budget and the soil associations here today and I know you've made comment about that as well. Scottish Environment Link has highlighted that a minimum of 60 million per year is needed to adequately meet the objectives. Now obviously funding isn't the only issue and there's a balancing of the different funds that needs to be addressed but I'd appreciate comments on that but also views on the effectiveness of the spend from the outgoing SRDP agri environment scheme in creating carbon sequestering landscapes and what lessons can be learned for the forthcoming scheme? Two things, yes, it can be and it will be and it is being argued that the current scheme potentially lacks ambition. Having been involved as a number of people on the panel in looking at agri environment over the last sort of 12-18 months on how the new scheme could actually potentially operate, there's clearly been an acceptance that funding would be limited but trying to actually make a bigger benefit as we could from the action. So there's been a lot of activity going into how best to actually, where best to target some of these measures, what multiple benefits that can actually arise from them. The devil being the detail in how that's actually applied and ourselves involved in that process are still as much in the dark as to how effective that will actually operate on the ground and it will, it does come back a lot to what you were talking earlier on about the IT scheme and how it's capable of highlighting to farmers and landowners what type of things are actually capable there. In terms of the effectiveness of the spend from the outgoing SRDP, then part of the reason why we put such a focus on trying to target things better within the new SRDP wasn't solely to reflect the reduction in funding levels, it was to reflect that there has been not just in the last SRDP but over a number of years quite a scattergun approach to what actually happens where in the landscape and for many of these environmental issues and climate change issues that need to be addressed, there needs to be a much more collaborative or focused attempt of having a number of farmers in a particular area doing a certain things that sort of complement each other. That's what the aspiration for the new scheme actually is, whether it works in practice, then that is, it's still open to see what actually happens but at least I would say there's a move in the right direction that way. We've got Vicki, Andrew and Alan at order. I think we do feel that the new programme and particularly the agri-environment climate scheme lacks ambition, it lacks funding at 355 million, 27% of the budget. That really isn't sufficient from some of the estimates that have been done when you think about what that is trying to deliver against. So we have our designated sites, we have priority species and habitats in the wider countryside. CEPA have been pushing hard for options which will help deliver against the water framework, directive objectives and water quality issues and then of course we've added in climate objectives to this new measure. So when you stack all those up that's a pretty big challenge. Now obviously there are opportunities for doing things which deliver multiple benefits and win-win situations and we very much hope that that is what will come out of the new scheme that additional funding for things as Davey's mentioned for cooperation or collaboration, I think doing things at landscape scale will help to add benefit to that and there has been some enhancement to the funding for advisory services probably still not enough in our view that again will help to get more bangs for our book in terms of delivering against our environmental objectives but we do have an SRDP which overall is severely underfunded and I think it's going to be a big challenge looking ahead. On the effectiveness of current spend issue there's a very big problem there and that's poor in monitoring and evaluation and data to tell us actually what were the outputs and the outcomes of the spend that we're making. Now some of that is down to EU rules and the monitoring and evaluation framework that's handed down which puts forward some fairly crude indicators and measures you know how much land went into agri-environment schemes it doesn't really tell you did it deliver climate benefit did it deliver for biodiversity etc. So I think for this time we really have to look hard at putting in place proper monitoring and evaluation and that may mean outwith and finding some funding outwith the SRDP programme the limited budgets that are in that for monitoring and evaluation and seeing how we can boost that and get a better picture of whether we're truly delivering value for public money. There's two demands for money for a start more money from outside the SRDP and some re-jaking of the budget within it can you put in the record just now where the money should come from within the SRDP for the priorities that you see? Within the SRDP we have raised questions to this committee before about the amount of money that's being spent on ELFAS that's not to say that we don't think money should be going to the more disadvantaged parts of Scotland and helping support agriculture in those areas but the scheme as it stands is poorly targeted the bulk of the money goes to the more productive or more intensively managed parts of the less favoured area it doesn't support the high nature value farmers that we would see in the north and west of Scotland so one question would be is that the right level of spend I think it's 35% of the budget it's a big ticket item and questions have been raised about it by the European Commission I think we need to have a hard look at that and see could some of that money be better targeted and free up some money for measures? It's not a transitional period really for up to 2018 where much more of these things will be better focused especially because we're talking about extreme fragility of many communities which may not have a high environmental status but they are actually communities that desperately need to have that kind of support given Scotland's northerly latitude etc but I would argue if you look at the distribution of spend of ELFAS it's not those vulnerable communities that are getting the bulk of the support. In the new ELFAS nothing changed so by 2018 we have to move it the area of natural constraint designation which as I understand it will actually increase the amount of land that will be designated we have at that opportunity as we indeed do now we could have come up with a whole new scheme if we'd wanted to the government has taken the decision to continue the current scheme up to the point of re-delineating under areas of natural constraint. You're absolutely right there's a transition period going on we've seen big changes in pillar one but again I would argue that a lot of that money in pillar one has not gone to those vulnerable communities to the crofters to the high nature value farmers in the north and west of Scotland farming in difficult conditions the bulk of that support is going to the more intensive sectors arable dairy and some of the more intensive end of the beef sectors even though there's been some redistribution which I accept but if you were to map the distribution of funds you would see most of it going to east and south and west Scotland and not to the north and west. Alex Ferguson. Well, thank you, convener. I would love you to come and give a lecture on that basis in Dumfriesian Galloway which I represent because the fact is that over the next period of CAP many farmers are going to have their single farm payment reduced by 50% and more and that money is being redistributed to the north and the west of the country largely so I think there is some discussion to be had in the point you've just made. Dave Thompson. Well, if Andrew wants to answer that. Well, there are several people to come in Andrew and Alan first of all but I think it's important that we get this element here and come back to Claudia if she'd any final points on her own question. Andrew and Alan first of all. Thank you. I think we're on a you know we have a transition with this round of CAP reform but we're really in a sort of decade along if not more process of reform of the CAP and you know refocusing. I think it would be a bit chirlish if anyone on this panel said that the SRDP was lacking ambition here. You know, we're all operating under severe budget constraints farming broadly accepts the setting that's got out of the SRDP. You know, yes, we would have liked to have seen what's happened in other EU member states where there's been a much stronger focus on research and innovation and knowledge transfer as you know as a way to move agriculture you know bring about a step change in practice but that's not what we have here so we have we have money going into health fast but we equally have large budgets for agri-environment climate and you know it's you know we need to be mindful we're also talking about monitoring and evaluation yes it'd be nice to be monitoring and evaluation and things like that but there are a lot of transaction costs there and part of the problem that there is going to be with the there has been with the previous CAP and there will be with the next CAP is the audit risk there and you know everyone's tying themselves and knots to create a system that is bombproof when the EU auditors arrive that builds in huge complexity if we build in more complexity with more monitoring and evaluation then I think we start losing the real spend on the ground that brings about the real change and Alan I was just going to go back to the sequestration point that claudee raised I mean while sequestration is important it is only part of the picture I mean emissions reduction is actually the bigger and longer term game so I think there's a danger of focusing on sequestration in the short term and not addressing some of those longer term behavioural changes so I mean what we're looking for is a package which is delivering multiple benefits so the landscape that we're aiming to achieve is a landscape which emits far less greenhouse gas as well as helps to sequester it. I mean in terms of sequestration there's obviously money for peatland restoration which we're going to come on to but there's also the money that was spent and is being spent on forestry as well which is sequestering as well so I mean I think what we really need to make sure is that we are not overlooking that emissions reduction and behavioural change side and that in terms of sequestration we can also look beyond the SRDP I mean there are starting to emerge market mechanisms which are encouraging that so part of that behavioural change I would argue is to encourage land managers to look more broadly beyond just support through the SRDP. Just before the rest of the panel think they're going to get a chance to speak we've got two bits of questions. Jim, Hughman, Dave Thomson, can we, I don't know, let's see whether they're somewhat similar and we can try and get the panel to respond as well. It's definitely on the agri-environmental schemes and measures etc. Our draft budget figures that we have states, the agri-environment measures are going to be 46.8 million which is up about 7.1 per cent in real terms but the payments and inspection admin costs are actually increasing to a similar amount 45.4 million that's almost a 30 per cent increase and I note from the NFU's submission that they were a little frustrated that the Government had changed its mind regarding smaller schemes being accessed locally and continually obviously it looks at first glance that more and more is being done centrally and that is causing more admin costs etc which is probably taking quite a lot of money out of actually being delivered on the ground rather than being delivered to, I suppose, civil servants. I think we've, you know, Scottish Governments and all of Scotland has suffered, you know, because of disallowances in the past due to, you know, problems with audits. The figure is very high. We're moving into, you know, the European Commission officials have admitted that they've failed in two or three ambitions that we're trying to make the next cap greener, fairer and simpler by their account. They've made it greener and fairer but they are quite willing to put their hands up and say they've completely failed to make it simpler. So I think the reason you're saying such a significant increase there is there is vast amounts of new mapping and administration and IT systems that are going on behind the scenes to ensure that we can deliver to the standard that the European Commission will accept. And that has led to some unfortunate consequences. One of them is the loss of continuous local assessment of projects and, you know, as we understand it, we will be moving to certainly in year one, a one month assessment window and potentially, you know, not really seeing spend on the ground until 2016, which is deeply regrettable. Is March, which is probably one of the busiest times? I cannot foresee, certainly not unless you're rolling over or applying for a scheme that you've been in the past, you know, perhaps a management scheme. I can't see how for somebody doing a capital project you're ever going to be able to get your application in time to meet that window next year. Therefore, I foresee that you're not really going to see capital spend of any great degree until 2016, which perhaps means projects not really happening until late in 2016. Graham Day on this point. Just a general reaction to that. You know, one of the frustrations that you like sitting on this committee is we start off with the cap process and everybody talks about the need to simplify the cap and let's make it nice and easy, much better than it's been in the past. And then every vested interest comes along and comes up with all sorts of clever ideas to try and predict their funding streams and get what they want. We end up with a very complex cap. Is it any wonder it becomes bureaucratic with the costs that await to that? That's a rhetorical question. I was hoping to get an answer from somebody. Andrew Bowre better. Certainly, I mean, we've, you know, actually some of the arguments that we've put forward and have been successful in the early stages of the negotiation in Brussels were about simplification. You know, some of the wins that we had around the use of coefficients to ensure that the risk at inspection was reduced and the complexity around that was reduced. I don't think that was something that we threw in there to muddy the waters. It was actually to try and clear them up, but yes, you know, it's an incredible process to see it happen at a distance. You know, the tens of thousands of amendments that go into the cap regulations is incredible. So I don't think it's any wonder that we've arrived where we have. Okay. I hope you're bearing in mind the original question you were going to answer, but we better bring in Dave Thompson's question just now. Yeah, I'm just wondering if I should develop the point with less favoured area schemes that Vicky and others mentioned just now. Would you rather I left it till I was going to pick it up afterwards? Well, if you pick it up afterwards, perhaps, because you're going to deal with ELFAS, particularly. But we've got, it's been teed up, that's for sure. Lynn and then Davie. Just to say on the legacy side of things, the SRDP has obviously supported organic conversion and maintenance and we're looking at multiple benefits and environmental outcomes and protecting enhancing ecosystems. Obviously organic farming covers a multitude of water quality, soil fertility and obviously getting back to Claudia's comment on carbon sequenciation. Research has shown that adoption of organic farming in the UK would offset 23% of agricultural emissions and that's through soil carbon sequenciation alone. Obviously Vicky was talking about evaluation and benefits of biodiversity and things like that. There's obviously figures out there already that organic farming gives you 34% more plants than insects and animal species and 50% higher numbers of wildlife. That's already stated, so obviously there could be a valuation there but it's also shown in research that you already get that with organic farming. On the basis that going forward organic is considered a national priority, we welcome that wholeheartedly. Okay, Andy Wight. Yeah, just going back to the question about the admin cost. Again, I think the question is, or the question that should be asked is would you actually get for that level of sort of admin spend? Clearly compliance and the risk of non-compliance is a huge, huge issue but if it is only compliance you're actually getting for that then it's quite a high figure. But if by 2018-2020 we do get a better mapping of our agricultural land and everything associated or a large number of other things associated with our agricultural land then that and itself is an important resource not just from an aggregate from a CAP and an SRDP management perspective, it's an important resource that could potentially help guide future actions, whether they're climate actions or wider environment and biodiversity actions, help guide where they might then be best to actually target even better. Graham Day, you've got a question to follow up on. Yeah, thanks. At the same time as achieving climate benefits we need to dress by diversity water quality issues for example, is there a risk, as I think the SRDC suggested in its written submission, that increased focus on climate change, mitigation and adaptation in the forthcoming scheme could potentially have a detrimental impact on other environmental issues such as biodiversity and water quality. So, Alan Hampson first then Andrew and Davey. Yeah, I mean I don't, I think that goes back again to the issue of multiple benefits and I think what we haven't recognised perhaps as explicitly as we do now in the past is just the contribution that a lot of the environmental and biodiversity measures do actually make to climate change. So I think part of this is about better capturing those benefits. As I was saying earlier, I mean the climate change, both mitigation and adaptation are identified as cross cutting themes. So I think we're in the learning stage at the moment in terms of capturing just what contribution these other measures do make. Andrew? Yeah, I mean I'm fairly relaxed that you know the climate change push, if I'm going to call it that, will not detract from efforts on biodiversity. You know, for example, you've been very focused on you know pursuing the idea of irrigation storage to take water during the summer. That's great for adapting to climate change. It also maintains the flows in the rivers so that it has benefit for biodiversity and we seem to be getting indications now that that will be funded so that you know, I think rather than looking at things in silos and saying well this is a bit biodiversity and that's about climate change. I think you know, we and the farmers we represent, say to us, you know it's all one thing essentially, it's all one system out there. So trying to slice it up separately, you have to do it to the extent for administration purposes but it's a bit artificial and if we can get away from that and accept that things can be deliver multiple benefits then I think we'll be spending our money more wisely in the future. David? Yeah, as Minister Graham said, we did raise it in our written evidence as a concern and I would still say, I would still say it is a concern. Vicky said earlier on about the sort of constraints on the budget, the big calls on the budget. Clearly climate change is important to actually address. We've got a recognition that climate change is important and needs to be addressed. We have got a recognition that water quality needs to be addressed and we've got a recognition through European directives that biodiversity within protected areas needs to be addressed. My concern is biodiversity, particularly outwith protected areas, which is a huge percentage of minutes, over 80 per cent of Scotland is outwith protected area. Again, when you step back and you look and see how things have happened in the past, biodiversity outwith protected areas has not necessarily had a fair shake of the stick. Plenty to do then, you know, for all of us. First of all, with Claudia, I wanted to ask a supplementary, I think, on this. Yeah, thank you, convener. I'm interested to know in view of the complexities of the multiple benefits that the scheme is looking for. If any panel members and not everyone has to comment, of course. Can any members comment on any concerns that they might have about the ability of assessors on four schemes to assess the benefits from particular outcomes? I'm going to come to monitoring later in another question. To be positive about it, are there any suggestions about development of training for assessors? I think this is a really important point. As we understand it, there's going to be a sort of two track process where agreements below 75,000 will go through the local scerpid area office and larger agreements will go to some kind of central panel. Now, we've been seeking reassurances that the appropriate experts or authorities would be involved in making the assessments of applications, whether that's SNH or CEPR or those who have the environmental knowledge to understand whether an agreement is going to deliver against its objectives. Whilst meaning no disrespect to some of the area officers working for scerpid, I'm not always sure that they do have that level of environmental knowledge in some cases that will be able to make some of those judgments. I think that the process that is being put in place will help. As we understand it, farmers are going to have to produce an audit. There's been a lot of work done on targeting to make sure that farmers and land managers can only select the right options. They have to be in the right place to select certain options, which have been based on good environmental knowledge. Then they put the application together. Then there's some kind of level of scrutiny by, hopefully, the right competent authority. There was a discussion about whether other organisations, NGOs, should play a role in that. We were quite supportive of that, but I understand that that's not going to be the case now. Then there will be a pre-assessment pre-visit before the agreement is actually given. That might be where some of these costs come from in terms of why the costs have gone up of delivery. I would argue that that's a good thing, potentially, to make sure that we actually get the right agreements that can deliver things. Equally, we should also be looking for things that do those win-win things as well. There are plenty of options in there that can deliver for water quality and biodiversity and against climate objectives, but not always. There are some conflicts, and that's where it requires the knowledge. For example, there's a big push for riparian planting, but if that's going on open ground, which is habitat for wading birds, like lapping and curlew and other things, that can be a conflict. You need to have that knowledge to know what things need to go in the right places. All large organisations know that the more complex things are, the more bureaucracies required, even NGOs. I just want to pick up on something that David McCracken said, but I think that he made the point that, out with protected areas, history is showing that biodiversity can suffer in these circumstances. Can you give us examples of what's happened in the past to all your straight at that point? It's clear from all the monitoring that's been done, not SRDP monitoring, which is general biodiversity monitoring through the countryside survey scheme, etc. We're seeing big declines in biodiversity on largely farmland, but not solely farmland, out with protected areas in particular. Huge declines in bird numbers, I can't remember the figures off the top of the head, but it's something like 50 per cent decline in cestro, 50 plus, 60 per cent decline in curlew and waders, etc. Surveys of hedgerows show that hedgerows are not achieving their best sort of state is their condition. There's a wide range, an increasing range of evidence, highlighting that biodiversity in the wider countryside is not as good as it actually could be, and that has an implication not just for what's happening there, but you can't divorce, you can't separate protected areas from what's around it. I take that point, but going back to the conflict that we talked about at the start, is there any examples currently or from the recent past where pursuing climate change mitigation and adaptation measures has had a detrimental impact on biodiversity? No, because none that I can think of off the top of the head, but the reason for that is that climate change measures depends on what they are, but largely will be effective for their climate change mitigation or adaptation irrespective of where they're applied. Biodiversity measures, they're actually quite spatially oriented. How effective or otherwise it will be, whether that's beneficial or detrimental, as Vicki said about the example that she gave. Especially since the question about whether salmon can spawn in warmer waters has been raised by other people and that the arguments for planting dappled shade and so on is another point of view. We don't know which is correct or whether they're both correct at the moment. Anyway, there's a number of people to come in here, first of all, Lynn. I'll have to wait your turn. I think it's important, you know, Davies obviously raised the importance of not forgetting the rest of the country and that's quite right, but you know that country isn't operating in a wild west situation. We have greening coming down the tracks very quickly, which will likely result in significant areas of farmland being taken out of production, buffer strips being put in, moorate land left fallow, nitrogen fixing crops being planted. So there's something via pillar one that will deliver for biodiversity. We have the general binding rules which are protecting water quality in a lot of areas and ensuring that pest size and fertilisers are not getting near water courses. We have cross compliance, which is doing a lot of the similar similar things there. We have the SAFO regulations, which regulate slurry storage and agricultural fuel oil storage. Recently, NFU Scotland has also proposed the formation of something called the Scottish Farming Environment Forum. We are in the very early stages of that, so that's, you know, we hope will be an industry initiative to resolve some of these conflicts, in a sense, before they become a conflict. So if we can, via a voluntary industry-led initiative, working in partnership with the organisations around this table and others, come up with things that farmers can do to, you know, address the decline in farmland birds. So there are both regulatory things, there are, you can call them regulation, things like greening as well in pillar one of the cap and then there are also voluntary industry initiatives and they'll apply right across the whole country. So it's not that if it's not in a protected area or it's covered under SRDP that it's a disaster area, it's far from it. Will we pursue that, I guess, a little more, Lynn? Just on the looking at the knowledge of inspectors and things like that, obviously, depending on what the assessment criteria is, is their knowledge of organic farming might be quite important in there. As previously, there was good documentation and things like that, but the soil association has previously said that we would quite happily speak to inspectors and government advisors and things like that on that basis, just to get across the benefits as we've discussed previously about water quality and soil fertility and getting the overall multiple objectives. Just coming back to your water and woodland and things like that, we've run a couple of events, one of them specifically up in Avymor, with the fisheries board up there, a local estate in the woodland trust where they'd all come together for the benefit of the whole community by planting woodland. The fisheries board were there to look at, obviously, the value of the salmon to the community, £4,000 or £5,000 of fish, seemingly, and the fact that the trees would be there, but would, obviously, not be in the situation that it would be affecting the fishery. I think that gives a good example of people working together, maybe that could be rolled out over other places. We've done one in Ayrshire as well, just to see that people working together, the fishery board, the farmer, the land managers, and maybe those who want to plant trees in the right place. Well, park that one for the moment and assess it in due course, but it's a very good point about working together. I've got to move on to peatland restoration at the moment. Clearly, the SRDP and so on is the delivery mechanism, but the RPP2 has identified the needs of restoring the cost to an enhanced peatland restoration programme of £6,500 hectares a year is estimated at approximately £5 million per year. If that was to be tripled to £20,000 a year, the cost would be around £15 million a year. The draft budget has £10 million for £14.15. We're talking about a number of other aspects there that show the disconnect between the size of the issue and the money that's available at present. Would anybody like to answer the question if you're confident that the funding allocations for peatland restoration will deliver emissions reductions attributed to this proposal in the RPP2? I wonder if Alan Hampson would like to lead in that one. The initiative was started off last year with the peatland action fund, which SNH has been running. That fund will, by March, have spent £5.7 million and have restored around 6,000 hectares of peatland. We're keen to ensure that the momentum of that isn't lost in the transition of the funding over to the SRDP. We will be retaining the project team that's been delivering peatland action to ensure that we continue to develop the demonstration projects that we continue to provide advice. Going back to the previous question, it's not just about the assessment application but it's also about the provision of good advice to make sure that the research efforts that have been set up continue and that we continue to innovate and find new ways of delivery. There is 10 million set aside for the new SRDP programme and we are confident that we can ensure that that money is spent to best effect to deliver carbon sequestration, along with a wide range of other benefits. I think that the thing that we've been particularly taking with during the peatland action is the extent to which there has been recognition of the other benefits for not just biodiversity but also water quality and flood risk management. Indeed, we've got a situation where the Wildlife Trust referred to the National Peatland Action Plan statement in their evidence saying that there is an estimated 600,000 hectares of restoreable peatland under need to a step change in action. What's your response to that? The money is possibly only part of that, though there is a need to build up capacity. We have managed to spend all the money this year but what we need to make sure is that we continue to build on that because there's little point in offering the money if we're not getting the uptake. I think we also need to learn about the techniques, make sure that the techniques that have been developed as efficient as possible and that we are buying more for that money than just the carbon sequestration that's aspired to, as I said before. There's also the scope and the peatland code is starting to explore this to use other mechanisms to help fund that as well. Given the range of other pressures that are on the SRDP, we're pleased that there has been 10 million targeted towards continuing the peatland restoration work. Would I be correct in saying that some of these schemes take more than a year to work up? There certainly is a lead time associated with that and that's part of the reason why we're going to maintain the project team because if we suddenly stopped there could be quite a lag before we built up momentum again under the new SRDP. So there's a big transfer, a knowledge transfer issue in there and just making sure that people who have already been expressing their interest have the opportunity to follow that up quickly rather than having to wait. Just before I bring in Vicky Swales, I think that Graham Day had a small supplementary on the first part. Thank you, convener. Just to go back to the figures that you quoted, it's 5.7 million dollars, 6,000 hectares of peatland restoration. RPP2 talks about 6,500 hectares from 5 million a year and if it was tripled to 20,000 hectares it would be around 15 million a year. There's a disconnect between those two figures. That would suggest that the figures that are talked about in RPP2 are inadequate. I think part of this is about just the range of restoration techniques that are deployed. You can't be very precise. We've got relatively straightforward things like drain blocking on one hand and helping to restore water levels to the removal of trees on the other end of the spectrum in terms of cost. I think trying to find an average in there. What we're doing is we're building up the experiences we go forward. Obviously, the estimates will be able to get a bit more precise, but certainly more accurate as time goes on. I think that it's clear that the potential for peatland restoration is fairly significant in Scotland and some of those much higher figures. One of the issues is about maintenance and about persuading landowners to actually do that with their land so that we can maintain peatlands in a good functioning state, ideally in perpetuity. Of course, one of the challenges is that having taken land restored it to peatland, in some cases it then falls foul of on-going maintenance payments under the cat. It doesn't meet the minimum activity requirements and therefore it's perhaps unattractive for landowners to look at doing that with land in the long term. That's a big challenge for us. I'm not sure if we've got any solutions, but unless we can either find funding streams through cap mechanisms or elsewhere to maintain that land in that state, it's going to be very difficult looking ahead. Is that one of the barriers that there might be to utilising the peatland funds, or is it that the committee has heard recent evidence indicating of an underspend to some extent of the peatland funds? Would you say that we've got to find some criteria to deal with the maintenance? You've made the case just now about that, but is that one of the barriers to land managers coming in? Are they seeing far enough ahead to see after the restoring and then maintenance cycles? I don't personally have any evidence to say categorically that's the case, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was a factor in the minds of some landowners. Point that's been raised then. Dave Thomson on this? Yeah, just a general point, just following up on that point there, biggie was mentioning that it might not be attractive for landowners to do the work they need to do, because then they lose funding essentially, you know, running on into the future. What would her view be in the view of the rest of the panel to a system whereby if people do not maintain the land they own in the way that we need for environmental purposes, that we actually tax them? Rather than give them money to maintain it, they own the land, they have a duty to look after it, so why not consider taxation as a weapon to make them look after the land they have? Right, anyone want to tackle that one? Andrew Bauer? Dare I? I dare, yes. There's obviously a lot of thinking going into issues of land ownership and land reform at the moment, and ideas like that, I'm sure, in the mind of a lot of people involved in that. The devil's in the detail. How would you assess what was appropriate maintenance? How would the appeals mechanism be for that? It's difficult to say that that would not work or it would work because there's just so many unanswered questions there. I think our gut feeling would be certainly under the next cap, I don't think you're going to see a lot of people being paid a lot of money to do nothing. The money comes with strings and it's to deliver outcomes that society wants, and if society wants those outcomes, those public goods, they tend to come at a private cost, so that helping farmers and other land managers meet some of that private cost is a reasonable relationship, a reasonable bargain with them, simply looking at them to do it for nothing and deliver all these public goods I think would be a bit unreasonable, but a lot of detail there that's unknown in what you're describing. Claudia Beamish? It's a point about raised people. Could I ask whether there's any concern about, in relation to the underspend question that's been raised, but also going forward about whether there's within the SRDP any possibilities that any of the panel sees for communities being involved in that issue in Centralland and other parts of Scotland? Davie? I don't know so much about the involvement of communities, but your question is a good one and is a good example to actually use. I mentioned earlier on about targeting, and lowland raised bogs is one of the areas within the next SRDP that's not targeted very well at all. It's quite a very—their themselves are very small—the area within which the measure will be available is very large, and so it will need a lot of local knowledge to actually know and advise farmers and other sort of landowners, whether it's community action or not, that they actually have that and they have that opportunity there to do that. I don't see any reason why there shouldn't be community—some level of community action within the next SRDP, but it depends on access and eligibility for the funding. Alan Hampson? It also depends on the co-operation of the farmers as well, and I think that's where the co-operative action fund could well be helpful, because you need some incentive to get the farmers around the table, and that might also help bring in the community. So, I think that we're quite interested to explore a little further about funding. The IUCN stated that, in the original announcement to funding for peatland restoration of the Scottish Government, it made clear that it was new and additional money for the environment. The transfer to the SRTP budget is important that peatland work remains as additional and does not compromise spend on other environmental priorities. Anybody like to take up a question about whether it is additional and whether it comprises spend on other environmental priorities? Alan? We understand it to be additional money, and, as I was saying earlier, I think that there is the opportunity there to deliver far more than just the carbon sequestration objectives through peatland restoration. I mean, the water quality side of this has been quite significant during peatland action. There's a big potential tourism spinoff for quite remote areas in terms of attracting visitors in. There's a visitor centre now being established. There's a non-going programme of... There's a non-going programme. I said that in a war zone. You're just in case anybody didn't pick it up in relation to the particular one that's in my constituency is going up. So, I mean, I think that this part that goes back to that question that was asked before about how do we maintain these peatlands once they have been restored and sequestering carbon? And I think that's really where we need to look beyond the mainstream government support mechanisms. I think that's where the whole notion of carbon trading comes into play, because the peatlands are certainly as significant as woodland in that regard. And we've already seen some quite significant progress on the woodland side. The international year of soils in 2015 will hopefully be drawing attention to the significance of soils as a store and means of sequestering carbon as well. Vickiesfield. I raised a point right at the beginning about transparency of the figures and the budgets, and I do find this really quite difficult. I hope that the money for peatland is new and additional money. It's very difficult to tell in the way in which the figures are presented and in the conversations we have with officials to understand. If you go back quite a number of years and look in the budgets, I think it was about 2010-11, the annual budget for agri-environment schemes was about £48 million, and then it was cut back the following year, and now we're kind of roughly back at that figure. How somehow with all these new added priorities is that additional money, new spend, we've got the beef scheme, we've got peatlands, we've got water quality, we've got climate. It's very difficult to see how it does all stack up, I have to say, from what doesn't look like a particularly increased pot of money, but it's very difficult for a layperson to sit and know that from the way in which any figures are presented, either through this budget process or indeed through things like what will replace the program monitoring committee, which was supposed to report on progress on the SIDP, and there are new arrangements for that going forward. So I just hope that some of those improve and we can actually get a bit more transparency on what's being spent on what. Happy that the money's there? Well, I don't know. I hope the money's there. I hope this is new and additional money for peatland because we made the commitments. It's an important thing to do and it can deliver unarguably. We should be spending a lot more on it because the scale of what we could do in Scotland is so much bigger. I don't think we could disagree. I think we should look at some of that further from what the IUCN has said because, related to the spend on the SRDP, which is limited, as we're saying just now, if not, where else in the rural affairs and environment portfolio could peatland-related activities be funded from? It's always useful to have hints from people who are at the peat face, so to speak, for us who are not normally out there cutting the stuff or even sequestering carbon in it because we'd like to ask the minister about this. Have you any suggestions? Davie, it's not my suggestion. It's a pity that Clifton wasn't unable to actually take up the opportunity to be here. Clearly, in his written evidence, he put a lot of focus on, as Vicki's already said, the need for a long-term commitment of funding, but to look at public-private initiatives in order to actually do so. He's more knowledgeable about how that could actually happen in practice than I can ever be so. That is the area of public-private, but that raises a specific question about the rural affairs and environment portfolio budget. Alan? I'm not sure where Scottish Water sits within all this, but there is a strong link with water quality, particularly in terms of colour, and Scottish Water, where, at the time when we set up peatland action, they initiated their own programme to go out and incentivise land managers to manage peatland better. We've been able to build a partnership with them, and through coming at it from a very different angle in terms of water quality, managed to work with them in partnership to deliver peatland restoration, which delivered water quality and the carbon sequestration and the wider biodiversity and other benefits that I mentioned earlier. Okay, I think that's a fair round of issues there, but I think we're seeing progress in this area, but we're beginning to tease out in a good deal more detail how it could be more effective, I guess. Jim, you've got a small supplementary. A very supplementary, a new supplementary about where funds come from and regarding capping of payments. Regarding capping payments to cap recipients and also transparency and perhaps a ledger of who gets what from cap payments, I'd just be interested if that's somewhere that some of the people here today would consider a useful way of perhaps seeing where funds could come from. Andrew? I'm not an expert on this hierarchy of precisely who gets what. My understanding is that there are a tiny number of cap payment recipients in Scotland who get anywhere near the level of payment that the European Commission was minded to look at, so I don't think that that would yield anything significant at all. Okay, thanks for that. Pardon? Oh, Vicky wants to say something. Sorry, yes? Well, just to add, so any money that is raised by capping, there were some figures presented by government a while back, but I can't remember them off the top of my head, I'm afraid, when there have been discussions in cap stakeholder meetings. It is a relatively small amount of money, but it has to go into pillar 2, as I understand it, within the member state. I would argue that money should be going into the agri-environment climate measure, even if it's only a few millions, it could make a difference. Indeed. Thank you very much. Jim Hume, you can follow on now with a beef skeet. Yes, thank you very much, and I should remind the people of my register of interest, of course. Yeah, it was just the Scottish beef package, as SRDP has been allocated £45 million between 2014 and 2020, and in this next year coming 2015-16 that has a budget at the moment of £15 million. So just a general view on whether that's good bang for buck or it should be focused somewhere else, et cetera. Andrew Power. We're strongly supportive of it. The beef sector is one of the, if not the key agricultural sectors, and we accept that we need to transform that sector, really push it on to a new level of efficiency so that it can reduce its emissions per unit of production, so that it can deliver more for biodiversity, water quality, whatever it may be. It's different, in a way, to the arable sector, where we've seen high levels of uptake of a lot of these measures already. You're dealing in general with smaller businesses, perhaps less attuned to, this is a very general statement, less attuned to some of the things that are going on elsewhere. So we think this money is necessary to bring about behaviour change. We accept that this is a fantastic opportunity that the Scottish Government and others have given us, and we are committed to making it work. We certainly don't want to see that money do anything other than bring about significant change in practice. So we think it's very much worth the investment. We know that others will disagree, but you can't bring about behaviour change on thousands and thousands of farms without making some kind of reasonable investment there, and we think that this has got huge potential. Okay, Vicki Swill. We've asked the Government for details of what's going to be in the beef package, but I have to say that it isn't entirely clear at the moment. We have the Beef 2020 report, which talks about wanting to have more efficient production, as Andrew said, which is absolutely right to improve carbon efficiency. That report also talks about a market-led growth in production and sales from the Scottish beef industry. It's difficult to square the circle. Yes, we may have more efficient beef production in carbon terms, but if we increase production in carbon terms, the beef sector will be doing very little to reduce its overall greenhouse gas emissions. The Beef 2020 report doesn't say anything about practical steps to contribute towards climate change objectives, so it's not arguing against spending that money as such, but it's a question of exactly what it's going to be spent on and what it is going to deliver in terms of delivering against climate change objectives, and that is not clear at the moment. We'll come back to Jim to wrap up on this one, but Angus MacDonald wants to pose something just now. Okay, thanks, convener. Clearly, incentivisation towards meeting climate change targets is imperative now. Vicki Swales mentioned earlier this morning the need for proper monitoring and evaluation in response to earlier questions. Now, there's been some discussions on the need to introduce or the possibility of introducing a compulsory carbon audit for farms, and it was also discussed during the committee's visit to the Green Cow facility in Penicook. I'd be interested to hear what the panel's view is on the possibility of an introduction of compulsory carbon audits. I think that they were related to the beef package since we're talking about that just now, right, Andrew Bauer? There are a number of tools out there at the moment, things like planets, that may in some way mirror what that would look like. You always have issues around the complexity of these tools, the planet in particular. It was designed for land managers, but it's accepted, I think, now that even it is a bit too complicated for the livestock sector. That's not to besmarch our livestock members. It's just that their systems don't require that level of complexity, so there's something called Manor NPK, which has been developed down in England, and I think is now available here in Scotland as well, which is particularly aimed at the livestock sector. There are things there that are the beginnings of what you might be describing there in the way of the audit. The audit is helpful if the audit is proportionate and delivers the results in a way that the farmer can then use to change practice on the farm. If it delivers him a report that says, you know, you need to cut your emissions by 10 per cent and gives a few vague recommendations about how you might do it, then that's problematic. What we have with, for example, the SEPA farm, now that's about regulation, but what SEPA is doing in its priority catchments is going out and saying, here's where there's a problem, here's what you can do to sort it. We'll be back in a year to see how you've got on. Now, they're enforcing regulation, but they're doing it in a really quite a positive way. They're trying to show the farmer how to make that change, so if the audit was able to do that, it was able to say, yeah, we've identified, I hate to use this word because I've used it in front of farmers and they usually try and lynch me. If it says, we've identified some inefficiencies in your system, and here's how you might tackle them, then that would be helpful if it simply gives high-level messages and some nice carbon accounting, then I think that would probably not be a good use of money. Lynn White. Just on the basis of the carbon audits, Andrew says there's a variety of them out there depending on where you draw the farm gate, whether it be feed coming in, inputs and things like that. One of the main things, obviously, if you're doing a carbon audit, is the use of how much fertiliser and things like that that you use, obviously under an organic system, that's prohibited, so obviously we're using going into green manures, incorporation in legumes and things like that, so the carbon audit, I think, is really important on that front because it shows you an overall look at the business, not just one part of it as we've been discussing earlier on, it looks at the farm holistically, and I think that's important to give people, but again, going back to Andrew, it depends how you sell it to a farmer, we've actually got one on our own and it's fairly straightforward to ask you about your electricity, use your stock and everything like that and when you plough and tell and things like that, fairly straightforward, but it comes back with a bar chart rather than coming about with thousands of tonnes of carbon and everything like that, it actually gives you a bar chart and says you could maybe look at this or you could look at this and it's very positive in that sense and it gives you two or three that you can look at rather than saying you're absolutely horrendous at everything kind of thing, it actually gives you a bar graph and gives you technical advice as well that you can go in and look at it as well, so it's something that farmers can do their cell and play with their cell rather than looking at getting a consultant or that kind of thing in to do, they can sit and manage it themselves. So that's the technical definition of inefficiencies, is it? Davey Kraken. Oh, just to echo much of what's been said, my colleagues are helping to deliver the Farming for a Better Climate programme, which would say that carbon audits are actually key to that sort of process, but actually it's the facilitation and the interpretation with the farmer and landowner on terms of what that actually means, where are the main areas that savings could be, what could be actually made and how could they actually do that and it's not one size fits all type solution to that, so it's that facilitation that's actually key to that whole process. Vicki Swales. We think we should be moving to a system of compulsory nutrient management carbon auditing, it's quite clear that fertilizer reductions and efficiency measures on farm are one of the things that can do most in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we accept that farmers need some advice, need some help, some support, but with Farming for a Better Climate initiative as a voluntary measure at the moment, the figures are we actually need uptake by 80-90% of farmers to actually deliver against our climate change targets, it seems to me we should be progressing towards a compulsory system, because at the end of the day most of these things actually save farmers money, it's just common sense stuff and some of the figures that have been presented under the Farming for a Better Climate initiative, you know 30,000 pounds savings overall for a dairy farm, you know a fairly substantive dairy farm in that case, some of them are much lower savings, but at the end of the day it's saving money, it's good sense and it's helping to save the planet, why wouldn't you want to do it? Very good, we'll take the questions about Farming for a Better Climate just after this, but we'll have Jim to come back since he asked the question. Absolutely, thanks very much and thanks for all those answers, they're all very interesting indeed. Just regarding the beef and the fact, you know, is this good money towards meeting climate change targets? We had Nigel Miller last week when we were talking about forestry and if that was good bang for the Government's buck and regarding climate change too stating that we didn't think we had enough science regarding pasture, obviously when pasture is grazed the pasture grows faster and therefore sequests carbon, so I just wonder where we are with the science of pasture and the sequestration that grazed pasture actually does? I think the SRUC said something specific about that in their submission. It's back to one of Graham's earlier questions that we shouldn't forget that there's a wide range of different sort of grassland and other sort of based habitats out there that do have an important role to play in carbon sequestration, particularly underground, and so there's an increasing knowledge base out there to actually say that those type of habitats are important and it's how they're actually managed that I would potentially say there's still some question marks but there's an increasing sort of acceptance at least within the scientific community that it's not just a case of if we want carbon sequestration that's plant trees, there are other habitats that have a role to play. Claudia Beamish is supplementary on this one just now. Right, thank you, convener. Both Lynn and others have touched on specific possibilities for reduction of carbon in the Scottish beef package and I certainly welcome the package as a measure that's been added in at the very much at the last minute but could ask Andrew and others if there could you highlight any really specific measures that you can put forward to farmers that will help with this some reducing the carbon footprint in relation to units of beef? Within the proposed beef scheme or just generally? I'm not directly involved in the scheme in the thinking around this however colleagues are and it's my understanding that there's an excellent work being done in Ireland which might serve as a model for us where they are they have a very comprehensive system of data collection and analysis and farmers are reporting in the performance of their herd where their herd is you know with the sires and things like that for their herd so that then allows decisions management decisions on farm and management decisions at a more macro level about you know you know should we be doing this or this so I think big data is obviously very much of the moment and I think that will be a major plank of the new scheme but obviously I think there's others who would advocate things like nutrient budgeting and the the kind of carbon audits that have been described here but I think it is fair to say that this you know the the work is being done at the moment it's that you know we don't have the final detail yet so through the convener it would be encouraging to hear more about that well it would be I suspect that the beef 2020 report involved a visit to Ireland and a variety of people who were on that it might well be it might contain the detail that we're looking for there I wonder if they andrew could just write to us about a little more about this if you can on this particular point this point okay yeah that'll be helpful I know there's more people want to come in but we will ask the questions thank you thank you convener um the cabinet secretary uh actually has announced that there will be a scope for a voluntary uptake and carbon audit that being the case can I ask andrew bowell to what extent the nf us will be encouraging and facilitating its members to participate in that I mean if if if the tool that's there is as everyone here seems broadly in agreement with is practical and workable then we would absolutely be you know holes full square behind that you know we would have no reason to be there's no you know we see no threat to farming from doing this this is a positive thing it is good for them the environment and farming vicki made the point you know they should be doing it already you know I think we could all look at our own lives and see examples of where we're maybe not being as climate friendly as we possibly could be and I think it is about helping people make the step in behavior change so we will we will totally encourage our members to do that and we'll be promoting that via every channel that we possibly can just on that point and I welcome most of your comments there the difference here is we expect the public and we encourage the public to recycle we encourage them to take decisions about changing the type of vehicles they drive the difference here is this is an industry it gets very substantial sums of public money for perfectly valid reasons but it does and therefore isn't it perfectly reasonable for society to expect a growing contribution to tackle and climate change from that sector I think absolutely I mean I don't you know there's no such thing as a free lunch you know farming gets a lot of money and you know we would like you absolutely defend that but yes it's quite reasonable to expect back in return but I think you know others might say it's not enough but actually what farmers are doing already is is pretty significant you know we will obviously need to do more but what's being done already is probably in excess of what average joe member of the public is doing and that a lot that what they're doing is in the interests of their business but a lot of it is extra work extra recording extra effort on their part that they're already doing we need to show to them we need to be able to demonstrate to them that this is not just a box ticking exercise that this is going to deliver for the environment for them for wider society well into farming for a better climate Alec Ferguson very much computer David McCracken mentioned as mentioned farming for a better climate initiative couple of times and reminded us that the budget for 2015-16 is 373 000 when you link it to RPP2 and the carbon savings that are expected my question is really very simple do you think it's enough to deliver the expected carbon savings it's a step it's simply a step on the way you know the the initial farming for a better climate programme showed that you could actually engage with farmers a relatively small number in that case you could actually show that those actually financial and environmental benefits would actually accrue from that and the expansion out of the the program in the new funding round to a larger number of focus farms and a greater aspiration for those focus farms to work with a greater number of farmers within that sort of area can only be a can only be a good thing you know is it is it enough then well it's less than 2% if I remember off the top of my head of the overall budget then it's quite a small a small approach but it's the evidence is starting to accumulate that it can actually have an effect but hopefully under this new next programme it will actually the message will get out there wider but would at the start of that new phase it would be a lot easier to tell you halfway through it. Lynn White and then Vicki Swales As part of my job in soil association Scotland I run future proofing Scotland's farming programme which comes to an end next last event in a couple of weeks in Sturt and we work quite closely alongside farming for a better climate obviously to make sure there's synergy in that type of thing and we're not running events similar events in similar areas and that type of thing the difference being with our events is we cover the whole of Scotland farming for better climate obviously has focus farms as the future proofing Scotland's farming we cover the whole of Scotland but is a and we have scotch farming innovation network that will run up and now until august next year which is similar again half the event rather than whole day events but I think it's important to say that these programmes run alongside each other future proofing Scotland's farming obviously funded by the government in QMS which we thank very much for and we'll obviously be applying for new money in the new year so I'd like to put my hand in the ring for that one at this moment in time but um as I say we like to work alongside each other and I have quite a close working relationship with Rebecca I'd like to make sure that these work together. Vicki Swales first. I think it's a very helpful initiative but to answer your question I don't think it is enough and I think there's not very good evidence that voluntary approaches across in many areas really deliver the kind of step change and the transformational change we need to make so I think the figures are clear that we need about 90% of farmers to take up the various often quite simple measures that have been highlighted that they could do that would benefit the climate I think it's very highly unlikely that an initiative with this kind of budget and running at this kind of scale is going to get that kind of uptake across the industry so how do you get the vast majority of farmers to perform and behave like the top 10% performing farmers that's a big big challenge and I think both historically and now we've under invested in that we're not giving farmers that kind of support that advice getting the research through knowledge transfer out into the farming community and helping people to understand how they can change the business is both for their own private benefit and profit and for public benefit as well so I think we do need a bit of a step change and I think some of that is moving towards some compulsion in relation to some of these things for exactly the reasons that ground days highlighted an industry which receives a huge amount of public support and actually I think has to do a bit more than it's currently doing to help us meet our objectives. Do you have international examples of people who are doing this just now and if you don't can you find us some? I didn't specifically say in terms of international I can have a look I mean I think I think there's been a withdrawal of advice and support across the board across Europe and in many countries you know there used to be a huge amount of agricultural advice and extension on a whole range of issues mostly about how to increase production and we're not making that same investment either here in Scotland in the UK or in other European countries I don't think to actually farm and manage our land to this new agenda to the new imperatives that we face today but I can certainly have a look convener to see if there are examples of other countries doing it better. That'll be very helpful. Davey and then Lynn. I just wanted to admit Lynn set out quite well how the farming for a better climate works closely with the future proofing programme but I should have I was remiss in saying that even within SRUC it doesn't work in isolation so there's many of my SAC consulting colleagues running actually farmer based events at the minute it's something about two or three per week it's difficult to keep on top with them but I can't think of any of the ones over the last month that haven't had a farming for a better climate oriented aspect to it and there's another range of them sort of coming up as soon as well and going back to Claudia's beef question then my beef research centre colleagues we've got a farmer oriented open day at the end of the month just to try and highlight some of these sort of techniques that could and should be implemented on farms now to actually help with that sort of process. Lynn and Andrew. Just to go back to the kind of saying about people farmer uptake on this kind of thing we actually do evaluation on the day and then go back to as many as we can six months afterwards to see what they're doing and we've got really good quite reporting on that and comments what they've done how they've worked with their neighbours and things like that buying bits of kit and that kind of thing and again go back to Claudia's question about obviously things that we might specifically do obviously I would challenge everybody to be organic and that type of thing but obviously I think on a practical level which we do at our events and have run successfully is looking at your soil and things like that we've obviously talked about greenhouse gas emissions and things like that looking at your soil and actually knowing what you've got being very well over the last six years when we've been running these events it's amazing the number of people that don't do soil analysis now we're going to ask people to do carbon audits soil analysis should be very well encouraged the fact that is if you're not point five out your optimum on your spring barley crop you're 15% down in your yield and that's simple in economic terms and looking forward at 15% you're losing because you've not got your pH right and I'd like to invite you all to the Scottish Organic Forum soils conference on the 10th of March in Stirling so you can find out more about that and obviously again going back to farming for a better climate working together with them we had an event in Durness and a week later I got an email from SRUC linked in with farming for a better climate saying you had a great event in Durness can you come to Caithness and do it so six weeks eight weeks later we had an event in Caithness that shows the synergy between the programmes and working together I think that's very practical on the ground thinking that we work together in that way and everybody gets better value for money I'm very glad you visited two places in Sutherland and Caithness in my constituency I hope you had a good time um Andrew Bower just in reply to the question about is it enough I mean it would be it would be nice yes to have more but we have a very tight budget I think if you were to look at the 45 million that's been allocated for the beef package okay there's there's a bit of crossover here so it's 32.5 new money in effect and the 10 million in the knowledge transfer and innovation fund and the 20 million in the advisory services budget large I would assume I'd be amazed if it wasn't a large percentage of that effort and the money in there will be delivering on farming for better climate type objectives so whilst we may only have 40 400 000 or so there we have tens of millions that you know of advice innovation knowledge transfer and practical measures on the ground that should bring about this change so I don't think we want to be too down on the fact that we've got 400 000 there there's an awful lot more lurking elsewhere in the budget we will explore that a little further but El Fas first of all Dave Thomson convener as was said earlier on there's lots of change taking place at the moment and we'll be over the next few years and we're moving into our the new system and so on and one of the things I think we have to bear in mind is that the the budget that we're talking about here a quarter of it comes from the Scottish Government and that's going to be under ever more severe pressure if the reports from Westminster that we're hearing that there's going to be a doubling almost of the the cuts that we were expecting coming down the line the austerity budget so it's just a just to flag that up that you know we're already talking about you know we're best to spend the money and we don't have enough there's probably going to be even less in the future and we're going to have to fight hard to keep that share that's provided by the Scottish Government directly you know at the level it's currently at and that'll be very very difficult and I think people should make note of that as we move into the future but I was wanting to focus in a wee bit on the the El Fas that was mentioned earlier on and I know the SRUC and your submission you were stating that there there are also elements within the SRDP such as the less favoured area support scheme where one could argue that climate and other environmental benefits could be more explicitly linked to the level of support being provided and the Scottish wildlife trust made a a similar point and I'm just wondering you know what we're trying to achieve an awful lot of different things here we've got the the high nature value which is really important food security and we're looking at maintaining communities in rural areas I just wonder what the panel think about the the current waiting if you like towards high nature value and whether we should be looking more at that given that particularly and Mike and state UNC has a lot of crofts and things in the in the west and the north I mean what are we given that there are reducing resources and probably going to be even greater reducing resources what's the most important thing for us between say the climate and environmental benefits and say the the food production benefits do you have a view on that Andrew I had the pleasure of speaking to Pete Smith who's climate change expert from Aberdeen University who many of you will know and you know I'm going to tread carefully so I don't misrepresent what he was saying when we interviewed him but his general view was pretty much the most in terms of food production the most efficient thing you can do by one measure is grow everything as intensively as you possibly can but that's a very narrow way of looking at things and actually extensive sheep and beef is very efficient because it's the more you know you cannot the human edible input versus human edible output is most advantageous in that system and these systems are also locking up a huge amount of carbon so I think it would be wrong to sort of look at these more extensive systems and say they're not they're delivering in global terms a relatively small amount of food therefore it's not that important as the south if you want to call it that becomes hotter more arid there'll be greater emphasis on the north certainly Pete Smith's analysis was we're eating too much meat here in the west but they're not eating enough in the developing world so actually there'll probably be a greater focus on us to produce the meat that the developing world wants to eat in the future so I don't think it's it's one or the other it's both but simply saying that or not both it's all of these things you have to try and balance them but looking at these more extensive systems and saying they don't deliver much by way of food they're not that important we have to focus on other things would be absolutely wrong you'd lose the carbon sequestration benefits you take away one of the more efficient ways of producing food strange though it may seem and you wouldn't really be putting us in a very good position if we want to be selfish about it to capitalise on the difficulties elsewhere in the world because that's what we will be doing you know we will be looked by looked on by other nations to provide the food that they can no longer produce themselves Alan Hampson and then Davy McCracken yes I'm going to make a similar point that I don't think they're mutually exclusive I mean we're very supportive of high nature value farming I mean these farms are often in fragile areas which can be more susceptible to the impacts of climate change I mean high nature value farming by its very nature tends to be lower input it tends to lock up carbon but they also tend to be more resilient in terms of those impacts to climate change and therefore potentially more sustainable in the longer term as our climate and other aspects of the environment change so therefore able to continue to produce food we also recognise in a written submission that the ELFAS payment is important to farmers in those areas particularly the moment in this period of sort of transition elsewhere in the CEP but what we were trying to actually highlight or looking to highlight was we feel that this transition period that we are in looking towards the move to the area of natural constraints is an excellent opportunity to actually really step back and consider what is what what are the multiple benefits that we actually want to actually achieve from those sort of payments if you if you well you need to go back that farm in the less favourite area support measure originally was designed from a social point of view not from an agricultural point of view or an environmental point of view we have a good opportunity here now to actually step back and say what is our situation in Scotland what it is what is it that we want to actually help support and maintain within those areas whether it's a high nature value farming systems and the wider environment and some of the production side of the things and how best can we do that and what role does areas of natural constraint funding in the in the future have to play within that we need a proper discussion and a debate on that over the over the coming year to 18 months and vici's will yeah I mean we absolutely do need to be supporting our high nature value farming areas for all the reasons that the alans highlighted the multiple benefits that they provide to us I think the question is whether both historically and now under this new cap we are actually going to be targeting the money towards those sorts of farming and crofting systems and helping to underpin them and their viability in the long term and I've made various comments to this committee that but both in terms of pillar one and in terms of some of the pillar two measures and ELFAS in particular I'm not convinced that that targeting is correct and that they're not actually getting a pretty poor deal out of of the cap and I think look those sorts of systems look economically vulnerable and they're therefore environmentally vulnerable as we look to the future and so I do you think we need to think about how best we can support them for all the reasons that we want to looking ahead thank you very much for your answers three of the answers didn't really sort of give a view on whether we should be moving as Vicki says you know towards pushing a bit more of the support into the the high nature value side of it or one you I think Davie you were talking about you know it needs to be reviewed over the next few years and I think we have to accept we're moving into a situation where for the next few years we just have to let that work its way out but looking further ahead how I mean do members have a view about whether the high nature value and maintaining communities should have an extra edge if you like or is that something you would like to see reviewed in some detail over the next couple of years so we can get it right when we move forward after that right Davie McRacken sorry just to be clear I wasn't suggesting we should just let it work its way out because if you just let things work its way out then they never actually achieve what you actually want things are reluctant to actually change I was actually saying and arguing for we need what you've just said there are a more fundamental sort of review of what we actually want to actually happen on the ground what elements of support we want what do we want to support how much of our support needs to go to the likes of high nature value farming systems in these sort of areas and then work through how that would actually be achieved in practice and what role areas of natural constraint payment for example could play within that on and within the wider CEP support budget. Lynn why? Just if we're looking at high nature value farming as a definition organic farming would fit perfectly into that so if we're looking at support and that type of thing and what to increase the the acreage of organic land and obviously it's a national priority now to do that I think that would be one way of actually doing it is encouraging people to to go down that route of organic farming and you would get your high nature value along with that plus another multitude of benefits. If you're very quick, Vicky Swales and Andrew Bower want to move on rapidly. It was just a question about having a good hard look at the rationale for using public money and we'd argue it's public payments for public goods and where there's clear market failure and I think we've got a bit muddled in terms of some of our agricultural support and what we think we're paying for we don't need to pay for food production per se there's a market for food and the market will provide there are some examples of market failure within that but it should be focused public money should be focused on public goods. That's a contentious statement I would say in that area of considerable constraints that we're talking about moving into you know we're going to have to we'll be having a lot of discussions no doubt in the next couple of years about the areas of your environmental constraints and the reasons for that so if we're going to move in a transition we've got to be very careful about deciding whether in fact the market works in a fashion that can help we know there's plenty of food in the world but it doesn't get distributed in the right ways you know in places that produce it that's not a market factor it's another factor entirely you know this it's complex but I would say we've got to be careful about saying hey food is market driven and the climate is not and there's only two parameters in this sure there's more than two not saying that well indeed but you know it can't come over to to be like that just now you know be careful I think Andrew Bowyer just to echo what you're saying there I mean we'd you know we'd accept that you know a lot of our farm businesses are moving and some are already there to the point where they are they don't need subsidy we'd like to see more people moving in that direction but the market does not deliver a lot of those subsidy payments go straight through the farm business into the pockets of supermarkets and organisations like that so there are some really complex issues there I'm surprised that we're sort of so confident you know when everyone around us is speaking about issues of food security that if we remove subsidies from agriculture that the food will just you know just continue to flow yes we need to tweak the system but we have to be careful that we don't we don't lose a fairly fundamental public good and that's food production which is perhaps a bigger subject for another day which we hope to involve each of the points of view and I think we should move on to being able to find out how we're going to improve the systems and I hope that we're going to make sure that that is possible as we move towards that the big transition that's that's taking place in the cap Nigel Darn. Thank you very much convener and good morning colleagues we have previously this morning mentioned monitoring and auditing and there are quite large numbers involved in that I don't particularly want to go there I would like to come back in supplementary on research and knowledge transfer but I'd like to start please by just going back to the basic issue of actually measuring things I'm conscious that farmers and those who work there have a pretty good idea in terms of tonnes per acre or pounds per tonne or you can measure nitrogen in water one way or another these kind of chemical things can be measured I'm wondering to what extent the panel believes that we know how to measure environmental things I'm conscious that bird numbers has already been used as a surrogate for biodiversity I'm also conscious that we've talked about carbon sequestration and obviously carbon and nitrogen in the atmosphere some of that will be measurable chemically but do you have and those around you have the tools actually to put numbers to the things that we really want to measure please by Andrew Hamilton first of all the I mean this is obviously a long-going issue how do we measure environmental environmental good we have used certain indicators as you mentioned particularly birds habitat area etc but I think what the Scottish biodiversity strategy now recognises is that these things in their own are part of bigger systems and it's those bigger systems that we actually need to be monitoring and understanding better than we do currently. SIPA have done a lot of work in relation to water quality at the catchment level the Scottish biodiversity strategy sets out an ambition to develop a suite of ecosystem health indicators which will also be applicable at the catchment level work is on going on those at the moment but the aim is to be able to do broad brush assessments across the country of ecosystem health taking a number of factors into consideration and then using that as the basis for targeting investment in improvement and also well demonstrating where there's good practice and the links between good ecosystem health and well farmland production but also the delivery of a wide range of public benefits as well so I mean there are particular issues around flood risk management about the management of impacts from visitor and recreation etc so we are still using some quite traditional indicators at the moment but the aspiration is there and work is on going to develop a broader set of indicators which will help us target resources in the future. I think we do know how to measure lots of things we don't necessarily make the kind of investment we need to measure those things you know one of the reasons we have reasonably good data on birds is because there's a system in place through the reading bird survey to go out and monitor those species and there's a particular interest in the UK in birds and hundreds of volunteers every year go out and walk their patch and record those birds we could do that for lots of other taxa we could do it for butterflies and plants and our understanding of habitats but sadly we don't actually make that kind of investment in understanding our basic biological assets and we do have a slight concern that there's been this sort of shift towards ecosystem services and understanding ecosystems valuing natural capital which is not to say it's wrong but what we mustn't lose sight of is some of that basic understanding and I was at an event talking about the Scottish Government's research strategy for the next five years and there was a notable lack of basic biological research in that programme telling us about what's happening to species why they're declining what the problems are and identifying the solutions for them so I think we need to watch that there are there are pots of money that could help us do some of that research and understanding but they're kind of sometimes being pulled off to what's the new and attractive and kind of sexier looking issues around some of these things let's not forget the basics. Davey. To answer your question as has been said there are plenty of sort of metrics available at that sort of wider catchment and landscape scale and being developed I think where we do face a challenge is how to sort of relate that back to the individual farm scale because it's the farm it's individual farm management practices that actually will make a difference and how we can actually get some simple metrics not very complicated metrics but simple metrics that are achievable and deliverable at the farm scale to allow farmers and land managers to actually see a bit like what we talked about earlier where they could make a difference and that that that would have an added value given what if other farmers and landowners in that area are doing so there is a there is a bit of a disconnect here. I come back sorry I'm going to say it again what gets measured gets done is there a risk that you do the wrong things because they're the things you can measure poor that's a that's a quite an open question it depends on what it is you're measuring and what interpretation you're doing from that so there's always a risk in doing the wrong things you know it's land management change land management change and what you expect to achieve from that change is always always carries a risk. I just interject with a bit of focus on things which the NFU and the soil association agree on that the European innovation partnership for agricultural productivity and sustainability is a very good model indeed that the soil association quotes farmer led field labs which are running Scotland incited by the US stunning exactly what we envisage provide an exemplar for knowledge transfer and innovation fund you know is that the kind of thing which you think we should be focusing on in this relation and does that include a climate element in it so Andrew yeah absolutely um I suppose the the European innovation partnership turns the traditional model on the head so rather than having the researcher after they've done the research going out and doing some knowledge transfer and saying this is what we've done and the farmer saying well that's very interesting but of absolutely no use to me you involve the farmer at the beginning and saying to the researchers I have a problem can you help me fix it and that might be around adapting to climate change it might be I have an idea for how I can sequester more carbon can you help me turn it into a reality we think it's got huge potential there but it's it's it's a change of attitude it's a change in in working and we're not yet seeing it coming forward from the Scottish Government in the way that we believe the European Commission intended it just as that quote comes from one of my colleagues from our Bristol office going to Europe and discussing this as part of the Scottish Farm and Innovation Network at the moment the programme that's funded by the Scottish Government Forestry Commission in zero waste Scotland in duchy and we've got a number of field labs running one of them on feeding pigs silage and the use of digestate and we've got one on horticulture and we've actually going to be running one nationally and just looking at it in the last week about the problem with rashes on farms and how to deal with them in a non-chemical way and which has had a absolutely wonderful response from all over the country as you would imagine so yes I think that the idea of as Andrew says it's practical on farm we go to the farm we've been speaking to the farmers and what would they like help with and what projects we can work alongside them with and having a researcher there taking the data and then feeding it back to the group that might do three or four visits to that specific farm in a year has been he's been very well regarded. Just before I bring in Davie Andrew you asked for the EIP model approach to be funded through the SRDP. Well our understanding of what the pillar two the European Commission's vision was that EIPs be funded via pillar two within member states we're not talking significant amounts of money here I know that you know I know the budget's unlikely to change now so what we're really saying now is there is there a way to embed the EIP way of working into the things that are already set in stone like the knowledge transfer and innovation fund can that have that that way that Lynn's described there built into it so rather than it being about the lab the white coated researcher going out and telling the locals what he's found you do have a much more equal relationship. Davie McCracken has finished up this before we come back tonight. Well it was just off the top of my head which is always dangerous but it was just the discussion we had about the beef package and what can be achieved from the beef package in terms of multiple benefits to my mind cries out for a European innovation partnership type approach to actually see what can actually be done there. I then come back to that and you've already got to it to much of the issue here but in the context of the budget which is what we're interrogating are there sufficient funds for the kind of things that we're now talking about in other words getting scientific understanding wherever it comes from to those who are actually practitioners in the field. Andrew Bowd. I mean there's a reasonably strong focus in there on knowledge transfer and innovation fund in the context of a tight budget. A colleague of mine in Brussels describes the IP as tea and coffee money it's not a lot of money here it's about getting people together rather than millions of pounds worth of new research money it's about getting them together and then you bid for other pots of money elsewhere in order to make it happen so EIP wouldn't blow a hole in this budget this budget is very tight but there is a you know there's 10 million in knowledge transfer and innovation fund and 32.5 new million money in the beef fund so you know we we understand and accept the constraints we're operating under here. Lynn White. I would just say the same as Andrew said there is money there it's just a case of the innovation fund. The programme I run is funded through SDS money and through the SFIN programme which we would presume comes from the innovation fund in the future and obviously if there is money from the the new beef package we would certainly be hoping to tap into that as well on a practical level. Claudia Small supplementary. It's a point of clarification convener just to just to go back could I just check because I'm not quite sure that I understood the point that was being made earlier in terms of food production and market failure could I just go back to Vicky and ask you what what point you were making there because I'm not quite sure that I understood it. Sorry convener I think the question I think was about it have followed on from the hnv discussion and about what we were paying for and what where we focused our limited amounts of money and I was trying to say that there are there's a rationale for government spending where there is either market failure or in order to deliver public goods because the market doesn't deliver those things in terms of particularly thinking about the environment and biodiversity and in relation to some of our our climate aspirations objectives and water quality food production per se food is is a market commodity and has a market now there are market failures I totally accept that and I accept that the whole system around food is extremely complicated so but I'm but I'm saying if we if we're going to look hard in future about how we spend public money then perhaps we do have to look at some of the money within the common agricultural policy and where it's going and what type of farming it's supporting and the balance of that money between supporting basic farm incomes of certain types of farming versus other types of farming or delivering environmental or other public goods does that make sense so so what we have in pillar one is a large amount of of that cap money going to um to arable farmers to dairy producers to the beef sector who are farming on good quality land in the lowlands in good situations close to market not disadvantaged um who are getting the bulk of that support and if we look at some of our farmers and crofters in in the highlands and islands they're getting very limited support but yet many their their agricultural output is limited but what they're delivering in terms of public goods is very significant so what is it we want to pay for and support in future that's what I was trying to to get to all right thank you um just any old question before I bring in Graham Day uh Andrew Bower wanted to comment sorry I think uh what several people around the table are perhaps thinking right now is you know what cap are we talking about here the next cap is not going to that money is not going to be going to these places that the we're turning it on its head the money is going to the high nature value areas right it's not sorry 10% of the budget or less is going to region three the vast majority of money is going to region one which is good quality agricultural land in the lowlands there is redistribution within the regions but but the system has been has been set up specifically to almost limit redistribution as far as possible if you were to map where the bulk of money under pillow one is going currently it is not going to the hnv farming areas they have seen an uplift in money but you're talking about an uplift of a few hundred pounds in some cases not not an uplift that's going to underpin and support the viability of some of those farming and crofting systems in future do you look at the budget split you can't argue it's all going to the north and west of scotland the ones the ones that I speak to from our guile in the north are quietly positive about what's coming so I don't think they're sitting there getting excited about a few hundred pounds I think this will see significant change and southwest borders northeast that's the big losers are now some of them are coming from high levels of support but they're coming an awful long way down and that money is going somewhere else yes but we also have a declining budget as well so you know I don't recognize the characterisation there I think we have to agree to differ on this one which is at the nub of part of the problems that we face Graham Day finally just thank you can be a just just to back up something Andrew Biles said I point others I represent part of the country there's going to see substantial sums of money disappear from the agricultural sector and surely we need to strip this back to the very basics until we get to the point where supermarkets pay the appropriate levels to farms which they don't and until we get to the point where the public could actually afford to pay appropriate prices which especially now they can't we need that support going into the sector we have to have it surely can't we just make that rhetorical yes since you haven't spoken for a while indeed thank you for your thank you I just wanted to make the point that I mean clearly there are differences of opinion here but next Thursday we are going to be debating Scotland's food and drink sector which I think all people all members of this parliament would agree has been a huge success over the last few years and what we have here is a question of balance because these things are always a question of balance it's quite clear everybody wants more money to go into everything but we have to take all the opinions that are taken into account and work out that balance and I think that's where we are I'm sure we'll see that in your speech but but that's it's it's very well taken I think we should really actually try and wrap this up at this stage we've got an excellent amount of written material which is as important to us as the discussion that we have around here so the two balance each other in terms of our response to ministers and the questions we asked to them and I'd like to take this chance to thank you all for the evidence that you've given us because as ever it's interesting, detailed and challenging and thank you very much for that I'm going to end this item here take a brief break because we all need it and we'll be back here for item 3 in five minutes petition PE 01490 a third item is to consider the Scottish Government's responses and the petitioner's response to the Scottish Government's responses I refer members to the paper and seek your own responses to that just now Dave Thomson thank you convener I agree with the Scottish Crofting Federation and that there are an awful lot of the questions that we as a committee asked that that haven't been answered or have been partially answered and it strikes me that a lot of the letter could probably be described as civil service waffle to be quite frank it doesn't really deal with a number of the points that we as a committee raised and I would suggest that we go back to the minister and very simply list the questions get the clerks to list the questions that we feel have not been answered just one two three four five six keep it very simple and ask for those points to be answered properly and where questions have been partially answered then we should also ask for further information in those partial answers right that's one proposal angus mcdonald thanks convener I would certainly agree with Dave Thomson's comments there as Patrick Cressor the Scottish Crofting Federation has stated in his response to the minister's letter that there remain a number of unanswered questions and I think the committee does need some more details on the intentions for funding of wild goose control and can I just place on the record that the minister acknowledges the the risks from large amounts of geese congregating in fields with regard to salmonella and listeria however I think it's more common than the minister believes and Alec Ferguson thank you convener I would entirely agree and support Dave Thomson's proposition but I wonder if I could just add a brief and I wonder if we might be able to refer to this in our response because I know that we wrote to all the goose management schemes the staff of this investigation if I can call it that and I would put on on record my disappointment that we didn't hear anything from the Solway goose management scheme and I think it is not unreasonable if you don't get a response to assume that all is basically well I have however since Elaine Murray and I received the deputation from the Solway barnacle goose management scheme about three four weeks ago which would clearly indicate that all is not well and and the the it's been hugely successful in that the numbers of the svarbled barnacle goose I believe is the correct pronunciation and this is the only there's always the only part of Scotland where these particular geese land the numbers have expanded hugely over the years and obviously the pressures have increased unlike the funding which has actually reduced so I wonder whether it is valid to point out in our response that that you know the the issues that Patrick Krauser has raised through its petition are not just confined to the north and west that they do also seem to exist in the Solway scheme as well. I think we did get evidence of Aberdeenshire and some other places too at least informally that are affected in the same way so you've got a very valid point there are you suggesting that we ask that question in the letter that we if you feel it's appropriate to do so I would like well I don't see any reason why not you know we should try and highlight the extent of the problem and therefore that's another example. Graham Day and then Claudia Beamish. Thank you. I would also agree entirely with the approach suggested by Dave Thomson on a but at the risk of slightly lengthening the letter I wonder if we could perhaps at the end ask for updates going forwards on bullet points K and P where it was said that SNH are working with local pilots to ensure they gather the information required in relation to the relationship between good goose numbers and agricultural damage and also where they're looking at the possible effects on water quality and locks and reservoirs. Scottish Water is working with SNH on Orkney to investigate this further. I would certainly welcome updates as they become available on those two points and I'd like to see us request those. Yes and Claudia Beamish. Right thank you convener I support Dave Thomson's suggestion proposal and also the other additional detail that's been added by other members and I would just like to highlight under point 0 in the minister's reply that I do have a concern about whether there's to be any possibility of the minister or the Scottish Government looking at the viability of a compulsory bag reporting scheme rather than only a voluntary scheme which should come up in evidence in view of private landowners and other issues which we're going to the detail of now but I would I would value if other members agree a response about that as well. Well I think we should ask the question certainly I think it sounds reasonable to see what answer we get Alec Ferguson. Can I make one addition to what I said previously convener it's simply for that to help the clerks in formulating the letter but there's just one figure I would give which is that in five years the number of these barnacle geese in the Solway scheme have gone up from 29,800 to 38,100 which if I'm right is a roughly a 30% increase in five years. The funding has stayed the same and the point that was particularly made and this will be the same in Aberdeenshire and areas in the northeast is that as the impact of the cap reforms begin to bite and single farm payment reduces in these areas the incentive to remain in these schemes will become less if I could put it that way. I think the clerks have got a clear steer if we're agreed that that's the amount of business that we wish to deal with on this just now so we need some more answers and we need them in more detail than we got well thank you very much members for that that is agreed then that we write to the minister and we seek those answers okay we're going to finish the meeting but before I do in public at its next meeting on Wednesday the 19th of November the committee will take evidence from the minister on the Scotland act 1998 river tweed amendment order 2015 draft affirmative ssi and then on the draft budget committee will also take evidence from the Scottish government's officials on the community empowerment Scotland bill I now close the meeting and ask the public gallery to be cleared and move the session into private