 Good morning everyone and welcome to the sixth meeting of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee in 2023. Before we begin, can I remind those committee members using electronic devices to switch them to silent? Apologies have been received from Finlay Carson and Karen Adam. I welcome Edward Mountain and Emma Harper, who are standing in for Finlay and Karen for today's meeting. Edward. Thank you convener considering the subject that we're discussing this morning and although I've attended the committee before where I've made a declaration of my interest, I want to make a slightly more detailed declaration of my interest so there's no dubiety about my interest in the subject. I am a member of a family farming partnership who employs three full-time people. I've been farming in my own right for over 40 years. I run a pedigree cimental beef herd. I grow barley and vegetables. I farm land not only that I own, but I'm also a tenant of. To save any dubiety, I do receive agricultural subsidies under the current scheme, both under the SFP, LFA and beef calf schemes. Thank you convener, I thought it was worth putting that on the record to start with. Thank you Edward. Our first item of business this morning is pre-legislative scrutiny of Scotland's future agriculture policy. Our first panel session is with representatives of the five farmer-led climate change groups. I welcome to the meeting Jackie McReary, chair of the dairy sector climate change group, Andy McGowan, chair of the Scottish pig industry leadership group, Andrew Moyer, chair of the arable climate change group and attending remotely Claire Simonetta, member of the hill upland and crofting group and Jim Walker, chair circular beef climate group, programme board. Welcome to everybody. We have 90 minutes for questions and discussion. Please indicate if you would like to come in by raising your hand. For attendees on blue jeans, please type R into the chat and the clerks will keep a note of the speaking order and I'll bring you in in turn. I'll kick off with the first question. Agriculture, as we are aware, in Scotland in 2020, was the third largest source of emissions, accounting for 18.5 per cent. To get the discussion started, could you each indicate key areas of emissions reductions and mitigation measures within each agricultural sector? I'll start with the panel in the room and then I'll bring in those online, so if I could start with Andy McGowan and move on from there. Good morning, everyone. I represent the Scottish pig sector. We're responsible for about 3 per cent of the agricultural emissions. We produce them apart from chicken, more protein for Scottish consumers. We produce about 45 days' worth in the year of Scottish consumers' protein needs. We've reduced our global warming potential by just under 40 per cent in the last 20 years. The other thing that is worth noting is that it's a very market-led sector, so less than 2 per cent returns come from some of the policies that we're talking about. The reduction in global warming potential has come through some of the elements that are in their win-wins. They are economically beneficial to the farmer, but they are improvements in health and genetics and in what they feed the animals. We feel that it's an example of where we can square the circle between what the public wants, which is emissions reductions and high-quality food, and keep sustainable farming businesses. That's why I've been so keen to get involved in the process. I represent the dairy sector. Your question was in relation to the emissions that our specific sector contributes to. Of the 18 per cent emissions that agriculture contributes to, dairy is about 16 per cent of those. In the main, 45 per cent of our emissions come from enteric fermentation, so the methane produced by the cattle. The next biggest emission that we would find is about 20 per cent from manure management. Those are the two main areas where dairy farming can look at to mitigate and abate our greenhouse gas emissions. Enteric fermentation is obviously methane, which is a flow gas. It's short-lived in the atmosphere, so it's quite different to other greenhouse gases. I think that there is some academic debate there in relation to how that is dealt with in terms of looking, because all greenhouse gases, for the purposes of the greenhouse gas inventory, are all reduced to carbon equivalents, but that's a very long-lived gas in the atmosphere. Methane is obviously a big one for the dairy sector to look at, and there are mitigation measures that we can put in place there. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you very much for inviting me in the arable section that I am responsible for, and we are responsible for 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, or 21 per cent of agricultural total emissions. Around 60 per cent of those emissions are related to nitrous oxide derived from fertilizer and soil management, and the remainder comes from CO2 largely from farm vehicles. That's where we are in the arable sector. We came up with 43 ways of mitigating the effects of those nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide measures, which are well documented on the arable document that we produced very quickly now, three years ago. Things have changed a lot since then, but, because of the things that we can do and are doing at the moment, that figure is coming down—the figure of 21 per cent is coming down—because of judicious use of nitrogen and good use of technology that is at our disposal. However, there are a multitude of things that can and we will do, given the right incentive and investment in things, to make this all happen better. The nitrous oxide on particular fertilizer is something that we should be paying a lot of attention to. I hope that you can hear me. I am speaking to you from Sydney, where it is currently 27 degrees at eight o'clock at night. I spent some time today in Coles, which is a multiple retailer in Sydney along the lines of Tesco across Australia. Interestingly, on sale was carbon neutral beef from the Circular Curd of Australia, which I thought was quite interesting, where Scotland likes to portray itself as first-in-class with a world-class beef industry. While we are still talking about the rest of the world, it appears to be moving on and leaving us behind. My interest in this was back in 2019, when I was asked by the then Cabinet Secretary, Fergus Ewing, to try and recover funding for the Scottish Government from Westminster, the convergence funding debate that went on. I am sure that you guys talked about it in committee between 2013 and 2019. A committee was set up, chaired by Paul Bute. It became known as the Bute Committee, obviously. After quite a lot of work, we managed to secure £160 million of back payments of convergence funding. We also recovered £26.7 million a year, which is still in place to this day. Why did I bring that up? One of the reasons that I agreed with Fergus Ewing to get involved with this recovery and injecting new money into Scottish agriculture was that some of that funding would immediately be transferred into actions, specifically for the beef sector, which at that time contributed somewhere around 60 per cent of the emissions from Scottish agriculture. A bit like Jackie, because of methane produced from enteric fermentation, and the rest—a fair proportion of the rest—of manure produced from the animals. At that time, we did not only produce a report, but we made some 40,000 words that were clear to Mineta, who was also instrumental in helping to put together with me. We also produced a scheme that was ready to roll two years ago. That would have given the beef industry a start. There was £16 million of funding from Vue, and it could have been allocated to it. We did not just come up with ideas that were cosy and nice for farming. It was a scheme that could have been put in place and delivered through existing scheme mechanisms that were already in place and taken into account. The Scottish Government's wish to stay within EU legislation and, similarly, compatible with DEFRA and compatible with WTO. That scheme was torpedoed and remains under water to this day. The problem in the intervening— Jim, that is helpful background information, but can I bring you back to the soft question that I have put to other panel members, if you could indicate the key areas of emissions reductions and mitigation measures now within your sector? The key mitigation measures are—the reason for giving you the introduction was that the industry has moved on significantly in the three years since you are referring to it since 2020. It is not moved on in a good way because there has been a significant reduction in the number of circular cows in Scotland due to the economic circumstances that we find ourselves in and the increased regulation of government on the herd. The first mitigation measure is the one that officials in the Scottish Government have favoured from day 1, which is the significant reduction in the number of animals taken into no account, the reduction of economic impact that that is going to have across the country and the potential to offshore the emissions from Scotland to other countries, notably Ireland, that continue to support the beef sector. I will come back to that later on in the discussion. That is number one. Number two, the most important thing to do is to make, bit like Andy McGowan in the pig sector, to make your beef herd as efficient as possible, whatever that beef herd might be. The more efficient you are, the less you will produce as far as emissions are concerned. To bring that into focus for the committee, without taking up a lot of your time, I would like to give you an example of what has happened in our own farm business. In the past three years, we have put in trials systems, which every animal in the trial would do four trials a year. Eighty animals in the trials are all eaten in hoppers. We know every single morsel of food that those animals eat and every litre of water that those animals drink. Those are high-performing circular animals, producing an average of 1.5 kilos of meat a day, so their weight gain is 1.5 kilos. The interesting thing about the trial and what it has shown us is that the best performing animals and they are all good performing animals are eating two and a half kilos of food to produce a kilo of weight gain a day, and the poorest ones in the same trial group are eating 15 kilos of food. Why is that interesting for two reasons? One, because obviously if they are eating less food, they will cost you less to finish them and they will finish quicker. Secondly, there is an absolute direct correlation between the efficiency of meat production and the amount of emissions from those animals, whether it is short life, methane or anything else. We have been working with Glasgow University, and we have got hundreds of animals through the trial. We have also done methane inhibitor work in the same trials. In the last year, we have also now put into place methane measuring equipment to underline and to prove the algorithms that the University of Glasgow uses to show how much methane is produced. The animals are going into hoppers as they feed and burp, as they burp, the machines measure it, and we can absolutely correlate what is happening. Those things are actually happening out there. The problem is with where we are at the minute is that putting out lists of things that farmers can do without specifying the outcomes and the base year and the base information from which they start does not take the industry anywhere. The second thing that we can do is the same as Jackie and the dairy herd, which is to be more efficient in what we do in the field. The Scottish Government has come out with a £500 soil analysis grant or support. The soil analysis programme that we have got in our beef farm costs us £5,000 a year. On a four-year rolling programme, where we do proper soil analysis, as Andrew Will in the arable sector properly GPS map fields, meaning that when we apply fertiliser, manure, slurry or lime, we do it in a way that is the most efficient that can be, meaning that we are not wasting anything. That once again has the double impact of super-efficiency in terms of money and more efficiency in terms of emissions. Those are some of the things that are really happening out there in the real world. Other countries have adopted those types of technological improvements, and the world has moved on so much in the past three years since we started doing this and writing these reports. That is actually frightening and it is embarrassing. Jim, if I can just enter up there, we have quite a lot of questions that people want to get. I want to bring in Claire Simonetta first, and then we have a lot of supplementary questions. Claire, can I turn to you now, please? Thank you very much for the invitation for having me today, representing the hill up on Crofton group. The two co-chairs, unfortunately, couldn't attend today. Just coming back quickly to what Jackie said earlier on, she very can be eloquently summarised the issue of science still being behind the curve. We have an emissions inventory at the moment that does not actually calculate emissions properly. The atmospheric longevity of methane is not captured properly, and that needs to be updated before we can really calculate the exact impact that ruminant livestock is having. Ruminant livestock being the main production system in hill, upland, farming and crofting areas. That is something that needs to be brought up to speed. In terms of what we can do, obviously, hill and upland crofting and farming is quite extensive. We have a low reliance on external inputs, which means that fossil fuel use is probably lower as a proportion of the total farm business compared to other sectors. Likewise, the use of fertilisers, for example, means that methane is really our big source of emission, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxides to a much lesser extent. As others have mentioned, fermentation and manure management are two key areas in which we can make a difference. Animal health and welfare has, by science and just from experience in the farming world, been highlighted as having quite a significant impact on animal efficiency. If animal health and welfare are maintained and safeguarded, then the animal is much more able to utilise inputs and feed efficiently. In addition to that, any sector, regardless of whether it is intensive or extensive, can do a lot with breeding. However, in extensive systems, the breeding outcomes and targets are slightly different. We cannot necessarily focus on producing an animal that is just more and more productive, because the environment cannot support that. We would end up with a system that has to rely on inputs, but those extensive systems want to work with an animal that is suited to the environment. It is resilient, it is hardy, it has a good genetic score for stability, which means the longevity of the animal, and it has a good feed conversion rate, which the latter point applies to any sort of system. What we then have is a resilient animal that is suited to the environment to thrive in that harsher environment on the hills and uplands of Scotland, and therefore can show that better efficiency in those areas. At the same time, that is something that is not captured in the inventory. That animal is then also beneficial for the environment. If it is managed properly, targeted livestock grazing can make a huge contribution towards the climate or be a big part of the climate solution, because those animals, if the graze are fragile and important habitats properly, including peatlands, they can actually help to maintain what carbon stores we already have in the ground, and by maintaining properly growing vegetation in those areas, they can help to sequester more carbon into those areas. I am going to leave it at that, thank you. Thank you, Claire. I have a few members who want to come back, but I know Jackie that you wanted to come in on something there. Yes, it was really just to pick up on what the others have said, really, that there is a lot of commonality between the sectors. Whilst each of us is here representing our own sector, as Jim said, the beef sector went ahead and reported first. All of us have looked at their report as we did ours. You were asking about the measures that we can now put in place. There are a lot in common and partly because a lot of farms in Scotland are mixed farms, so very few are a single sector farm. In addition to that, a lot of farms are diversified, so they have other business interests as well. There is an issue there about measuring carbon footprints, for example. There is not a tool that I am aware of yet of the 64 that are available that can measure a tree carbon footprint of a mixed, diversified farm. In the dairy sector, if it is easier to think of the abatement measures, we put them under six headings of genetic efficiency, feeding efficiency, energy efficiency, herd and health management, grassland management and nutrient management. As you can see, those apply to the dairy sector but also to quite a lot of others. Underneath those, we set out a number of subheadings and measures that we felt could help. The difficulty that the Scottish Government or any Government has is that there are hundreds of measures that could potentially mitigate and abate greenhouse gas emissions, but they need to tie it back into what is called the marginal abatement cost curve. There are lots of academic research that has gone on, so those have to be tied back into the inventory. It is not an easy job to identify measures, but us, as lay people, managed to identify quite a few in our five reports that we produced a couple of years ago. What we have got through in the route map from the Government is, to some extent, a regurgitation of what we have already done and what is already out there. It does not necessarily give us a huge leap forward for two years of work, and I find that a bit disappointing that we are where we are two years later. I just want to make a comment on what Jim and Jackie have said there. I cannot understand when farmers want clarity and they want to understand the future of their farming enterprises, why the proposals on the climate change groups were not initially taken forward. That remains a mystery to me, but that is just a comment on the back of what has been said. I am interested in two points to the panel. One is whether the current measures to reach net zero are sufficiently supported, are farmers sufficiently supported by the Scottish Government to do that, and the second point is in relation to the proposals in the agricultural bill in terms of the tier system, how can the tier system support Scottish farmers to maintain livestock numbers to meet consumer demand, while remaining viable and meeting those net zero targets? In answer to your first question, are the measures currently in place to do this? No, mainly because we have not really changed anything from the old system yet. I should declare that I am involved with the area of, do not ask me what the five letters stand for, but I am involved in that. We have been getting involved and keeping the spirit of it. I would say that the process will bring about a mechanism that will drive the change that we all want to see, yes. There are a number of areas in which there are decisions to make and, if they take the right ones, it can do. I would say that all five of the reports—indeed, some of the previous work—was an outcome-based approach. It was treating farming businesses like frankly grown-ups and not saying that you needed a 10,000-page rule book and a team of inspectors going round to measure your fences and make sure that you are down to the nearest inch that you were complying with the rule book. We do not do that with any other business, so I run a farming co-op. I can apply for a grant scheme. There is a broad set of objectives for that grant, and I make a proposal into that scheme. I either deliver against that, and if I do not deliver against it, there is a clawback mechanism. I go into that with my eyes open. I say that this is what I am proposing to do, and if I do not deliver it, feel free to take the money back off me again. Farming businesses are the only ones that we do not seem to treat like that, which seems to say that we need that to make sure that we absolutely do that. The problem with designing a rule book is that someone will come up with a good idea the day after we have published it, and it will not fit. If we take more of what we would call an outcome-based approach, which is the concept behind all of the reports, we all want to reduce emissions to net zero. We all want to keep on producing high-quality food for Scottish consumers, and we all want to enhance the biodiversity, because there is no debate about that, either within the farming industry or around this room, or more widely with society. The question is, how do we do it? We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to genuinely come up with something innovative and different, but it does involve, and I would say that it is less Government and representatives, and it is more about officials taking a certain level of trust in the businesses that they oversee and saying that we will design those, so we will put those things in place, but we need to step back a little bit from it. If we write a very prescriptive rule book, it will be wrong, and it will underperform in terms of delivering the outcome, so we all want to see it. Should it have happened sooner, as Jim says, yes, probably, but we are where we are. Can we get it right going forward, yes, with a bit of urgency? Yes, so in answer to your question, Rachel, common measures, are they good enough? Absolutely not. The only word that I can describe to use them to describe them is embarrassing. Some soil sampling with undefined outcomes. A carbon audit for farms that are not really quite sure what they're going to do with it once they've got it. An animal health and welfare plan. Interesting, we've been doing them for years. What's the outcome of all this? 219 out of 15,000 eligible farmers have so far applied to the national test programme that's specifying that. In my own farm business, the latest announcement of the NFU conference suggested within addition of that £250 to get a vet to write a health plan that I would be eligible, or my business would be eligible for £1,250 over two years for all these new initiatives when we've got a climate emergency that we keep hearing about, £1,250 over two years wouldn't even pay for the disinfectant that we use while we're having 700 cows a year. So embarrassing, it definitely is, and there's no way on earth that it's going to make any difference to what's happening in the real world that we're all living in. The problem with what's been published is that there's a legislative timetable that was published at the same time as the latest announcement of this £6 million quid that's rehash money that was already in the pot, but that legislative timetable is what officials are working towards. It gives no indication at all to ordinary farmers about what part they could play in this and what are the outcomes that they need to be involved in and what are the outcomes that they are shooting for. There are people in every step in this ladder, in every sector, as Jackie said across the country, no matter where there's dairy, beef, arable. Some of them are in the bottom rung, some of them in the top rung. Every single farmer can do something, but if they don't know where they're starting from, then there's no way they can actually do anything sensible and we can actually measure what the benefits of all these activities that have been published are. So I'm afraid that the Government and their officials have got it completely upside down where you publish lists and lists of very interesting things that came from work that we did and others. None of it, particularly rocket science, had it changing all the time, as I've described in two little examples of what we're doing on our own farm, but there's no structure for this. So we're going to waste another two, three or four years till 2027, which only leaves three or four years for real actions and outcomes to happen, particularly in the beef sector, where an animal is two years old at the earliest before she has her first calf, so you just simply don't have time to make the kind of changes that we need. Therefore, the natural instinct to farmers at the moment, beef farmers in particular, that are operating in a total vacuum with the economic background that we have, with the highest fertilizer prices in history, the highest feed costs in history, the highest fuel costs in history, and the best prices for cull animals, so for cows that we are finished with, the best prices for cull animals we have ever seen, then what happens? They are culling animals like there is no tomorrow. A, because they can't afford to keep them, and B, because it's the best price they've ever had. If I could explain that in 2003, when we were throwing 30-month-old animals and over into the burner, they were worth £200 apiece, now they're worth 2,000. Clean beef in 2019, when we wrote this report, was worth £3.20 a kilo. Today, cull beef is worth £4.20 a kilo. What's happening is that the numbers of animals are shrinking as we speak very, very, very quickly, and once the beef industry loses its critical mass in Scotland, then it's going to have a fundamental impact not only on beef numbers and the farms themselves, because they will continue to farm something, whether it's trees, sheep or arable, they'll do something, probably trees, but the downstream and upstream industries that rely on them and the millions of pounds that are generated in the Scottish economy by the beef sector will simply disappear, and once they've gone, they will never come back, never. Thank you, Jim. I'm just going to bring Jackie in for fairness of voice here. Jackie wants to come in as well. I completely agree with what Jim's just said. I'm coming back to your two-part question. Current measures are sufficiently supported. As Andy said, we are where we are. The test programme allocated something like £51 million for the starter programme of the soil sampling, carbon auditing and that kind of thing, and I think that that is a good start. As Jim said, we do need a baseline. Every farm in Scotland should be carbon audited. Two-thirds of dairy farms already are, but not necessarily. They've done that for different reasons, perhaps to take a box for us for a process or whatever, and not all of them have an action plan coming out of that, so I think that we need to get everyone carbon audited. The test programme that's out there does have some support for that, but my understanding is that the uptake hasn't necessarily been as good as it could have been, maybe because of the capacity within the advisory firms to do it. We need to be making sure that we're using a consistent tool. Agriculture seems to be the one that's as good as any. There are 61-odd tools for measuring carbon, so those measures do need to be supported. I think that the other point that I would try to make in relation to support is that we should try to move away from that term and talk about investment. We're talking about a global issue. I can't think of any more two important things than feeding a population and preserving the earth that we all live on. Those are two non-party political issues. They rise above so many other issues, and that's what we as farmers are tackling. In the dairy sector, in 2018, I don't have the 22 figures, but only 60 per cent of dairy farms were profitable, including their support payment. Even then, the profit was on average £24,500. If you're looking at that profit maintaining the people on the farm and then enough to reinvest back into climate change measures, it's not enough. We're not talking about support. We're talking about investment for the future of the planet. We're talking about investment to feed a growing global population. That comes back to your very well-made point on your second point, the tier system. It does. We have conflicting challenges. Sustainability and farming isn't just about net zero. It's about maintaining populations in rural areas. As Jim said, the cows on the hill have more of a purpose than they have more than one purpose. There's a critical mass that we need to maintain. Those conflicting challenges are going to be really difficult. The tier system, on the face of it, looks fine. It's as good as any other system there could be, but the problem with looking at it is coming back to budget. We don't know how the budget is going to be allocated between those tiers. We've been told that at least 50 per cent of support will be used towards targeted outcomes. That's good language. We like to think of outcomes, because if we're looking at dealing with competing challenges, it's good to have outcomes to work towards, but we don't know how much money, A, there is in the pot, or B, how much will be allocated to each of those tiers. Without that information, it's almost impossible for us to give any intelligent or cohesive response to what we're asking. We'd better leave it there or not. Can I bring Claire in and then move on to other questions? Thank you very much. A lot of what I was going to say has already been mentioned by Jim and Jackie, which was to reiterate the point that Jim made earlier on. The drive to try and cut the beef numbers or the ruminant livestock numbers is not a sustainable solution. We need to think about further than just ticking a box on paper. The issue goes beyond the boundaries of Scotland. There is a global issue, as Jackie said. Reducing livestock in Scotland is not a real outcome, if we then just export our food production and the associated socioeconomic and environmental benefits abroad. We can offshore the emissions, but then import produce from other countries, where perhaps environmental, social and animal welfare standards are not the ones that Scottish Government and Scottish society demand from their producers. That's something that we just need to think about, and I know that that's quite a big challenge, because you have to meet targets on paper under the current inventory. To come back to the two points, just very briefly, the current measures in place, more is needed. They are a start just now, but we really need to move on. The problem that we have just now is that, although those measures are being introduced at the moment, we still have a support payment system and framework in place that is not fit for purpose. Two issues in particular are being paying payments to historic activity. Some farms are receiving support payments for activity that they carried out 20 years ago. That's simply not right when, at the same time, we have new entrants, young farmers and growing businesses that are working very efficiently forward thinking, and they are locked out of support payments or full support payments. That stifles progress, it stifles improvements in terms of business efficiency and beyond, especially on rough grazing areas that are in the hills and uplands of Scotland, because our support payments are tied to livestock numbers and because livestock numbers are typically used in their historic reference here, it then becomes difficult. If I want to improve the efficiency of my herd and I want to maybe drop numbers of cows by, I don't know, a dozen, two dozen in one year to get cows away that are not efficient, then slowly build stock up again from more efficient bloodlines, I can't risk doing that because the extensive systems rely so much on income support and who could then potentially be locked out from support payments for many years to come, so actually the support payment system does not facilitate improvement and efficiency-driven decision making. Thank you, Claire. I'm conscious that we're only on question one, moving on to question two, and we are almost halfway through our session, so can I bring out Alasdair Allan for question two, please? Thank you, convener. You've given us a very clear picture of some of the challenges that you think there are sector by sector in achieving our shared air aims that we have around emissions reductions, but what's perhaps more difficult to tell from what you've said so far because you've been concentrating, I suppose, on examples of what's happening and the challenges ahead is what the distance is to go and what mainstreaming would look like in your sector, what would mainstreaming of the things we are trying to achieve around carbon emissions look like in your sector and how far away is that? I realised in the first question, and I didn't specifically answer the two biggest problems we have are finding an alternative protein source to soya, and the second one is manure and slurry management, and so in answer to what does mainstreaming look like, are it certainly an elimination of any soya linked to deforestation and ideally alternative sources of protein altogether, which has technical challenges because soya is nigh on the perfect vegetable protein in terms of its nutrient balance for a pig's diet. That's why it's been so difficult to remove, but we can certainly do a lot about the sourcing of it, and there's a lot of worry going on in the commercial supply chains to do that. Tesco has, for example, already declared that they want that out of all of their supply chains by 2025, so I suspect that that is going to move quicker than any of the companies. It's not going to need a public policy to make that happen. I think that the private sector will force that out. The second part probably is one that we're interested in, the public sector side, because it's about the slurry and the manure management. We need to cover every slurry store in the country. That costs money, in and amongst all the trying to address this issue. The pig sector is at a generational meltdown caused by a combination of Covid immigration policies, losing China licence or the export licence. You couldn't make it up, but the long and short of it is that the Scottish pig farmers have lost more than £100 million in 12 months. The idea that they're going to off their own back and spend money putting a lid on a slurry store in the next year or two is just not going to happen because they're about to lose their house. They're more interested in keeping their house a roof over their family's head than they are putting a lid on a slurry store. Slurry storage is one where there isn't really a return on investment, so it is one there. If we want to make forward progress, I think that there is a need for some public investment, so that's what some of the grant schemes were across sectors have been about. That's to me where the solution would come. I was slightly disappointed that the budget given to the agricultural transformation programme for the next couple of years seems to have dropped from £40 million to £5 million. If that's the scheme that I think would be used as a mechanism to incentivise people to do things like improve slurry and waste management, £5 million spread across 20,000 odd farms isn't going to get us terribly far. A new slurry store is about £0.25 million each for a pig sector, so I could use the entire budget and it wouldn't even solve the problem for the pig industry and we're a very small part of the industry. As far as the arable sector is concerned, the arable sector is in grave danger of leaving the Scottish Government way, way behind. Really, that's where we are. We're on a curve that is up here compared to the Scottish Government, which is down here. We're leaving the Scottish Government way behind on the things that we're doing. It's just to make that point clear and we're in grave danger of losing any kind of control, if you want any control at all, on farming from these guys, because we're just trying to stay ahead. We are staying ahead because we're investing, and Chuckie used the right word, investment, is where the Government needs to be, because we all know that every pound that goes into a farmer's pocket, it all goes around the whole up and downstream areas. Jim quite elegantly mentioned, of course, that once these areas have gone, they're gone. I also need to remind the committee that Scotland's food and drink ambition of £30 billion has to be produced, and that's production. We are about production, and that is to be a big part of that. We have to produce for the nation. That doesn't mean to be a provocative question, but is that because the arable sector has more means than other sectors to invest? No, I would say that just a bit further ahead of the game. I've just been using some of the technology there. No, I wouldn't say that. Yes, we've had a couple of good years. We won't deny that. Prices have been good, but the price of the nitrogen thing, if we, an easy thing for you to say would be stop using nitrogen, that would cut out 80 per cent of our emissions, but that would automatically reduce our yields by more than half, and that would automatically make our carbon footprints a lot higher. Arbal farmers have been well aware of that for a lot of years. I've personally been using GPS technology for over 30 years to target lime, to target fertilizer, to target my nitrogen using green area index with satellite technology to put on the proper amount to the proper areas with absolutely no waste. That's why I'm trying to get across to you guys that you're in danger of being left so far behind and not having any control of what you're trying to do. We are doing more because we can, but we do need investment there. For instance, I'll explain why. On the nitrogen thing, we can use green nitrogen that can be done, but it costs about five times more than nitrogen we do just now. Investment in producing nitrogen from a green source can and is being done at this moment, but again, we're back to the investment work. The Scottish Government has to invest in those technologies to help us to utilise those things and to still produce. We have to still be able to produce. There will also be no businesses. Businesses won't be there, and the ambition of Scotland food and drink will become an impossible target. I just wanted to make that quite clear to you all. Alasdair, in an answer to your question, we're in exactly the same position as far as the arable sector is concerned. We're trying really hard to do things properly. There is new technology that is now being used across increasing numbers of beef farms, as I explained earlier, particularly concentrating on feed efficiency. That's what the dairy herd and the pig herd have been doing for years, so that's starting to happen. The whole point of what we produced or what we tried to introduce through the scheme and beef was to be first with the rest following, because Jackie is right as well. This is about all mix farms—carrot and stick. What do you have to offer farmers to get them involved to start with? Clearly, what has been offered so far is meaningless, and there is no one end to do with it, because there are only a few hundred out of thousands. The stick is the regulatory requirements and the cross-compliance that is going to be involved with those various tiered payments. You asked what mainstream is going to look like, Alasdair. Mainstream is going to mean that a big proportion of farmers that are currently active farmers producing food will not be producing food by 2030 once those cross-compliance and regulatory requirements come into force, quite simply because there is not enough money in the job to allow them to do the capital investments that are required. For example, in the slurry storage that has been mentioned already, and it does not help when the £72 million of underspend that the Scottish Government still got sitting in the kitty from three years ago because civil servants couldn't get out the door. I am astonished that my 40 years have been involved in various sectors. The whole point of civil service departments was and is that they actually get the money out the door and spend it on their sector because they are interested in it and going somewhere. Those people did not manage to do it, even though their numbers have increased and there are more than 1,100 of them costing the taxpayer £70 million in salaries a year. Secondly, John Swinney decided to take £33 million off the farming industry and the budget for no particular reason other than he wanted to take it off. Thirdly, I have no idea what I am to the extra £26.7 million a year that I got when I bothered to go and do some work for the SNP administration and the promise in the programme for government that you would introduce a circular scheme and follow on with schemes for the rest of the country two years ago. I have no idea what I am to that either. Fourthly, the food marketing co-operative grant scheme has been shelved for this year, which shows the commitment to the Scotland food policy for 2030. The problem with all of this sitting here in Australia watching carbon-neutral beef being sold in the shelves of supermarkets and proud of it, is that we sit around offering press releases and talking about this stuff. The officials in the Scottish Government responsible for agriculture are refusing to engage on proper policy discussions that set up a framework to allow outcomes to be defined and then they can announce all the soil sampling and carbon audits that they like. At the moment, this is so infantile, it will take our country nowhere, Alasdair, and the mainstream will disappear. There will be less than 70 per cent of farmers that are currently farming in 2030, and half of them will be producing food and the rest of them will be doing something to do with forestry or environment. If you look at the cattle numbers that are currently going off, our record will have lost 20 per cent of the Scottish sector that we have had between 2019 and 2020. It is important that, before he finishes, the person that we are speaking to here can address the question that I asked, which is, what is the distance to mainstream? Sorry, I missed that. I asked Jim what the distance was to mainstream. I do not know what the distance is to the end of his contribution, obviously, but if he can maybe address that point before he finishes. The distance to mainstream is that 80 per cent or 90 per cent of the industry is a country mile away from it. The whole point of doing what we suggested is various groups two or three years ago was to get the best-performing farmers and the most forward-thinking farmers that offer the ideas to the rest of the industry and have a five or six-year transition period to allow the rest of the industry with continued farm support to be able to get the least opportunity, Alasdair, of making a start so that they can start to catch up and offer a meaningful contribution to emission reductions. The fact that we have lost three years already and we are about to lose another three means that those 25 or 30 per cent of the industry will never get the chance to be mainstream, they will be forced out. That is not my opinion, that is an absolute fact. But Jim, we are time short. If we could move on, I have Claire and Jackie to come in and then a supplementary from Ariane Burgess. Claire? Thank you, Jim's again mentioned a few points I was going to make, so I will try and keep mine short. In terms of achieving mainstream in our sector, that depends on what you actually want. We have only spoken about emissions, but hell and up on farming and crofting systems have never just been by one aspect. We have always delivered many multiple public benefits alongside food production, but food production has obviously been the core activity of these businesses and should remain so. It is not just about emissions, it is about sequestration, it is about biodiversity. Those need to go hand in hand, so we have to be careful when we have to debate that we do not talk about those things in silos. In terms of achieving mainstream, it is not the businesses that do not want to be there or do not try to be there, it is the legislation and the policy that restricts them from getting to where they want to be and a lot of outside factors that they cannot influence. For example, we need support schemes that are more facilitating. At the moment, we have the agri environment and climate scheme. To give you just one example, the application process has become so unbelievably difficult. I am a farmer myself, but I am also a consultant, so I complete these applications for people. What is involved in those applications is unbelievably challenging for the farmer who then relies on an adviser to do all that work for them. Because it is so competitive with a very restrictive budget, it means that a lot of people do not get in. We see that time and time again when schemes like the EECS or even the Sustainable Agriculture Capital Grant scheme that was offering technology for efficiency and emissions reductions were so heavily oversubscribed, that is because farmers want to make those improvements. However, if the system is not in place to allow them to get access to the funding because the budget is too restrictive or the application process is too difficult, then that is a bigger issue that needs to be tackled. It is not that the farmer does not have a willingness to actually improve what they are doing. Gems mentioned something really important, knowledge transfer. It is hugely difficult to achieve at the moment because we do not have—we were talking about industry champions—we do not have those systems in place operating to their optimum. We need more advisers, but specifically for the hill and upland farming and crofting sector. What we are lacking is actual best practice and technology that is applicable to our systems. Here on my farm, we do a lot of trialling, we analyse genetic and genomic profiling of our cattle, we adopt a lot of technology and our biggest difficulty is that all those things are just not quite fit for purpose yet for our systems, so we spend a lot of time having to tweak it to make it relevant to our systems until they are actually workable in these extensive systems. You cannot expect farmers to adopt them or to even get a benefit from them because they are not fit for purpose just now, so there is a huge opportunity there to put more time and effort into developing best practice and technology that can be adopted by any sector. I will leave it at that. I will try to be brief. When we are talking about distance to mainstreaming, it is quite difficult to know because we do not know where we are starting and everyone is starting from a different point. There will be some farming systems and farms in all sectors that have greenhouse gas reductions in their business. What we had suggested, and not just the dairy sector, was common among nearly all the reports, was to create a baseline so that we know what that distance is and that each farm has a plan with an action plan of how to get there. That has been picked up in terms of the Government's route map without detail—again, more details needed—but what we had suggested was that every farm in Scotland goes through some sort of whole farm review and that looks at, as Claire said, at every aspect, not just greenhouse gas reduction. It will look at things such as a carbon footprint audit, some training needs assessment, a feeding strategy, a health and fertility plan, a soil management plan, and all those things to look at each farm at farm level. Each farm will then have a distance to mainstream, if you know what I mean, but at least that will be identifiable and we all know where we are starting from. Those plans would then unlock future funding and investment, where that is needed because it would identify the gap. It is almost like a gap analysis, but it would be a living document that will be reviewed and renewed as the farm progresses along that action plan towards its specific outcomes. The outcomes will be specific at farm level. Not every dairy farm will have the same outcomes. They will be starting from different places. The other point to note is that good practice that is already there and being done should be rewarded so that those who are already on the journey do not suffer a disadvantage. I am going to direct the question because of time. I have two bits at one. I will direct this to Andrew and possibly Jackie. Andrew is representing the arable sector. Last week on the committee we heard that organics needs to become part of the mainstream. I would be interested to hear what your thoughts are on that in terms of the arable sector. I understand that 20 per cent of what we are growing in Scotland is for food for people, but 80 per cent is for whisky and feed for animals. Is there a potential to support other sectors if we are feeding animals with organic feed? Let's be clear. Organic is fine and it's got a niche market. If we go, and the ambition of the Scottish Government is to go higher, that I don't think is possible because of the business that is not there to do it. Because it's organic, the costs of it for the people who are want to buy it will be astronomically too high. I can't see organics. There's not enough land mass area to allow that. Yes, there's a percentage and they're doing it very well, but if you increase that percentage too high, it will become mainstream and therefore the price would be too high for a vast majority of people who want to buy it. If we take the concern about the farm gate out of the picture, in terms of climate emissions and all that, do we think that organics and that way of producing... Organic gets worse. The garden footprint goes up when you have organic farming per kilogram produced. Okay, I'm going to have to take that away and have a look at that because I think that's not what came out in our session last week. My footprint in my farm, if I produce, use less nitrogen and produce less, my garden footprint is actually per kilogram of production goes up. Okay. Obviously, if you take everything out and you're not producing anything, you're not producing anything, so when you're not putting anything in, then you will be using less of the chemicals etc or fertiliser stuff that you need to produce. As I said earlier, the nitrogen is there to help you produce and it's part of our problem with nitrous oxide, but we have a solution to that in green technology to allow us to use nitrates. And nitrates is the only fertiliser we can actually get to net zero because of that, but it's a huge cost involving that. But to say that organic farming in Scotland, to be farming in Scotland or organic, I'm afraid you have no farming left because there wouldn't be a business there, just would be no business. Thank you for that. I will take that and look into that further to try to understand what you're saying in more detail. One of the things that I'm, in terms of the mainstreaming in the bloc, something that came up in the committee last week was around tenant farmers and the fact that some farmers have not even a year in their tenancy and I just wonder maybe again, maybe Jackie, you could address that on behalf of everyone, that issue that if you've got a short term tenancy it's very difficult to start taking up some of these measures and do we need to actually be looking at a different form of tenancy or something to support people to actually feel like, well, I can invest in this and I can actually move forward with these longer term programmes. Yeah, I think that certainly can be an issue for, particularly in the dairy sector where a lot of capital investment tends to be needed because what we need to do is lots of big kit and big expensive kit to increase our efficiencies. So I think that certainly is something that needs to be looked at and I think the tenanted sector has a very long history in Scotland and there are a lot of issues there that have always seemed to be there and not change, but I guess maybe looking at opening up the whole area of tenancies and as Andy said treating people as grown-ups that can freely enter into contracts themselves that are less restrictive than maybe what we have in place at the moment and allow people to do other things with their businesses and to treat farmers as business people. We have a very historic system for agricultural tenancies that was a post-war thing where the whole situation has changed since then. So yeah, some sort of freedom for farmers to be able to enter into contracts that allow them to do what they need to do, which won't necessarily, and that might be more environmental type operations as well as the ability to invest and know that that investment won't be lost. If we are in grave danger of offshoring all our food and stuff, if we start producing or go organic in Scotland then we will offshore putting all the problems elsewhere. We won't have any control at all, so that's a real problem with an organic going all organic. The production will not be there, therefore we'll be offshoring all our emissions somewhere else. My view is that there is a place for all farming systems, intensive, extensive, organic, non-organic. What we need is all of those to be as efficient as they possibly can because efficiency will reduce carbon emissions. At herd health there is a place for being able to treat animals with antibiotics, but the less you have to do that, the less wasted milk there is because all that milk doesn't go into the food chain. Efficiency is the key, not necessarily what the farming system is. Our group was made up of all sorts of dairy farmers, but efficiency is the key. Coming back to Andrew's point, it depends on how you look at whether it's carbon per litre of milk or carbon per area. You'll get a different answer. We've room for everyone to farm in Scotland as long as they're doing it the best they can, and efficiently. If you look at the Sri Lankan example, they all went all organic virtually overnight. The country is in a terrible state now. We just need you to look at that. If you want to look at what happened in Sri Lanka in the last year or 18 months, that would give you a very good example of what can happen with unintended consequences. Andrew, we'll have to move on to the questions. If I can bring in Jim Fairlie for his questions. Thanks very much, convener. I think that the frustration that I certainly have in this is the fact that we're speaking to five different sectors all at the one time with different baselines, different outcomes required, and each one of you could have done a session yourself, because it's just too complex. However, I'm going to try and keep this as concise as I can, because we're very short of time. I think that it was yourself, Jackie, that you talked about the baseline measure. How do we get a baseline measure, given the fact that different farmers are starting at different levels across all sectors? How does the Government find a baseline level to work from? Andy, I'll start with you, because you're clearly wanting to get in. There's a very simple solution to this, which could be done now. We are paying for individual farms to do the carbon footprint. There is no system to collate the results of each of those individual carbon footprint into a single national number. One person with a bit of thought could probably come up with a way of collating that and giving us this annual baseline figure. How do we do that if farmers aren't taking up those measures? If we're going to get a baseline measure, the farmers have to participate and get that baseline measure to allow us to start. They do, but I suspect that there are several thousand farms in Scotland that have done a carbon footprint exercise in the last two or three years. Most of them have not done it through the Scottish Government scheme. For example, on the pig sector, we've only got 14 farms that haven't done one. Everyone else has done it. I'll collect that number on behalf of the pig sector, and I'll give it to somebody. As you say, the pig sector is under this, but we need the dairy sector. We've similarly got carbon for Princeton. There are flaws in it. It's maybe not comparing apples with apples, but it's a good start. Let's collect what's already been done. What Andy says is correct. There are a lot of farmers who have done something on this journey. The problem is that they'll have used different calculator tools to do it. The data that's been collected has maybe been used in different ways. They've done it for different reasons. From a Scottish Government point of view, they need to get a consistent baseline so that everyone gets audited along the same lines. Yes, that may be a bit of duplication of effort for some farmers who have already done it for their milk processor, for example. However, I think that it's important that the data is collected and used to influence the infantry, for example. I think that there definitely is a role for the Government here in supporting farmers to do this and whether that's through tier 1, for example. It needs to be simple and easy to do. What we've said in our report is that this all needs to be accompanied by a communication strategy. Farmers need to understand why they're doing it. They need to understand the benefits of doing it. That communication strategy is the bit that may be missing. For some, there will be a bit of a culture change and a bit of a head shift. We're talking about mainstreaming. That needs to become a core part of every farmers' business. The Government definitely has a role in that. Communication is one of the starting points. There's no point in issuing all those schemes if no one knows about them and no one understands why they're doing it. Andrew, what's your view on that? The problem that I sort of have with carbon audits is that there are four that the Government has said that we can use. Agriculture is the one. The thing is that I started carbon audits 30 years ago. They haven't moved enough with the times. Who haven't moved enough with the times? The carbon audits themselves, to give the proper reward of what farming is actually doing. I'll give you a couple of examples. Grass wasn't used at all in any of those. Now it's there. I'll give you a fairly recent one. Hedges wasn't until recently been used in the carbon audit. It is now, but guess what? Over the last six months or so it's been decided that hedges are now worth three and a half times what they originally thought they were. You can see the reticence of farmers going, well, if I do it now, what's the point? Everything's changing, but they're frightened they don't get properly recognised for what they've done, because it isn't in that calculation. We're right, but we'll have the means there. It just needs to be a little bit, if they thought, put into it. Get what we've got now, incentivise people to do more, to do the carbon audit. I know that's happening. It's maybe not being communicated enough, as Jackie just rightly said. The comms has been appalling, and all of this, I have to say. It is there. It just needs to be properly collated, and we've got a baseline. I'm going to ask you one other question, which is a wee bit of diversification. I promise I will be quick. You're talking about reducing nitrogen waste. We've got massive food waste issues in this country, and there's a plant near me who is turning that food waste into liquid nitrogen for grass. Does that work on arable? It does, but we have a problem. We have got buyers who might not wish to use some of that waste, because you have to be careful what's going into the waste, Jim. If it's food waste, then our distillers, for instance, will say, no, I don't want to have anything to do with that, because the potential for a problem going through, say, the distillers have got 10, 15, 20 years worth of products sitting on the shelves, and somebody says that 15, 20 years ago, there was a problem with something that you put on the land that automatically puts billions of pounds worth of revenue for the Government and revenue for the distillers as well down the pond. Effectively, your customers are deciding what you can use. We are driven by what our customer demands, Jim. Okay, thank you. I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name. Yeah, clear. I'm going to come to you just now, because you said something earlier on about science. I think it was yourself, science being behind the curve. In terms of hill and upland farming, what is the view of the hill and upland group about what the baseline measures should be and does the science match up to what year studies I've given you? So I'll start with the latter point, because it's a very simple no, it doesn't. The science lags behind, not necessarily that it's not aware of its shortfalls or shortcomings at the moment, it's just that what's coming through a Government level is lagging behind the latest findings. So we currently have GWP 100 versus GWP Star to calculate emissions. Once that's updated, it will give a much more honest picture of what's actually going on. Because of the way the inventory works at the moment, extensive systems actually look much less efficient when you carry out the carbon audit, because those extensive systems rely much more on environmental factors and are influenced by environmental factors. Whereas maybe the more intensive counterparts can control inputs, they can control the environment inside a shed using machinery and this is not sector against sector, I'm just explaining the shortcomings of a carbon audit. The problem there then is you don't have the emissions associated with all that capital infrastructure included in the carbon audit whereas in extensive systems you've got the inefficiencies created by the environment influencing the carbon audit outcome. So the extensive systems at the moment look less efficient even though within what is possible in their systems there are actually a lot of them operating in a very efficient manner at probably an optimum production level and that coming back to the question earlier on about carbon auditing, yes it's important but we have to be important that we have to be aware of these contexts that we understand the shortcomings of the carbon audits and there is a bit of a fear talking to other farmers in the hills and uplands who say well why should I do a carbon audit just now in case this underpins my future support payments, I'm actually trying to do what's right for the environment, my cows are on the hill doing the job that Divi Wolff to do but the carbon audit doesn't show that and that's partly also a lack of uptake is caused by that and again what the Andrew and Jackie said the comms has been extremely poor. Okay can I ask again this is a wee diversion have you done any work on native over continental in terms of hill cattle is it mostly native cattle that are on the hill producing the sucklers producing the calves for the fattening systems? Well hills and uplands can vary quite significantly in system and productive capacity of the land hill is a lot more extensive so you would usually look at more native animals whether that's pure native or maybe a native cross uplands you will also find more continental cattle maybe a little bit less of that native influence but certainly where I live it is a proper hill on an island our hill can only support native animals these native animals they have evolved over many many years to suit the Scottish environment they are resilient and hardy enough to to make the most of this environment here. Okay so and going back to the point that Andrew made about your customer has to be the the end decider of what it is that you're going to do should we be grading on eating quality rather than shape? Well certainly the the Europe system looking at shape is not working it's making it really difficult to actually operate as a profitable business. Eating quality yes I would actually go a step further and say the nutrition the nutrition that's in a kilogram of beef. I spoke a few years ago about the so-called concept of so-called empty calories where you grow a food product but actually it doesn't have much in the way of nutrition just the way it's been produced that's something we need to look at because when you look at the way our targets have changed for how many fruits we have to eat each day keeps going up and up that's because the nutritional content is falling and that's not good we need to produce healthy nutritious food so yes there's definitely an opportunity there. Okay Jim I'm going to come to you but it's a slightly different question and please don't use up all the time I know how frustrated you are but please don't use up all the time what would be the the minimum number of cows to give us a critical mass in order to keep the the circular herd viable? We're at it already. We're at it now okay in that case we're under 400,000 cows now we're tiny we're absolutely tiny in world terms and we have a we have a very very efficient and very tough competitor right across the Irish Sea with access to a market called Southern Ireland and you asked earlier and I wouldn't take up the time Jim because I'll let you find it for yourself so why don't you google the circular carbon efficiency programme SCEP in Southern Ireland that's what they're introducing this month in Southern Ireland it's 256 million euros of a budget over the next four years across the next five years specifically to improve the efficiency of the beef hub in Ireland and to do with exactly what we're talking about and I'm really quite pleased Jim to be honest because at least all the work that Claire and I put into the report that we produced three years ago hasn't been wasted because our biggest competitor is now almost exclusively implementing what we suggested the Scottish Government could do. Okay thanks Jim my final question is this and this doesn't want to set you all off against each other but where should the financial support be targeted in order to allow Scotland to ache and maintain a sustainable farming industry but also to get those claim emissions targets reached? Andy, go on. Not at the pig sector. Not at the pig sector. Great, brilliant. You're getting no support whatsoever. Historically we haven't been reliant on direct payments, some of the supporting elements, the knowledge transfer, the research and the capital grants are really the areas that we've had so I think I mentioned about capital grants particularly around slurry stories that would be one big ask but the big chunk of the money needs to go to bluntly the areas where land who deliver multiple benefits of biodiversity for the rural population and produce quality food off the back bit so ask these guys. Jackie, go on. Well I obviously would support the dairy sector but in seriousness the dairy sector specifically I think needs more capital investment potentially because we don't within the sector have a surplus to do that. The dairy sector has a massive contribution to make I think you know a beef calf from a dairy cow hits the ground with zero emissions because all its emissions are attributed to the dairy cow so there's a massive potential there and Jim maybe not won't agree with me here but there's massive potential for the beef from the dairy sector as well in terms of supporting you know the contribution that can make the whole of the farming sector it's very difficult to split us sector by sector because very as I said earlier very few of us are single sector but in terms of the dairy sector I think we will need some capital investment. Two people to deliver. Farming outcomes not agents fees is where I would be putting the money definitely not because that would engrave danger guys of doing that. It's really a serious money must be channeled to productive forward thinking agriculture to deliver the outcomes that's where it needs to be channeled. Okay clear thank you basically you look at the sectors what they produce in terms of food production that is a public benefit where there's class to such is not and then you look at all the other outcomes climate and environment biodiversity and then you look at the income support that they need in order to be profitable and that gives you a good idea where the money needs to be channeled as an example hill up on crofting and farming delivers multiple public benefits from disadvantaged land so although these businesses are disadvantaged in an agricultural sense and hence rely more on income support they are advantaged in what they can deliver in terms of public outcomes and that is a justification to receive that that support but it's not the only sector. The thing is all sectors work together we're all interconnected we're all co-dependent on each other Scottish farming homes as a package deal so to speak and and we need the diversity of sectors in order to survive as an industry. Okay thank you Jim final word to you very quickly please and I say that with fondness. We've not each other in a long time Jim. I'm not interested in sector b sector I'm interested in investment with reducing cash with a reducing cash pile going forward there's going to be less money around in years to come we all know that so it has to be an investment to allow the next generation of farmers to farm without reliance and government support that's what all this is about at the moment it's not much better than a welfare state and we're never going to get away from that unless we start looking at this completely differently and so for example the equipment that I talked about that can measure feed intakes and feed efficiency and methane and equipment like that should be available across all farms I'm not saying all farms will take it up but versions of that or groups of people should be able to club together to actually get something meaningful so something that looks at the efficiency of what they're doing on the farm and there's capital invest so that's capital investment Andrew said that as well okay the second bit of it is what we do with our land this is about soil and looking after soil whether it's carbon audits whether it's the pH of the soil or whatever so the £20,000 that we're spending over the next four years doing soil mapping, soil sampling, soil testing for organic matter as well you've interested to know is doing two things firstly because we're measured it allows us to do targeted inputs for those individual fields and reduce what the input costs are for those fields that's number one so there's an immediate financial benefit to everybody that's doing that not some wee nonsense 500 quid soil sample but properly GPS the stuff that Andrew was describing earlier what does that allow us to do that's allowed us to sell the carbon that we reduce from that land for the next five years alongside the money that we are spending so we've got a 20,000 quid investment that could potentially yield over 200,000 pounds worth of benefit to the farm at today's value of carbon and carbon's only going to get more expensive as things move forward so my plea to the committee my plea for government when I set out the group to start with Jim it wasn't about government support it was about young farmers want to do things differently and how government could enable that now we're back to the same old argument about farm support and how much it's going to be worth and to whom and cross compliance and all the same old chestnuts we are still living in a world as if we're getting money from the EU that's prescriptive instead of being ambitious instead of actually understanding what the industry moving forward needs whether you're in the first rung of the ladder or the top rung and then having the ambition to put policies in place to achieve these these wonderful goals that have been set for us by people who know nothing about our industry okay thanks Jim thanks Jim both gyms can we move on to questions from Emma I'm really conscious of time and I we're not going to get all the questions in that members have got to ask so if I could ask you to keep your responses as brief as possible please Emma thanks convener I will be really quick because a lot of information has been covered already and you know i'm thinking about data and data management data collection and Jackie you said early like two thirds of dairy farms have done a carbon audit but i'm thinking about other other measurements of emissions reduction like there's products out there that are biostimulants like pro soil and pro fortis and there's other products that are emissions reduction like yeast based products for for ruminants and bio cell and then there's others like slurry cell which helps reduce nitrogen emissions in slurry so do we measure that kind of stuff do we know what farmers are using slurry cell bio cell do we know who's using biostimulants which isn't organic but it's regenerative and will help reduce nitrogen so maybe that's a question directed to andrew first and then maybe jackie it probably is what you direct question is more to talk but there is we have inhibitors for nitrogen we can use and do use in the industry but they are say 10 15 20 percent more costly to use that type of nitrogen so that does they're not they're not perfect either but they don't get properly measured they don't think that they would come under the carbon audit as a as a positive might do i'll need to check that but that is a thing we can and are doing at this moment on nitrogen on our crops okay i'm not aware of that data being collected as in terms of who's doing what already at the moment but again it's something that the whole farm review i guess would would pick up in terms of what a farm is already doing and what and in terms of your carbon auditing your soil something these are all you don't data is a one off they're reviewed it's a rolling programme so you can see maybe in your your three carbon audits what what improvements you've achieved in terms of your ultimate results so that will be a way of measuring how these things are happening there and there is a lot of as you say a lot of technology out there there's feed additives that aren't quite yet approved for use but we want to be ready to use them when they're approved and i feel that the the whole farm review mechanism would be if that's a living document that's renewed every few years that will be a way of measuring the improvements made by adopting some of these technologies so does the way we measure and gather data it needs to be flexible because of technology and because of like products that you're saying that are not licensed yet for emissions reduction in dairy cattle for instance so everything needs to be flexible and allowed to evolve as science and technology and and support can enable emissions reduction for the farmers is that right and i think it is and i think tools like the agricultural tool are continually being developed and you know there are a whole team of people working on improving that and allowing it to move along with technology so i think that's that's right we do have to get started we can't wait until everything's perfect but yes i think everything does need to evolve as technology evolves okay thanks i know we're conscious of time so i can hold it there thanks okay thanks Emma can i bring in edward if you can keep your questions brief yes it's a question will be brief the answers may not be i can't count for those but i share that the the sentiments that have been suggested around this table is what we don't want to do is go to a complicated system of forms to fill out not good for you not good for agents and we don't want to go to a system that encourages the secondary users of our product to benefit from it by driving the prices down for the producers i.e. the farmers so my questions to you is twofold one is how do we stop the users of our product siphoning off the funds that are meant to be improving the habitats and the environment on the farm and do you think this government has enough time before they bring in this bill to model the outcomes of what they're suggesting because what they did in 2015 didn't achieve the aims or what they stated was going to do you say maybe go to andrea and then jim how do we stop them and that's a six million dollar question here really um well i think we've got we have and jim mentioned it there about the carbon we do have that control of that carbon we must not sell that carbon cheaply that's really where we must not legislation government should be able to legislate to prevent that carbon any carbon we have on our farm we are actually a net zero farm my business is a net zero business i won't go into detail that why that is the case but that is the case we could sell and we probably will sell carbon at some point to to underpin the business but we must not be allowed to just sell carbon of people to sell carbon so that the big business can actually say oh i'm green that is absolute within the grasp of this government to prevent that from harm them that's my plea okay and jim maybe dwelling on that just taking into the fact that it's not just carbon it's the fact that they say you get x amount per acre therefore we're only going to pay you y for your output so jim i'm sure you have views yeah so i mean i disagree with andrea i don't think government should be legislating about the carbon market i think we're in a free market we should be allowed to reduce carbon offset sequestrate on individual farms and do with the light with it i think that would be a backward step if government revolved in that as far as the products are concerned in the world of beef my background in biofuels was a lot a lot to do with patents and ip and we patented when i started with the circular cow group and we use a patent lawyer in glasgo alongside qms to patent sustainably bred scosh beef and that sets the bar really high as a start point for people to enter that so you have to be able to produce the data from your farm from your production system to say that we started at point x and we're now at point y and we can actually prove what the emissions from those animals are along the lines of what i explained earlier on that we're doing in our own farm we're just not waiting for government anymore because we can't afford to which leads me on to your second question have they left enough time to model the outcomes absolutely not and they're not even trying to model the outcomes Edward that's the problem they're throwing out these piecemeal little incentive packages every now and again as farmers become increasingly frustrated and lobby groups jump up and down that the progress isn't good enough but actually there's no strategy there's no ambition and there's no coherent policy looking forward there's targets that we'll be forced to meet because they're legislatively legislatively compliant but there is no no coherent policy if i could just draw a comparison with the circular the circular carbon efficiency programme from southern ireland that i spoke to Jim about a second ago when applicant when open the applicants will be presented the scheme they'll be presented with the circular calving data of their individual farm from 2016 to 2021 inclusive and they'll pick the best three years as an average from those five or six years of data and that's their base that's what they're going to be measured against we have got scot eid sitting up in the northeast not far from you with all the information in the world cost an x million a year to run and we do absolutely nothing with it so there is the potential a database already exists as far as the cattle herd is concerned that would give individual farms a place to start from but the government cannot bring themselves to even think about using it okay thank you Jim that's very helpful i mean you and many other farmers across scotland have used genetic breeding line breeding to increase the productivity of their animals which means that they get they can get them to slaughter quicker the sadness is that beef cattle that are worth ready at 11 months can't be sold because they're too young they have to wait for another month before they can go into the food chain which must be a mistake if we're trying to speed up production yes or no jim from you on that would be helpful yes 100% they're not veal at 11 months old we want to get them into the food chain as soon as possible and one of the participants earlier asked about eating quality i'm sitting here in australia where they sell carbon neutral beef and they have a very simple consumer chart on that beef that tells you what the eating equality experience is going to be in terms of its taste and texture what are we doing the same europe grading system that we had 30 or 40 years ago because kms and others don't want to change the practice that currently exists probably because the scott scottish's abattoir sector is dominated by irish processors that are quite happy to import it from the island of ireland where it's subsidised to the tune of 256 million euros over the next five years thank you jim and thank you convener thank you and thank you to all witnesses thank you very much for attending today that concludes our evidence session and thank you to those who have travelled substantial distances to attend in person we'll suspend until 1045 to allow witnesses to leave and for members to have a short comfort break so back at 1045 thanks i now welcome our second panel from the UK climate change committee attending remotely we have chris stark chief executive and indra till and nethan senior analyst for agriculture and land use could i invite chris stark to make an opening statement thank you very much i'm very grateful to be with you this morning from our office in london i'm actually a resident of scotland but i'm in our london office today very grateful to be here with you today i think this is the first time that my organization has offered evidence to this particular committee so very briefly we are the independent body that looks over what the whole of the uk is doing on climate change we offer advice to the scotland and the uk government and indeed the welsh government and the norther arish government on how to handle climate change how to set targets for it and then we of course check progress and offer that to the scotland and the west west parliament periodically so i'm very grateful to be able to talk to you today about a very very important issue i'm joined by my colleague indra who has led our modelling of agriculture and land use across the uk and in scotland and that's really what i wanted to talk about just to kick things off if back in 2019 that we offer the advice that led to scotland setting its net zero target in that advice in 2019 we made it very very clear that agriculture and how we use land were absolutely key to the achievement of net zero and since then we've been watching and waiting i think for a policy to emerge you know at uk level and indeed in scotland that is fit for purpose when it comes to net zero with i would say increasing impatience so it's very good that we've been able to come today to talk about it and well i'm sure we'll talk about the proposals that the scotland Government have for agriculture but what is absolutely clear is firstly that net zero is absolutely necessary we will have to achieve it not just in this country but in other parts of the world too and that every sector must play its role in achieving net zero so we're not singling farming out when we talk about the need for farming to act for agriculture to make changes agriculture is one of the most important sources of greenhouse gas emissions in scotland and in our work what we try and do is give you know a balance of effort across the across all the sectors of the economy to get the country to net zero and we try to do that and model that with the specific circumstances of scotland in mind when we do so we are very clear when we do our work that scotland farming has to play its role in reducing scotland emissions many of those emissions come from livestock and that is not easy to tackle without lower numbers so this is a hugely sensitive area and we recognise that but rather than that being portrayed as an attack on farmers as it sometimes is sadly we've tried to discuss this in the language of opportunities for farming opportunities for the sector and i think that is important so farmers are uniquely placed they see climate change happening probably more than anyone does in this country in my experience they have an absolutely key role because they are the stewards of the land three quarters of the land in scotland is agricultural so we absolutely need farmers to come on this journey with us we need that land to provide a whole range of services alongside food production that includes of course a very strong response on the in storing carbon but also biodiversity nature things like natural flood protection tourism just the beauty of the landscape these are really important issues in our view farming is a profession it's an unusual profession because of the extent to which it's shaped by policy already but it is a profession and this is therefore a historic opportunity to use that to our advantage but i think this needs to be about diversification modernisation of the profession of farming through policy reforms which actually support farmers over this transition to net zero but lots of changes in practice and lifestyle needed for net zero in farming i think that's well understood we'll no doubt discuss them today but those farmers who are willing to make the changes i think should see rewards for it policy should provide that there should be a livelihood in these things and in those terms this is absolutely not an attack on the profession of farming and that's why i'm pleased to see these reforms you will know that we and my institution have had concerns in the past about the lack of progress in this area but really that was because we were also letting farmers themselves down by not having these policies in place i think these proposals move us on a little but i would say at the outset this is still only incremental progress and i'm afraid it is very late progress certainly too late to bring about the reductions in emissions that have been promised by the Scottish Government itself in the sector but i still worry about pace i still worry about pace and i worry about ambition and just one further thing if i may and we are expecting a lot of our farmers in this transition and i say that with great respect to the farmers in scotland you could say this is about achieving an even higher standard of farming in scotland at the end of this we absolutely must not have that undermined or betrayed by importing food or meat that's been grown or reared in other parts of the world that don't have the same high standards of farming in place same high standards of climate policy in place members in this committee i'm sure will have similar concerns to us about the new trade deals that have been signed that might permit that they don't these places that are signing these trade deals don't offer those same protections on high standards of food production we've written to deaf reminiscence about that very topic very recently and i wanted to say that at the outset we can expect us to be first in the queue to defend the interests of those farmers that are willing to go in this low carbon journey but who may see their good intentions undermined by those sorts of moves with those new trade deals but with that i'll end my opening statement and perhaps we can go to questions thank you for that and in terms of the scale of the change that's needed in Scottish agriculture how does it compare in scope and scale with changes that are needed to be made across other sectors in reaching that zero by 2045 well i think the key thing when it comes to the other sectors is that the emissions in other sectors are often driven by the use of fossil fuels and we can see ways to reduce those emissions to zero in most cases so there is a difference i think with agriculture in comparison to some of the other sectors that the opportunities to get to actual zero emissions are less in the sector farming accounts for you know something like a fifth of Scotland's emissions at the moment other sectors have that clear path to decarbonising which means that by 2045 when Scotland has met its net zero target quite comfortably farming will be the single biggest emitting sector so we do need to think about it in those terms i think we're not asking the sector to get to zero emissions but we are asking in the modelling at least for the sector to change that's driven by increased uptake of low-carbon farming practices and technologies that in turn helps to reduce non-co2 emissions especially emissions from methane from all sorts of things that happen on the farm at the moment we also need to reduce waste on the farm we also need to switch on the farm from fossil fuel use to alternatives low-carbon energy use i think when you bring that together the great hope here is is that for farming carbon becomes a crop of sorts there's some discussion of that in the last session a new income screen effectively for farmers and farmers unique contribution to this overall transition for the economy to net zero is something i said in my opening statement as stewards of the of the land we need 30 percent of that land in our modelling to be converted from conventional agriculture to the growing of biomass woodland hedge creation things like agroforestry energy crops and of course the big challenge of restoring degraded peat and to do that the challenge i think in the sector particularly is that we got to free up land so you know modeling what we try and do is look for ways in which we can free up land while maintaining food production crop yield improvements very very important they'll deliver more productive farming in scotland something that is actually a long wrong problem for scotland that will enable us to achieve the same level of production with with less land and other inputs that will release some of that land from agriculture to allow us to do the stuff that we really need for climate and indeed for some of the other environmental services that really means i suppose you could say a sustainable intensification of especially scotland scottish lowland farming with associated improvements in productivity increased stocking densities good grazing management systems in place to make that happen but we come then to that you know the most important issue i think the most the most difficult issue that in our view livestock numbers must decline if emissions are to fall and in our modeling that is driven particularly by diet change in scotland and across the UK most of the meat that is produced in in scotland is for UK consumption but we see dairy cattle beef and sheep numbers fall on the way to 2045 which allows the sector itself to be part of that journey to net zero supplementary from arian budges thanks convener hello chris it's great to to see you here and one of the things i appreciate about you is the fact that you can think you can put yourself in 2045 in a way you've touched on my question which was about the fact that 80 percent of ag emissions are from livestock and the need to reduce that but we just heard from the in the previous session that the beef sector are kind of at their like level to keep the their sector functioning 400 000 cows and we also heard from the person from hill and upland um and crofters um farmer led group that um you know they also need to to keep the headage up but here you are saying that we need to bring it down i think what i'm getting from what you're saying is but i just need clarification is that we actually need to be really looking at diversification there and that farmers are and the fact that they did say i think jackie did say that no farm is a single farm it's always mixed so could you just kind of expand on that a bit more yeah of course and thank you for for taking that question up i mean i'm sure this will be a topic we keep returning to but yeah absolutely i mean we cannot duck the fact that ruminant livestock are very very important source of emissions in Scotland at the moment and indeed across the rest of the UK and around the world so that methane in particular is a very potent greenhouse gas and some of the you know some of the work that's done often by farmer farmer in communities that tries to maintain livestock numbers for very understandable reasons but it is very difficult to see globally us achieving the goals that were set in the past target without some change in those livestock numbers and here within the UK and Scotland the same thing applies so you know we need to see a reduction but not the elimination of of those kind of livestock farming production processes and numbers but i think this is such an important thing to say that we're not we're not seeking to shrink the sector in fact they have anything which is keeping to grow it it's about diversifying on the farm what is produced and i think alongside that some of the essential services that we need not just for climate change but also generally for the improvement of the environment improvement of nature farmers should be rewarded for those things so we're looking at diversification generally of the profession of farming and with that you know our modelling shows very clearly that we do need to see lower livestock numbers i know that's an uncomfortable factor of our modelling but it's it's one that we you know we have to be truthful about a couple of supplementaries one from Jenny Minter and then Jim Fairlie so Jenny. Thank you convener and thank you Chris I represent our island butte which is a mix of farming types a lot of it is upland farming now that that can be on islands or on the mainland as well as some dairy i'm interested to hear how how how there's a reconciliation between your proposal reducing cattle numbers when that impacts directly on the sustainability of populations and we've also heard that from the previous panel which i'm sure you listened to the fact that a lot of hill farmers and crofters the fact that they have got beasts on the land is improving and maintaining that land to be able to sequestrate carbon so i'd be interested to know your your thoughts on that so i might in a second if i could bring in my colleague indra to talk about some of that but may i might just give very brief introduction to that whole topic which is it is absolutely the case that you can have livestock on the farm and sequester more carbon in the soil you know i can understand that entirely i think what we're trying to do here is look at you know a bigger system question which is what is there is an opportunity cost to taking that route to doing this so there is a world where you have lower livestock numbers and you can then do something different with that with that farm with that farm land notably growing trees restoring peatlands doing other things potentially growing energy crops even that is where the big win is when it comes to emissions so what we're trying to do is kind of take this balanced approach where i'm afraid we do need some of that land to be freed up to do some of those things we've talking about increased productivity from farming what we sometimes call internally a sustainable intensification of farming on the remaining land so we continue to produce as much food as we do today and potentially even more and then that you know about a third of agricultural land freed up to do this other stuff that is really important in this transition from net zero which if we frame this correctly with policy is something that those same farmers should be paid for so i think this idea that you know this diversification that goes with an improvement overall and an increase in the productivity of farming yes there are lower livestock numbers at the end of that but we're actually cramming more services on to the same land to get better outcomes at the end of it for the environment. Indra is there any you would like to add to that? If I may just to give you another thing to think about India before you answer a lot of the farmers in my area are generations of farmers so therefore they understand their land and they have been working it they would argue in a sustainable way so i'm interested to know what information that you have that might support them to be able to review how they are doing things sorry could you refer us that question? Sure the farmers that are in my area and across Scotland have been farming the land for generations and they understand the land they know the different types of soil they know where the the petar they can watch their livestock move around they understand that the outputs from the livestock if I may put it that way is then used as a fertiliser so I'm interested to know how you the work that you've done and how that relates to what I'm hearing from farmers on the ground. I mean if we look at the I guess what we want to look at is the the sort of the soil carbon benefits of grass and farming and no doubt when you look at mineral soils arable soils and dust ore less carbon than grassland but given you know a lot of this grassland has been in place for a very long period of time there's an issue that in terms of actually being able to sequester more carbon that it's probably received you know reached a level of equilibrium therefore those mineral grass and soils are unlikely to be sequestering more carbon because they've reached a certain age but the fact remains that if you're still grazing livestock on that on that grassland then you're still you know there's still methane being emitted by those by that cattle for example so therefore the sort of the carbon sequestration benefits of having grassland doesn't necessarily see an offset of those of those mitigation those methane emissions so in that respect you know if you wanted to increase the carbon sequestration potential of that piece of land you'd be better off sort of growing trees or creating more hedgerows for example that's not really answer my question because it wasn't specifically about grassland it was more about hill farming which is a mixture of of peat which is sequestrating carbon and the argument that was made by the farming groups we've just heard from was that if you have livestock on that then that improves the land the peat land to absorb absorb more I'm not aware of evidence that points towards that to be honest I mean there's certainly a case that if you remove sheep and you know put livestock in terms of cattle at quite low densities there is a case that that's that's better for the peat but certainly in terms of the the sort of bringing that peat peat condition back into better condition you're better off going from you know removing cattle all together really or sheep and restoring that to its full hydrological condition I've got Chris who wants to come in are you sorry Jenny are you if maybe Chris can come in I've got Chris who wants to come back in and then I've got Jim Rachel and Alistair I would just to make a very simple point really in response to this question that I think you're absolutely right to say that those farmers know their land better than anyone else and that actually that is a key part of what we're trying to achieve here is to give those farmers the incentive to use that knowledge in new ways so one of the key tests for me in terms of how this bill that we might eventually see with the proposals and it actually works is whether farmers are given the kind of freedom to use that knowledge in new ways to allow them to do the restoration of peatland in the best possible way and then of course to measure that so that we are giving rewards for things that we can measure as a result of all this so I don't know whether this this set of proposals will do that I mean it's worth saying that my my expectation is it won't so you know again this is part of my earlier story that farmers themselves are the core of the of the solution that you know we've got to give them the tools to do this and give them the incentives to do that in the right way and you know that of course steps away slightly from the livestock question but I think there's a whole range of things that if we were freeing farmers up to do different ways with the right incentives we would be able to achieve more freely with a good set of proposals here. Jim. Thank you convener. Chris, sorry, Andrew, you've just used the word probably in your answers to Jenny Minto. So what science have you used to work out what the calculations are for sequestrated carbon for grazing animals on a hill setting? I mean we very much sort of rely on the greenhouse gas inventory so that this is the inventory that's put together each year by the central government base and that's fed in you know that's constantly being updated so we're very much sort of governed by what the greenhouse gas inventory for land use, land use change and forestry is telling us so that looks at different it looks at really the mitigation benefits as it were from grassland systems and what I've tried to say before is that no doubt grasslands is a huge store of carbon but there's a question as to whether once it's reached that level of sequestration whether it continues to actually sequester more carbon and the sort of evidence that's been looked at suggests that age is the most important, the age of the grassland is actually the most important thing in terms of its ability to continue to sequester carbon so young grassland you know if it's been converted from arable land will obviously continue to sequester carbon but there will be at some point an equilibrium level that's reached. The best thing we can do once that happens is to ensure that we manage the land so we're not losing that carbon from grasslands. Okay let's look at hill setting then. Am I not right in thinking that there is new science talking about the types of greenhouse gases that have been emitted and I do want to come back to Chris about the methane reduction levels because there's science now which is reducing methane through feed but we can come back to that in a second or two. There is science just now talking about when you're talking about renewed grassland the best way to renew grassland is to graze it and then take it off now hill farmers generally have a stocking rate based on the viability of their hill now I have got absolutely no problem at all with planting trees in order to make the hill more viable but in terms of reducing the numbers of livestock planting trees has there been any calculation done on how much carbon you're released by breaking hill soil up in the first place for trees and then when you intensify how do you intensify a hill farm and still make it profitable? In terms of the I mean there are associated carbon losses you get from the initial establishment of a tree if you plant it on grassland so there will be obviously you can minimise those losses by careful soil preparation for example and you know using an appropriate technique to plant young saplings for example but there will be an associated loss in carbon emissions in the initial years but as that tree grows and gets bigger then obviously those initial losses will be offset as the tree starts to sequester. Can I ask you a wee question about that then? What is the lifestyle of trees that stand up tall? The lifespan of the tree that you've planted to break up the soil in an initial release of carbon how many years does that tree have to stand in order to sequester the amount of carbon that is released for planting in the first place? Yes that's a good question I don't have that on an individual like tree basis and we can certainly get that information back to you. Okay I'll move on just now. Dementry is to Indran it's on exactly the same train of thought I would like to know what the CCC's view of the calculation on the scale of the GHG emissions resulting from commercial forestry plantation on peaty soils which of course are part of the upland? Yes I mean we are certainly advocating that there should be no planting of trees of any sort on organic soils so peatland you know deep peat for example or even more shallow peat so that's that's not something we've modelled at all and I believe that the UK forestry standard does not allow for the creation of woodlands on peatlands anyway so that's not something that we would advocate at all and that is excluded from our analysis and our recommendations. Okay can I just get some clarification the upland that you're talking about that's being grazed by sheep does that have peat? Well I understand I mean just looking at some stats here so around two-thirds of agricultural land in Scotland is rough grazing and when I looked at the amount of peatland almost 40 per cent of Scottish peatland is classified as being used as rough grazing so I think there is on this. Would you rather that that percentage of land was grazed? The 40 per cent of Scottish peatland in an ideal world you'd want some of that peatland being restored. To follow on on this theme again I'd clear an interest of a kind which is that you know I represent like Jenny an Island constituency. I'm just not clear what it is that you're recommending here to crofters because on the one hand you're saying you might be better off rather than having livestock having trees but then you're saying you wouldn't want quite rightly you're saying you wouldn't want to plant trees on peatland but in a place like the west of Scotland peatland pretty much all there is so what are you recommending that the crofters do instead of having livestock? There would obviously I mean this is where government policy is very key and this is where the agricultural bill and more detail is required in terms of the level of financial support that will be forthcoming that you know if if there is a sheep farmer farming on an area that is deemed to be peatland then there is the opportunity for that farmer to reduce the amount of sheep that grazes that peat and then be incentivised or provided with some financial support to actually go about and restore that that peatland if it's degraded. I'm sorry I again I understand the point you're making about restoring peatland and we want to restore peatland but what is then the business model for a crofter who might have a total agricultural subsidy as most do of two or three thousand a year to invest in something else which is not really specified in what you're saying this I mean I personally I'm supportive of diversification I realise that we can't just use the uplands for for sheep but I do not understand what form of agriculture you are recommending in place for the kind of person I've just described if it's not trees and it's not livestock it'll probably I mean you know there is still a place for livestock farming that's not something we've said should not continue it's just um as we said there has to be some conversion of land that's currently used for sheep farming but other uses that can sequester carbon so if that land happens to be peatland then there's the opportunity for that farmer to continue farming but also to allocate some of that land that would have been grazed to for restoration and to be paid to do that as well whereby can generate an additional income stream. Thank you. Edward. I'm just following this three I mean surely it's a mixture not only of improving the efficiency of the animals that we have so if it's in cattle reducing the carving interval reducing the amount of time it goes to get to get the animal on to into the food chain and therefore having less animals around that's one side of it I can't follow your logic in the sense that if you're saying that grassland gets to a stage of being carbon neutral then you should use it for something else well grassland if it's properly looked after doesn't become carbon neutral it becomes able to produce and sequester carbon from the atmosphere by the use of the animals that are putting them in your back onto the ground so I don't see the circularity of your argument it seems to be far too segmented perhaps you could convince me that I'm wrong yeah I mean this thing about I think as I've mentioned before this thing we have to consider at what point does grassland stop being a continuous sequester of carbon and as I've mentioned before if it's mineral grassland and it's of a particular age then the likelihood is that grassland is no longer a sequestering or carbon but if you've got animals on that grassland then there is you know they are still emitting but but she would never stop managing the grassland properly if you were a good farmer to ensure that it's doing both that's what I don't understand you're suggesting leaving it alone you can't eat leaving it alone and our ongoing management is very important to ensure that the carbon that is actually in the in the soils is not actually admitted to the atmosphere and given changes in climate you know that is one potential risk very brief supplementary from Jim because I'm conscious that we're halfway through the session and we haven't moved on to question two yet so very brief supplementary Jim very brief supplementary can you can you define what you mean by mineral soils are you talking about grassland that is on arable land that would be in a four-year rotation I mean that temporary grassland that goes in and out of rotation certainly if you if you convert it from arable and then put it into grassland for 45 years obviously that does sequester carbon over that period it's you know and then obviously when you then revert it back to arable soil there will be some losses I'm talking when I'm talking about the the ability for grassland to sequester more carbon I'm talking about more mature grassland that's that's been you know permanent grassland as it were okay thank you moving on to the next question from Alasdair Allan please thank you again sorry if it sounds like a similar theme but um uh diversifying from it slightly again supportive of what's been said about diversification and the need to tackle emissions but um one of the ways that tackling emissions has been talked about has been um again about animal numbers but specifically about um whether or not animals which are dependent partly on uh for cattle feed for instance whether that should be part of the business model going forward so I mean we've talked a bit about you know animal about livestock numbers but do you do you think that it's a sustainable model for people to use feed other than grass because again it's difficult to see how agriculture would exist on the west coast of scotland or the northwest coast of scotland if nobody was allowed to bring in any cattle feed so just your views on on grassfed only or or other other feed stuffs I mean it makes sense it makes perfect sense when you look at the west of the country in scotland that it should be you know grassfed um I senior reason why there should be a you know a massive change from from the current um point is that it's not I mean when we're sorry to just interrupt you I think you misunderstood my question I maybe didn't put it very well my point is that it's not just grassfed my point is that you cannot have agriculture as anyone would understand it in terms of livestock without bringing in feed to island and on west coast areas it can't can't be done there wouldn't be any livestock so sorry what was your initial questions about my questions do you view that as a sustainable form of agriculture agriculture that brings that involves bringing in feed other than grass um no um I think that's that is sustainable to bring in to bring in animal feed I mean that's that's you know that seems quite sensible if you're talking about you know winter um you you've obviously will have silage that's being cut through the summer and that's a a crop but obviously that has to be supplement supplemented with with compound feed for example thank you thanks can I bring in Jim and then move on to Emma thank you very much convener um I'm going to go back a wee bit to the the fact that Scotland is predominantly a grass system um you've both used I've said that we can intensify things but on a hill farm livestock numbers are set pretty much by the the hill so there are a couple of things I want to bring up first thing is the introduction of methane reducing feeds for the finishing of livestock these are you calculating that in your emissions going forward and how does the UK livestock production system compare with other countries of the world who are producing let's say beef and sheep maybe go to christian uh maybe I maybe I should take that one I mean yes we do factor that in and it's I mean I would say this is one of the most exciting areas really you know the feed additive is something that you can actually bring down emissions is something that you're very excited about and the key thing is we are still in a world where a lot of that is untested so relying on that solely as the way forward is is tricky for us and is is a risky business so you know that is something that features in our models there's something I hope that in the future we'll be able to do more of but again we're looking for we're hungry for data that it will work and I think that's the key thing Mr Fairlie in the work that we do on on modeling the future over the next 35 years or so okay can I just come in on that point just now because one of the things that the farming community are actively doing right now is trying to reduce their methane emissions we know that methane is a temporary gas that's in the air but it's also more polluting we understand that so that seems to me to be a crucial focal point in reducing the amount of emissions that cattle will produce in the intensive systems so if you're going to factor that in sorry I lost the point that I was going to make there I completely lost the point that I was going to make well I think if I might make a point not to guess the question you want to ask but I might make a related point just about the importance of methane I mean perhaps that might move us on I mean agriculture methane emissions are are very very important in the story of what's actually happening to our climate and I did pick up in the last session the discussion of alternative metrics this GWP star metric that is discussed and indeed it's a very important way of looking at the world sorry the point came back to me I do apologize the point I was going to make was as the industry works towards getting this methane reduction we've already heard that we're at a critical point a critical tipping point to have the critical mass farmers will exodus the beef sector on in numbers if they cannot make it pay because if it's simply not viable they're not going to do it but if we take the time to allow that science to develop and make sure that critical mass stays where it is if we don't we will be importing those products from other parts of the world so have you done a balance on which one's more favourable you mean in terms of the global position overall yeah I mean we work to the to the idea that we want to maintain good production of course within the sector but that we also want to reduce emissions and that we want to we want to of course not see that displaced by imports from countries as I said my introduction for where there are not such high standards so I think that brings into the question in all of this but the role of trade policy and what borders we have and how we manage that but you know this is where we come to the key issue of diet in our in our modelling diet change in this country is what supports I suppose the continued food production of a different kind into the future worth saying that when it comes to diet change we are I think relatively conservative in their view about how diets might shift in the future in fact if you look at the latest metrics they're already ahead of the kind of metrics that we've spelled out as advice in those pathways so okay you know I think we've got to bring in this bigger system view of what the nation's diet is doing alongside trade policy and yes the need to manage livestock numbers and have within that innovative technologies like feed additives that can help manage methane we try our best to do that and you know we continue to look at that and when we come to do the next major assessment in the next couple of years that's going to be a major factor but it's difficult for me to imagine in a world where we wouldn't be advising a reduction in livestock numbers as a key part of that overall strategy for net zero did you answer the question about the emissions of the UK intensity as compared to other parts of the world yeah I mean we can come to that I mean that that's a really really important point this is one of the parts of the world that has lowest greenhouse gas emissions associated with the rearing of animals with the with that meat production gotten slightly different because of course it has a slightly different balance between dairy herd and beef herd but it's a this is a place that produces low low emission meat and you know that most of that is is for domestic consumption and hence the link to the nation's diet okay thank you a brief supplementary from Rachel and then on to Emma well I just want to pick up on how you answered the question Chris to Jim there because obviously if we cut livestock numbers which basically you are saying if we look at it in black and white here you say you want to support farmers but cutting livestock numbers is not supporting farmers but you also say that you know the ccc also say that offshoring food production is wrong as well so how are we meant to feed our country I mean it's put it very simple way I mean and it's actually very clear in the modelling that as the diet shifts in this country we can produce actually more food from existing land whilst delivering all these extra services that I've talked about and they need to change that land to allow it to sequester and work carbon as part of that so you know I suppose I feel sorry on that point Chris on that point I don't know if you were able to follow the last session but we had evidence from an upland farmer Claire Simone I can't pronounce her name but she basically said that it looks as though extensive systems are operating inefficiently but they're not they're doing everything they possibly can there are two different types of calculation of emissions which are the gwp 100 and gwp star and they're already doing all this so I think we could come to there's other questions on this but I think we could come to a very different point if we actually got the calculations correct and the Scottish Government started to speed up the support and gave them the right support like we heard examples are happening in other countries I mean I I fear we're falling into chat of imagining that we are attacking farmers here I mean I couldn't agree more with what you just said I mean I think if we get the incentives right with policy then we can have sustainable upland fill upland farming in this country alongside all the other services that we need I mean I it's not my intention to give you the sense that we can't you know we can't have that kind of farming happen in Scotland it's absolutely the case that policy needs to support a broader range of things thank you Chris can we move on to Emma thanks convener just to pick up on what Jim was asking about I suppose emissions in other countries and you know we've talked in chamber in debates about how much water it takes to produce a litre of almond milk for instance you know it's like 101 gallons of water to make a cup of almonds and that's not even made in this country and compared to how we grow grass really really well in this country and supporting a diet we had another expert that came to health we raised it in health committee Alice Stanton who was talking about the I suppose misinformation about red meat consumption and avoiding it reduces cancer when actually that information has now been evidenced as not quite accurate so I'm interested in you know how do we support food production emissions reduction and support would how do we compare to other countries well I mean in terms of our food production and particularly in terms of the you know the highest the highest emissions from food production which are again from livestock we we compare very well so you know in terms of what needs to be done globally this is a part of the world when you look at you know the emissions associated with food production where you'll see a relatively low number now that's important but you know it's equally true that even in this country we still need to see productions and emissions from farming if we're to hit net zero now it's doubly so in other parts of the world so I think that brings into question how that's achieved and again I'll go back to my opening statement that what we're trying to do in our modelling is present a balanced outlook on that we're not trying to ruin farming in this it's absolutely not the case what we're trying to do is to squeeze more on to existing land land is a very scarce resource in Scotland and across the UK who do more things so part of that is about encouraging farmers to have a different a bit more diversified set of activities on the farm yes there is reduction in livestock but that is matched by a reduction in the nation's meat consumption and alongside that that allows us to squeeze in to those same farms additional services which again I'll repeat what I said earlier could be rewarded by policy so that we are giving the incentive to farmers to diversify at their income streams not not reduce their income streams to deliver some of these environmental services including carbon sequestration it is possible to do that whilst maintaining if not increasing the amount of food production that the country does so I think you know that is the that's the goal here that I hope the proposals that we are discussing will also focus on thank you very much it's interesting you know here in this these arguments develop about you know what agriculture might look like in the future and obviously in some of the the previous questions I was asking again thinking about my partner scotland and the answers that came back tended to suggest less agriculture and more paying people not to do agriculture now there may be a place for that I was interested to hear also what you had to say about diet change which implies a massive cultural change at the level of supermarkets and I just wonder if how if this is the means by which we avoid the offshoring of carbon this is the means by which we avoid a situation where we don't produce as much food but we ask people and countries where they don't care very much about carbon output to produce more for us if that's a model for the future how on earth do we navigate through the cultural change required and the change of attitude on the part of the supermarkets required to achieve change in diet you're talking about well I think that's an absolutely brilliant question and I agree I mean I think a lot of the changes at the consumer end and the retail end this I mean I'll say again what I said about about diet just to make the point that diet change in our modelling is is one of the ways in which we continue to support food production and see those reduced livestock numbers and for that to be a you know a kind of holistic outcome here that allows us also to do other things on the land but if you want to see that happen of course the retail offer for that needs to change with it I mean what we've what we've advocated in our models at least is that for the country to reach net zero we need to see about a 20% shift away from all meat and dairy products by 2030 that goes a little further after that and we substitute that substitute those proteins with you know a more plant based diet as latest indications are we're already ahead of that trajectory so if you look at the latest indicators that's what you will see and I think the kind of interesting question is I suspect most of that has been driven by a different offer from the supermarkets you know of course there's a cultural aspect to it I mean I suppose I might I feel I want to challenge the idea that you need to see a dramatic cultural shift to achieve at that kind of outcome I eat meat I've chosen to eat less red meat that's a that's a you know that's a kind of decision that is that is easy to make if you are offered you know good alternatives for that especially from the supermarkets but I absolutely agree that if the supermarkets are not on board with this and that whole notion of diet change underpinning this is one that we absolutely should question I mean I think the supermarkets may view themselves as leading this transition I think mostly they are responding of course to what their consumers are demanding but I would like to see them lead it more and I think you know this idea that we can tie this to healthier diets I mean I want to make this point that a 20 reduction in meat is far far less than the health guidance would indicate we should be we should be reducing that meat consumption so I think we are at the conservative end when it comes to you know those key factors in the modelling that we do I suppose that the only other observation I have on that which would be keen to get your views on is that in Scotland and in the UK compared to most European countries the supermarkets have far far more power over over the market in terms of what people eat and they are even the supermarkets in this country compared to other European countries are far less likely to stock local goods so you seem to be talking about a dramatic shift but but the supermarkets in the UK do not seem to be signed up to that in the way they are in other countries so how do you how do you tackle that attitude well I'm not sure I have the answer to that Mr Allen but except to say that you know I think you're right to say that there is a no dominant supermarket sector and I think if we are able to crack it then I think some of the things that we've been talking about some of the things that we've modelled would be a lot easier frankly and I think we may have common cause I suppose in seeing that happen I don't know whether you're taking evidence from those same supermarkets but I think that that idea of asking them about what they are doing about this diet shift this year about local produce of how they're supporting high quality production of food in this country that's compatible with net zero is a very good one to put to them we have to have some engagement with those retailers but you know of course the modelling we're doing is at a more fundamental level about where the emissions come from and how we might see that shift into the future we have a range of scenarios that would you know some of them much more demanding when it comes to these issues than the one that I've been discussing with you today none of that will work unless the supermarket retailers are on board thank you can have a supplementary from Mercedes and then move on to questions from Jim thanks convener yeah just on this subject so we heard from the previous panel and I think we're hearing now that livestock numbers are reducing they've already reduced and they're continuing to reduce and we want to avoid just shifting those emissions overseas by importing the meat that we eat here so in your view is the nation's diet changing fast enough um to keep pace with and to match the the policy changes that that we're bringing forward and if not how can we um improve that and what do you see as government's role in achieving this behaviour change diet change um that's one question i've got another one if there's time but i'll put that first so i mean it's interesting to see look if you look at the evidence and diet change um and the advice that we've offered we have never gone as far as advocating some of the tougher edged policies that you would really change diet and occasionally you hear issues like meat taxes proposed and that's not something that's ever come from us we've proposed and said uh clear labeling around some of these things the healthy diet advice uh to lead you to these kind of outcomes and i think we've also you know in our work monitored what looks like a generational shift in some of this when you look at all of that together i have to say so far we've been proved right uh that we are seeing a reduction in meat consumption on the latest evidence that is actually ahead of some of the indicators that we have for the transition on the diet side but really important to make this point you know we when we talk about diet shift being a really important component of this and another aspect of it is that we can't suddenly you know can't expect that that the farmers in this country who are going through that process of porting the transition to net zero are undermined by imports of cheap meat from other places which i think would upset some of those indicators that i talked about so you know that that is a key part here and i think that that is where i have more concern you know Westminster of course has control of some of the trade deals that we've been talking about very big risk i think there of some of those trade deals in recent discussion about mexico for example undermining domestic production you know what we what we talk about in the cc in our advice is the need for common standards for what's produced domestically and what's imported it is frankly outrageous that cheap imports from a place like mexico with different standards for you know the the carbon value of the meat that's produced undermining farmers who have been asked to meet higher standards in scotland or in other parts of the uk and i think that is that is a major issue that at the moment i don't feel very satisfied about at all if i'm honest so it sounds as if you're saying that trade regulation is a more important factor than the behavior like the behavior change will then follow that as opposed to something like you know greater public awareness campaigns more education in schools you think it's it's about the trade end no i think it's about both i mean my concern is more that you know we can see that the kind of combination of a shift in dice with what we call co-benefits particularly around health benefits of those changes in dice reduced healthcare costs etc and you know some combination of that plus the incentives for farmers to do low-carbon farming the things that we've talked about we're moving in the right direction on that i suppose i'm less confident on the trade side and therefore i'm more concerned about the fact that we may undermine all of that by having a you know a trade arrangement with countries where those protections and policies are just not in place and that will undermine the efforts that we have domestically to do all of this thank you can we move on supplementary from gym and then on to another question and we are actually running out of time and we don't have much leeway i'm afraid time wise grand christ i know this has been a fairly testing session for you but there's one thing that we absolutely agree on is this that we should be eating less meat but we should be eating better quality meat so scotch beef and lamb seems to me with the fact that we are such a a great producer of low-carbon meat seems to me to be the perfect fit for consumption in this country but if you want to get consumer demand for meat down how are you going to do it because if we don't reduce that demand for meat in the first place we're working to the standards that we are with the price implications that that has the only other way that that demand is going to be met is by imports so i take on board the the points that you're making the mexico deal the australian deal the new zealand deal all these things are going to be bad for our emissions so if we're going to reduce the amount of meat that we're eating how much you're eating currently and how much do we need to reduce it by in order to reach the target that you tell us we need to reach so i mean i'll go back to i mean just to make a reflection on it being a testing session i mean i've enjoyed the session because it's been good to have this discussion i mean i'm welcome it so i'm very happy to do more of it if that's something that you would like i mean we have lots of insights from our modelling about much wider set of issues that sadly we may not get on to in the next five to ten minutes but we've landed on one of the key issues and it's of course a really key one when it comes to diet shift we're talking about you know again i'll say a fairly conservative outlook of reducing our consumption of meat and dairy products by 20 over the next 10 years or so and then that going on a little further to something more like 30 31 by the middle of the century that is you know i'm not i'm not a forecaster i don't predict the future but we are on track to that kind of shift happening which i think is largely driven by a shift in consumer preference and where it not to happen we would need some combination of things in the future to happen that would allow the sector to continue on the transition to net zero along with all the other sectors that are making that transition so you know harder edged things are a secretly part of the policy mix my own belief is that you wouldn't need them i don't think we'll ever get to the point where there will be a government that's willing to put some of those regulatory or tax measures in place nor do i think we will need them what i would rather see us do is move to what we were talking about as you say high quality meat consumption perhaps a little less frequently yes treasuring the fact that we produce meat really well rear those animals really well to high quality and high standards and that we are that is something that we are proud of but that is part of the mix that we consume less of it and alongside that that we are freeing up land so that farmers can see diversified income streams supported by policy provide a wider range of environmental services including carbon sequestration and to have a discussion about that being a progressive part of farming in a way that it has not been for several decades under the EU's rules for for the common agricultural payment if we reduce the red meat intake by 20 percent over the next 10 years i think you said what would you replace that protein with it's i mean in the in the work that we've done is substituted for substituted with plant-based proteins things like legumes again latest indications we're ahead of that today okay chris i'm going to move on to the next question what do you see what does your organisation see as scotland's developing post-eu agriculture and land use possibly post policy and what does a credible policy look like from a climate change perspective i mean in terms of the policy that we have i mean it's really important to say that the proposals that we've looked at from the scotland's government probably fall short and that's something that i've said on several occasions and i picked up much of the same discussion in the last session when i tuned in i wanted to start by saying policy works in this sector you know we've seen in the past what happens when policies change emissions from farming have fallen five percent since 2010 that's mainly through changes in policy that's what's driven it alongside some of that diet shift that we talked about which has led to some reduced livestock numbers but we need realistic farming policies that target the right climate outcomes and i think on that front the the proposals that we have from the scotland's government are still from my perspective too incremental they're too conservative they're too late so you know tier one in particular in these proposals maintains effectively the status quo so what happens after that comes much later in the process and it's difficult for me to understand how these agricultural policies would affect the kind of change that the scotland's government itself says it wants to see in emissions from that sector and the land use changed with it so you know in our view this is an important step forward unlikely to deliver the scotland's own objectives for agricultural emissions and unlikely to deliver the kind of land use shifts that we think are necessary in scotland and across the UK to make all of this possible to get to net zero on time and with a fair effort across the economy so i would like the scotland's government to respond to that sit out more detail particularly about those agricultural policies so that they are more clearly supporting abatement in emissions i haven't mentioned the other aspects of my role which is looking at how we adapt to climate change itself the big challenge for agriculture to make sure that the land that is farmed in scotland is ready for the warming climate as well as very important particularly when it comes to peatland and we need these kind of route maps that have been promised to support land use change as well as biodiversity improvements climate environmental services i referred to several times we haven't got that kind of detail so when we see the agriculture bill and the support package i will be looking at whether it's embedding those kind of things in it and then we'll be able to make an assessment i suppose of whether it's compatible with the kind of pathways that we think are necessary conservative as many of them are for scotland to reach net zero by 2045 and for us to have a healthy agriculture sector at the end of that okay thank you thank you i'm very conscious of time and i'm sorry that we're going to have to bring this evidence session to a close i'm also very conscious that members have got other members have got questions that they would like to ask so if they're agreeable we may write to you with the questions that haven't been asked today so thank you to chris and indra for your time we'll reflect on the evidence and consider how to take forward the key issues later in our meeting if i can move on to agenda item number two uh uk subordinate legislation our next item of business this morning is consideration of consent notification of two uk si's the sea fisheries amendment regulations 2023 and the welfare of animals transport miscellaneous amendments regulations 2023 do members have any comments on the notifications edwodd thank you convener i just want to talk about these sea fisheries amendment regulations 2023 my concern is is that with the warming of of the seas more bass are being seen around the coast of scotland and are caught on a regular basis right up as far as tongue i know that they've been caught and uh the scottish government in in the proposal with the uk government is suggesting that uh no more than two sea bass may be retained per fisherman per day during the open season which runs effectively from march through to uh december my question is how are they going to police that we write to write to marine scotland and ask that question okay i mean it seems strange to bring in a law if it cannot be enforced it's something that i think can bring discredit to the government if they sign up something which is unenforceable so i'd be grateful if the committee would agree to write and and seek guidance from arianne thanks convener the papers explain that the pipe dogfish under 100 centimeters will be removed from the prohibited species list but this type of shark is still listed as vulnerable on the iucn red list so i have strong concerns about allowing to be caught and i'd like to ask the committee could write to the government or marine scotland to ask them to explain how they will ensure compliance with the total allowable catch and size rules for this species including through remote electronic monitoring on quota vessels members are agreeable we'll do that emma i'm no i'm not a regular attendant at the committee and i'm here as a substitute today but in the notification it says that it's adjusting the level of european sea bass that can be caught in british fishing limits i'm aware only one license has been issued for any sea bass to be caught in scotland so when they're talking about adjusting does that adjusting up and down i think we'll seek clarity on that it's just official yeah okay um our members content to agree with the scottish government's decision to consent to the provision set out in the notifications being included in uk rather than scottish subordinate legislation that concludes our public session and we're now moving to private