 Good morning, and welcome to the 33rd meeting of the Rural Affairs and Island Committee in 2023. Before we begin, can remind anyone using electronic devices to please switch them to silent. Our first item of business today is consideration of the wine and miscellaneous amendments Scotland Regulations 2024. I welcome Mari Gouza on the cabinet sector for rural affairs, island reform and land reform and islands. I invite the cabinet secretary to make an opening statement. Thank you very much, convener, and thanks for inviting me to speak about these regulations today. The purpose of this instrument is to amend legislation relating to the marketing and production of wine and other wine products. Firstly, to introduce rules that will regulate how products marketed as ice wine must be produced, which include a definition of ice wine, and secondly, to update the lists of approved inological practices that can be used to produce and conserve wine and other wine products marketed in Scotland. The relevant existing legislation happens to be EU retained law, which from 1 January will be known as assimilated law. The ice wine provision in this instrument is required as the UK is aceding to the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-specific partnership. This provision is required for compliance with the terms of the CPTPP. Although ice wine is not produced in the UK, it is imported and a definition for that is required to ensure that consumers can identify products that are made according to specified criteria that apply to its production. The provision amends regulation EU 2019-33 to provide that products may only be marketed in Scotland as ice wine or similar terms if they have been produced exclusively from grapes naturally frozen on the vine, and the same provision is being made across Great Britain. Also included in the instrument are changes to approved inological practices. Regulation EU 2019-34 authorises specified inological practices that can be used to produce and conserve wine. The instrument amends the regulation to update those practices to reflect updates to the international organisation of vine and wines-approved methods, which largely are already existing in EU law. The UK is a member of the OIV and its recommendations form the basis of domestic EU and many third countries wine production rules, and that will ultimately ensure that wine producers and importers have access to the latest technological developments in wine making practices in line with EU law. The UK and Welsh Governments are making the same changes for England and Wales. Before bringing forward the instrument, the Scottish Government carried out a consultation on citizen space and directly contacted the major stakeholders to and that consultation ran from the 31st of August to the 8th of October. The major stakeholders such as WineGB and the Wine and Spirit Association did not respond, but they had, however, previously responded to the UK Government's consultation on those proposals and the response to that was generally positive. There were five respondents in total to the Scottish consultation who were individual members of the public and the responses advised either a positive impact or no impact of the proposed regulatory changes. The instrument was also notified to the WTO technical barriers to trade committee, and no comments were received to that. I hope that the comments have been helpful in outlining what this instrument is for today, and I am, of course, happy to take any questions that the committee might have. That is a new one to me, cabinet secretary, but you mentioned the ideological practices and restrictions that will be brought in with that particular regulation. I just wondered if, for the committee, you might be able to explain what those were. You said that some of the responses said that there would be no impact at all, but is that because there is no real data on the amount of ice wine that is consumed in Scotland? In relation to that, and just to give a bit more detail, as I was outlining in my opening comments, there is essentially split into two parts, so that definition of ice wine. There wouldn't really be impact on producers here, it's not something that's made here. It's quite a niche product, and I think it's largely produced in countries like Canada and Germany. From the consultation responses that we've received, there wouldn't be any impact in relation to that, and in terms of that definition, there is obviously an impact on those producers who wouldn't be part of that definition now, who are using artificially frozen grapes as part of that, but again, it doesn't affect our industry as far as I'm aware across GB, but I don't know if Kevin would have any more to add in relation to that. The illogical practices, again, the changes that are being proposed there have been broadly welcomed, and there was a positive reaction to that, because those are changes that have already been implemented in the EU. It means that this was broadly seen to be benefiting, whether it's exporters, botlers, and it was seen as encouraging innovation in relation to that as well. They were broadly welcome, but again, I don't know, Kevin, if there's anything else that you want to add to that or adequately covered it. No, I think that you have adequately covered it. That was exactly it, just summarised the changes about processes, practices and restrictions that we need to look at on illogical. Kevin, what are they? I mean, that's what I'm asking. They're quite technical in nature. There's an annex in the SSI. It's basically about improving standards and regulation that OIV meet annually, and they make those changes after consulting their own industry. I think that it's a seven-stage step to go through before they all agree them, sorry. But they are quite technical in nature, and there's a whole list on SSI itself. I don't know on juristic, but do you want to expand on the actual changes themselves? As you say, Kevin, they're set out in the regulation 934 of 2019, and this inserts some new provision that slightly tweaks some provisions to update them with the most recent files that the OIV have passed. Those are resolutions that are passed, including the UK who vote as part of the OIV, as to the technical detail of what those do. They are set out in the SSI itself, but... Okay. We now move on to the formal consideration of the motion to approve the instrument, and I invite the cabinet secretary to move motion S6M-11343. Formally moved, convener. Does any member wish to debate the motion? No. Is the committee content to recommend approval of this instrument? We are, thank you. Finally, is the committee content to delegate authority to me to sign off our report on our deliberations on this affirmative SSI? Thank you. That completes consideration of the affirmative instrument. We'll now suspend for 10 minutes until I witness to change over. We now have our second round table on the Agriculture and Rural Communities Scotland Bill. Today's evidence session will focus on the production of high-quality food, one of the objectives in the bill, but we'll also go on to discuss the bill more broadly. We have up to three-hour schedule for the discussion, and this morning I'd like to welcome to the meeting Leslie Mitchell, the Policy Director for Sustainable Food Trust. Tim Bailey, the chief executive from the Scottish Agriculture Organization Society. We have Professor Jenny McDermid, the director from the Interdisciplinary Centre for Health, Wellbeing and Nutrition, from the Rout Institute. Joe Hind, the policy manager from Scotland Food and Drink. Johnny Hall, director of policy from the National Farmers Union of Scotland. Pete Ritchie, director from Nourish Scotland. Sarah Miller, chief executive of Equality Meets Scotland. Last but not least, David Thompson, chief executive of Food and Drink Federation Scotland. We're going to kick off the themes. I'm going to ask you all a question on one of the four main objectives, and that is about the production of high-quality food. So, what is meant by the production of high-quality food, and how do we define it, and do we need to define it? I'll kick off with Joe, I was looking. Wonderful. Do I need to press a button? You don't need to operate your mics. Great, okay, thank you. How do we define high-quality food? I think that's a really important question, and it's difficult to answer simply. Certainly, from our point of view, there's one, there's different lenses, and one of the lenses we use as Scotland Food and Drink is that of the customer, and the customer's a broad entity. You know, you have a local market, your domestic market, your communities, if you like, within Scotland, and they are best served, we would say, by short, transparent supply chains as direct as possible from farm to fork, and you see farmers producing that kind of what we would all probably recognise as very high-quality ingredients, high-quality food that can go into those communities potentially directly through things like box schemes or things like farm gate sales, and then you've got, by extension, the customers who are in the public sector, your schools, your hospitals, which again, can be served really well by high-quality food, and high-quality in that sense doesn't necessarily mean you're perfectly shaped carrots and vegetables, it could be all manner of things. They're full of nutrition, they're serving the local economy, they're provided by producers into processes potentially for transforming into a state that a school can take in. For example, school kitchens can't take dirty vegetables by and large, they need it to be processed to some degree, and then they can use it similarly with hospitals, and then you've got further extension into sort of your hospitality and your retail markets across Scotland, and again, they will have their own specification. There's some argument for that specification being widened, I would say, in some of those markets, in terms of what can be accepted as high-quality, and then, of course, you've got your global markets. Again, if we're customer-led, we would look at, for example, in Dubai recently, the demand for lamb, and that specifically, I think in that case, halal lamb, and that high quality for them is defined by certain standards in the production which they would require, and again, with Scotch whisky, you might have a requirement around single malt and high quality, so it's difficult to answer, but we would say, as a principle, that it should be led by your customers, led by your markets in terms of the quality that they would be looking for, and as well, hopefully, with some agreement from the production side as to what the production standards are for Scotland as a whole to be recognised as a place for good quality, high quality food and drink, which is nutritious, which supports the economy, which has value within the supply chain for the farmers, for the producers, and which has environmental sustainability embedded within it as well. Thank you. Does there need to be a definition on the face of the bill, Johnny? I don't think you can actually define it on the face of the bill. High quality food production is fundamental to what the bill's purpose is all about. It is clearly one of the four key themes within the bill and the objectives of the bill, and I don't think you can separate high quality food production from the others, being climate and biodiversity and, indeed, underpinning rural communities. I would echo everything that Joe's just said, but I would take it a bit further in the sense that first and foremost, high quality has to have at its core the integrity of the product. There is absolute certainty around the safety of that food and the provenance of that food, the traceability issues, and we are already incredibly well served in that respect, given the role and function of the standards to which we operate, both legally and in terms of our quality assurance aspects in every sector of Scottish agricultural production. I have no issue around the fact that we are already operating to extremely high standards, both in terms of the integrity, but also, more importantly, and this is what I would like to see come out of the bill and the policy that flows from the bill, is that it recognises that high quality food production is a significant component of what we are trying to achieve around things like the climate in terms of sequestration, reducing emissions, adaptation to climate change, as well as delivering for nature in terms of biodiversity, as well as delivering for rural communities in terms of having a viable, profitable agricultural sector, farming and crofting to underpin those communities. I do not think that it is useful at all to separate high quality food from the other things that we are trying to attain. I think that they have got to be integrated in that respect, so that would be my plea. If we go down the route of trying to define lots of things within this bill too hard, too fast, I think that we will paint ourselves into lots of corners and possibly tie ourselves in knots for no particular gain. I would reference that in the context of high quality food production, but there are other things in the bill that we will come to later. The term regenerative is bound to come up in conversation. If we try to nail that down to an absolutely defined process or a concept, we are making ourselves a hostage to fortune. The only concern that I have is that this is the bill. We are at the business end of this now, where it is law and legislation, and ultimately it is going to be framework of how agricultural payments are made. If there is no clear indication of what high quality food is, where do the payments go? Where does the support go? If it is left to secondary legislation, there is very little that scrutiny can come along with that. You said too fast that we are quite some time from when we decided to leave cap the common agricultural policy, so why is it too fast to have a clearer definition of what quality food is and what that might do to support payments? We need to have a clearer definition of high quality in the context of what we are talking about. Because we have those standards already embedded in what we do, and we have had for decades now, we have had to have in every sector that the integrity of what we produce is not in doubt. It does not require this bill to build further integrity into what we do. The key thing in this bill, in that context of high quality, is that you then embrace things like, is it high quality in terms of delivering on the other outcomes that you require? Remember that the purpose of this bill is fundamentally to deliver support that underpins either an activity and or an outcome. Therefore, I do not think that you need to have high quality, absolutely nailed down on the face of the bill. That will come along with other things. If you look at the rest of the bill, things like a code of practice for sustainable and regenerative agriculture, it does not say what that will be in the bill, but it does say that there will be one as part of the bill process, a rural support plan. It does not say what that rural support plan will be within the bill, but it does say that there will be one, and that is what will follow. I think that that is what needs to be taking a degree of time to get right. If we paint ourselves in a corner too far too fast, then I do think that we are storing up problems. This is a framework bill, as we all know, and there are some who would say that a framework bill is not good enough. We need to have absolute precision in the primary legislation. I would disagree. I think that we need to then use the powers to best effect in order to tackle the issues that we have. In that sense, you need a framework bill that is flexible and adaptable as we go forward. I think that we have a general consensus that the framework bill is the way forward. Pete Ritchie. I think that it is bad law if we put high-quality food on the face of the bill with no intention to define it. There are two things that you need to think about in high-quality food. One is what is in it in terms of nutrients, and I will leave Jenny to talk about that. The other thing is how it is made. What we know is that you cannot have high-quality food that is made with poor animal welfare standards. You cannot have high-quality food that is made with poor labour standards. You cannot, in our view, have high-quality food that is made in a way that damages the environment, whether that is through pesticides or nutrient pollution or using more emissions, more resources than best in class. In terms of high-quality food in Scotland, if we are producing beef and lamb that are high-quality in terms of protein, they need to be best in class in terms of animal welfare, greenhouse gas emissions, contributions to nature and all that stuff. If we are going to put it in the bill we need to define it in the rural support plan, we need to clearly think that those are the indicators for high-quality food and those are the targets that we want in terms of delivering high-quality food. Thank you. I have got Sarah. Yes, just come in there. I think that Pete has hit the nail on the head there when he said that within the rural support plan that, for me, is the place where you can have that definition of where high-quality food comes in. I think that from my memory the rural support plan is due to be reviewed every five years, which aligns with how the CEP rural development plan also used to be delivered. It gives a time period that is long enough to give certainty, while it is still being agile enough to respond to challenges that come down the wind. How I would define high-quality food is food that does good for the economy, that does good things for local environments. I think that one of the things that we have to remember is that Scotland is a very broad church in terms of the resource space that we produce food from. What is right in Lanarkshire will not be what is right in the Orkney Islands, so having that regional flexibility that can be delivered through the rural support plan rather than on the face of the framework bill itself I think would be the right mechanism to go and embedding co-design principles into that rural support plan would ensure that that has designed from the bottom up, from farmers, crofters and those within the supply chain to make sure that it is right for businesses. I think the lens that I find quite useful in this discussion is that of sustainable nutrition in the sense that you have, and what I think we've already heard here, you have sustainably and regeneratively produced food that delivers the right kinds of foods for healthy diets available for all. That becomes the overarching goal, but within that, to Pete's point, there are key outcomes that reflect the attributes of high quality food. I do think that that requires a definition because they are the signposts of what you will then be paying for and what will be the guiding lights of your food system within Scotland. They do include clearly, obviously, greenhouse gas emissions and so on, but it needs to be a set of holistic outcomes that cover those different attributes of sustainably and regeneratively produced food. I think from my point of view, there's almost a subtext to hear that it's food production as we do now. There's a degree of customer and practice here for a heavy legislated country, regulated country in Scotland, huge levels of quality assurance. At the end of the day, if we're sitting there with our primary production is traceable, meets customer expectations, as Joe was saying, is legally produced, is quality assured, then it's very much building on that. So relative to where we are with the needs of the sector to address regard to climate and relative to the needs of where the sector needs to get with regard to nature, we're at a really good level already. I would send his support, previous comments, that, you know, let's not put it into the face of the bill if we can't define it, unless we're going to define it as we are, you know, we are here already. I've got a question from Alasdair Allan and then Arianne Burgess. Thank you, convener. Johnny, all you've mentioned to us in the past on the point you were making there about the importance of producing food, about the importance of the connection between support and production. So I just wondered if you could say a bit more about that in terms of producing quality food for the country, obviously other places have gone down a different route in terms of breaking that connection. You have mentioned in the past also about how Scotland might pursue a different path or play a different furrow in terms of making sure that the subsidy control bill didn't actually frustrate us in doing that. So can you say a bit more about that connection and what scope there is for Scotland doing something different? Yeah, I think where we are in Scotland is where we do need to be, because what we haven't done in Scotland is broken the link between food production and delivering on our objectives and aspirations around climate and biodiversity and underpinning rural communities. That to me on the face of this bill is clearly what's important. There's four inseparables in there and if you strip out the high quality food production then I think you're in danger of actually losing the main tool you have to delivering the other outcomes. You need high quality food production to be driving farming and crofting across Scotland, underpinning it financially in a sustainable way so that that enables then the land management that you require to deliver on the outcomes around capturing more carbon in our soils in woodland and so on, diversification of the rural economy in terms of what we do and of course addressing the challenges around nature restoration. These things are inseparable but if you have not got that kernel if you like at the heart of active farming and crofting then it makes it really really challenging to do. Seventy per cent of our land mass is under some form of agricultural management and therefore we need to be ensuring that we focus our attention on how we manage that land in an agricultural context to get all of the outcomes that we want simultaneously. I'll paraphrase the cabinet secretary last November not just gone but the previous. There is no contradiction between food, climate, biodiversity and underpinning rural communities and we would absolutely endorse that. You've got to stitch those together through active farming and crofting that's the key thing for us and that's where the focus of the support has to be. I think in terms of the second part of that we've always been conscious about the fact that agriculture and rural development policy is devolved quite rightly so. We're going to stick to the four objectives at the moment I think and we can come to that. I was asking about the subsidy control but I'll come back to it. Yeah, which is not relevant to this particular topic at the moment. I'm going to move on to a question from Ariann Burgess. I've actually got a couple of questions. The first one's around animal welfare and the second one is around nutrition because they've both been raised. It's interesting that Pete you're the only person who's really talked about animal welfare and last week it came up extensively and I wonder if you think it falls under high quality food. So Cursi Jenkins from one kind last week talked about other countries moving away from using colony cages or farring crates in Cathie Dwyer from SAWC talked about how we still allow surgical procedures to be carried out on young animals without anaesthetic and I just wonder what our thoughts are around. Can you call something high quality food if these kind of practices are continuing and also if not, how can the bill, the rural support plan or the payment schemes ensure that high quality food meets high animal welfare standards? Anyone want to pick that up? I speak here as an animal welfare scientist by background. I have a PhD in animal welfare science and I would simply say that you cannot have high quality food if it is produced in systems where animals are effectively designed to suffer and what that says to me is that there are specific red lines that might be too harsh but things that you need to point away from and things that you need to point towards. The concept of animal welfare has shifted quite significantly in the last 20-30 years from being about reducing suffering or enriching environments to actually providing animals with a good life and I would argue that caged systems do not cannot provide animals that are complex beings with brains with a good life and secondly that we have fantastic pasture based systems that are very capable of enabling animals to live good lives while producing good quality food and in some cases for example in ruminant production providing much more complex nutrient availability to people through longer lived and pasture reared animals so if I were my choice I would be saying get rid of the cages in this but I am also aware that this is a framework bill so that's something about the definition around what we mean by high quality food and I don't think that we should be rewarding poor welfare systems in any kind of payment. Sarah and then Joe. I just wanted to, there's a really really good example of some of the different complexities involved in what we're trying to do here around a food system and the rural support bill because you mentioned there Leslie about you know animals that are living longer one of the key ways to reduce our emissions particularly from the ruminant sector is to reduce our days to slaughter you know that that is evidence base but actually animals who live longer like you say they're doing different things and I think that's really important in terms of this discussion this is not a clear cut you know do this and that will be the outcome there are trade-offs and intricacies and I think one of the things that we have to remember that you know bringing back into what Johnny said is that at the end of the day we're dealing with businesses and you know how we enable businesses to provide high animal welfare systems how we make it easy some of the other elements of the bill in terms of you know things like cpd and how we support businesses to remain viable in parts of the world that are really difficult to run businesses in you know parts of the outer hebrides where things like getting animals off the island to go to auction markets you know those have animal welfare implications so making sure that we have a holistic policy that enables high welfare systems to become the priority is really important but it's not it's not also as easy as as it always looks thank you bring Joe and then Pete and a supplement from Rachel it's just to say I guess that high quality as we've touched on has various elements and welfare is clearly one of those elements but because there are so many elements it is tricky as jolly's touched on to define it up front so it's I guess the question is almost back would not defining it now present a risk to later defining it in a way that's implementable and if if that is a risk then perhaps a more work does need to be done at this stage but if not I would imagine that the plans the delivery plans that come out of the framework bill could within their functions serve to define that in a way that does capture what we all recognise as a really important part of it which is welfare because welfare links to quality links to markets but actually also links to just integrity which is really important in in production and Pete just to add to that about markets animal welfare is really important for animals it's also really important for farmers because increasingly that's what people are going to be looking for is demonstrable high animal welfare standards on whether that's getting pigs off slats or whether it's giving all cattle access to pasture or whether it's getting coward calf dairies going what producers are going to need in Scotland is to support to transition their systems because that's an expensive business so if we're going to go for animal welfare has to be part of high quality and we have to support producers to be best in class on animal welfare and not to rest on our laurels and say we're quite good we have to be best. Can I just add a supplement on that why should it be on the face of the bill why would animal welfare outlining what we want to achieve not be on the face of the bill why would secondary legislation be a better place for it surely if we know what animal welfare concerns are just now why do we need to wait till secondary legislation where we don't actually have the ability to scrutinise it at the level that we do through primary legislation Joe. It's a fair point but I guess the delay there would be you'd have to define it across all those different areas not just welfare you'd have to do all of the work that will need to be done at some point to define it and have some form of assessment ability linked to that criteria but I mean I think it's a fair point in that objectives generally are meant to be quite specific and measurable and and as they currently stand it's not particularly you would say just by having it but by keeping it general more general you do then allow it to be defined at a later date with having that extra work having that extra dialogue and dialogue like this is so important but it would certainly take time to come up with those definitions spell it out and have it there I'm not enough of an expert on parliamentary process to understand whether that's better done now or later but I sense from other people that they feel that it would be better done later. I'm going to bring in Rachel for a supplement to the in-gem and bring Johnny. I just wondered the panel's view on animal welfare and health being missing from the list of objectives because it's not in the best interest of farmers to practice bad animal welfare but it is in their best interest to ensure that they make savings, that they produce the best food, that they adopt technology and that they use preventative health measures such as vaccine vaccination or you know I suppose gene technology but it isn't on the face of the bill and I think if we're looking at you know some people are saying it's too prescriptive but other people are saying we need more detail and I don't think we should be afraid of ensuring that we do have some of the best quality produce in Scotland. I just was it's really a comment for Sarah because she talked about cpd. Where I would go with that one is that going back to the rural delivery plan I think if you can link those objectives to how that rural delivery plan will be delivered over the five years in terms of funding support in terms of grant aid that helps achieve those objectives it also allows you to align in with things like cpd and also innovation we know that the space around data technology and transition is incredibly fast moving so by having it in the rural delivery plan instead of being on the face of the bill it allows you to be a lot more focused and nimble but actually enable those businesses to move with the most modern science technology and evidence that they have so suppose it's about the the framework bill and how we frame at a higher level what we're looking to deliver provide that enablement for the powers to then deliver that rural support plan that actually links them to businesses I do think animal welfare is incredibly important when we talk about high quality food there's a lot of evidence that says that animals that are producing high welfare systems are also you don't have lower greenhouse gas emissions are also more productive you know what's better business it's that kind of triple bottom line triple win again we shouldn't be afraid of doing but I do think when this space is moving so quickly we want to make sure we give businesses the best chance to stay ahead of the pack and you know delivered through that aligned rural delivery plan jim do you want to bring me your supplementary in just now I'll wait till he about Johnny's said and then I'll come back okay well I've got Kate to come in as well on this so Johnny I'd like to support everything that's been said by the panellists but then to take it on to first of all your own question convener about why don't we have a definition of animal health and welfare on the face of the bill I think that would would pose some significant questions about ensuring it's that definition being compatible with every other piece of legislation which covers animal health and welfare anyway we have significant legislation in place that requires certain things and standards and quite rightly so that then takes me on to Rachel's point about again why isn't animal health welfare on the face of the bill if we take this bill into that secondary legislation phase and how we then distribute support one of the key elements that we're discussing right now and others are involved in this is the production of something called a whole farm plan which will insist that we have things like animal health and welfare built into that as being if you like a requirement to be able to attain the support you require so we have to build in from a statutory base but then over and above that we then need to build in standards up and above and over that to ensure that actually what we're producing here in Scotland is recognised as being of the highest and not just doing our best but to use Pete's phrase about best in class because that's actually ultimately what will differentiate Scottish produce from produce from the rest of the UK and indeed other parts of the world so it's in our best interest that we have a baseline standard of regulatory requirement and I think an awful lot of that's already in place but then how do you then build that on top of that and again animal health and welfare I think is is compatible with the other objectives of the bill in terms of how do you how do you ensure that we have you know ruminant livestock systems that are actually underpinning our habitats and grazing and all that sort of thing as well which so there's a connection between all of these things all the time. Thanks. Just on all of these points that have been made nobody is going to deny that we absolutely require the best animal welfare standards we've already got them that what their family community do is extensive and making sure that welfare standards are right. I want to go back to the very first thing that Joe said and that is the what do you define as quality food it'll be what the customers prepare to pay for and I hate to bring money into the issue when we're talking about animal welfare but ultimately if you put a 10 pound steak and a four pound steak in front of a consumer and they're facing a cost 11 crisis they're going to buy the four pound steak by and large they do the same thing with milk we've had programmes where you've got 10p extra going to the farmer where they had a later a milk at one pound 20 or a later milk at one pound 30 and they bought the one pound 20 before they bought the one pound 30 so that's not to put a barrier in the way that's just how do we find that answer for people who are cash strapped as it is to say yeah all of these other things are really important and I'm prepared to pay for that out of my pocket and it's I don't know how you do that in the face of a bill and if anyone's got any answers I'd be delighted to hear it Leslie I was I think I was just gonna say Pete will probably be in a better position to to answer this from a Scottish perspective but I did want to bring to bear the work that the food farming and countryside commission have done recently which has been an extensive amount of citizen engagement and polling looking at what people want from their food systems so this is from the ground up and it has been designed to be broad and representative across a range of different regions the key finding there in answer to your very important point here was that everybody wants good quality food everybody wants food that is produced sustainably and delivers healthy outcomes but there is a barrier to those who are poorer to being able to achieve that which says something about market failure and it says something about the food system not about whether people will make different choices in terms of what they will spend their money on versus what they actually want to buy so what we are hearing from them is that they want and this is very much within the UK context as well particularly looking towards the UK's next election what they are saying those citizens is that they want to be they want the structures in place and the leadership and the infrastructure and the design that will enable them to be able to make those choices and the unfortunate situation we have coming dare I say from the UK and from England specifically is that we have a fundamental market failure where people can't afford to buy food and farmers can't afford to produce it can I just follow up on that point I think you're absolutely right in everything that you're saying Pete I know that you've done extensive work on this so how do we get those higher costs that are absolutely part of producing the kind of food that we want to produce affordable for the people who at the moment want to buy it David first then Pete not a direct answer to Jim's question but but second question but so I represent food and drink manufacturers so we buy primary produce and make things out of it and I think that that's so picking up on the commercial side of things I mean large UK food and drink manufacturers and Scottish food and drink manufacturers are here because we have high quality food and high quality primary produce that they want to process and manufacture into products here in Scotland whether that's in the dairy fields of the south west whether that's in the in the old production we have so they recognise and invest in production facilities where they can get the best quality agricultural produce and they come to Scotland for that and there are multiple companies that have done that what they're looking for from agricultural in Scotland is a few things and this is how they would probably define high quality food and a lot of this aligns with what Joe has said but Joe is talking about the direct the end consumer and I'm talking about the manufacturer in the middle and what they want is resilient agriculture agriculture that can be relied upon and that's really really important to them if they're going to build a massive factory here they need to make sure that they can get their raw materials and get it regularly to the spec that they need it to be they want it to be productive so they can get as much as they need from Scotland and to save it having to come in to Scotland or the UK from other parts of the world and they also need it to meet all the criteria that they will increasingly need to meet over the years and that's I think where some may be rushing to a definition of high quality or trying to be too prescriptive in a definition of high quality and I think there are things you can do that aren't prescriptive here is one of the problems and as Sarah has already said if we're thinking about the responsibilities that companies and farmers will have around net zero we don't actually know really what those will be yet in a form that is sensible workable commercially and able to deliver for as low cost as possible some of some of the things that we want to do so that's I guess why there's a bit of nervousness and we would have a little bit of nervousness about being too prescriptive on the face of the act because it's stuck in law and it becomes much harder to change so I think there are things that you can do to expand the definition but I think when you when you begin to get prescriptive then you reduce the flexibility of the government to respond to changing circumstances and you reduce to an extent the flexibility of the parliament to be able to to reflect that in the work that we're doing to David very quick yeah it's very quick you talked about the the long-term investment to actually want to be here that's going to require critical mass to make sure long-term production stays in place thank you yes i've got Pete and then Jenny and then we're going to move on just briefly so obviously the bill can't solve come any qualities in scotland I agree with leslie all of what we've done suggests people value the same things pretty much it's just you can't always afford them so but i think it's really important to pick up Sarah's point you know high animal welfare is not a cost to farmers it's a benefit to farmers they can produce more efficiently at a lower price if they look after animals better you know in general terms but the job of government is to raise standards here so that everybody when they're buying food knows that it's been produced with happy healthy animals you know and that's government's obvious to raise those standards that's like we don't let people sell sofas that burn even if they be cheap right so we've got to keep raising those minimum standards and johnny said keep pushing towards the high end keep moving that graph along so the best producers are the best in class and that does mean investment in advice it means investment in cpd it means investment in kit it means investment in helping farmers change their systems so that you know we'll never completely narrow the gap between the best and the average but we can we can narrow that and we can make sure that even the average even the lowest price food on our shelves has been produced without animal suffering no i'm gonna move we're already we need to focus a little bit more can i have jenny and then terminate the endokini wanted to come out hi i'm jenny mcdermid and just to say my background is in sustainability nutrition and food systems so reading the bill there is a mention of nutritious food it's not really sort of in any detail and i think nutrition needs to be in there because we want to produce food that will lead to healthy outcomes we know we've got huge health inequalities and i think that needs to be taken forward i agree with the cost of living crisis we might we need to be sure that what is being produced is actually affordable and we don't end up with a much higher quality inequalities and i guess one of my questions maybe when we're talking about high quality food is at what stage in the food chain do you define nutritionally high quality because you can produce something that at the farm gate is very nutritious but by the time it's gone through all the processing it's less nutritious and i think that was one of my questions sort of to you in terms of the bill is at what point do you want to define good quality particularly around the nutrition because it can change across the whole of the bill and sorry across the food chain and i think this is where it's maybe going wider but i think it's really important to think about the whole food system and where it fits in because you end up with unintended consequences if you don't think about it in that sort of steps i wanted to just pick up on everybody wants certain types of food high quality etc actually the research shows that prices obviously is the most important thing taste preference enjoy or joyability are next and then you find health and environment tend to be lower down the chain so i think again in talking about health high quality food we need to consider these things that actually people will want high quality but it's maybe not at the very top of their list and then you've got this conflict between price and production costs and as i say one of the big things is not increasing health inequalities so i think while not being prescriptive i think needs to be really clear what is the framework for this you said earlier that they're going to be trade-offs that's what you get with any food system when you start to bring all of these things together whether it's climate nutrition etc you are having to look at you know what is the balance between these things i would prefer to use the word balance rather than trade-off because trade-off suggests you've got to get rid of something so what is the balance so i think you need all of these things as central to the bill and particularly nutrition because nutrition is predominantly sat in other bills in terms of health and good food nation etc and i think there has to be a recognition of how do you go from the agricultural bill to the health bill so that's my feeling i would like to see a bit more about what you mean by nutrition nutrition is difficult in the sense that as i said previously at the farm gate it might be different to what ends up on the plate there are certain nutrients that you could focus on but also it's got to be how does it fit into the whole diet what people are eating where does it sit within that because it isn't just a single entity thank you briefly tim yeah that's fine yeah we always strive for optimal welfare and we've got to look at mechanisms to make that happen and certainly rural support planning and priorities and that could be a good way of doing that but i suppose from a purely practical example we've talked about sectors sort of historically been high intensive that for a agricultural bill talking about rural support programmes a lot of sectors fall out with the scope of the bill in terms of providing financial support so you know egg producers poultry producers generally have not had access to that support previously and won't be from from here so so we need to consider about what's in scope of the bill and leave us to do that and from the flip side of it the market is actually driving quite a lot of that already and within the egg sector within the poultry sector and in the pig sector year you're seeing a lot of standards expected of producers that are greater than what legislation regulations need anyway so we're now going to move on to to look at some of the other objectives of the agricultural policy kate forms thanks very much and convener we'll be coming back to rural payments won't we anyway later on so thank you very much my question is really about some of the other objectives so this is obviously a bill that's entitled agricultural and rural communities we've clearly focused quite extensively on a number of objectives some of which are already in the bill and some of which are not so far but i have two questions if that's okay the first is around the the the rural communities thriving point and johnny you quoted the cabinet secretary as saying that there was no inherent tension between all the various objectives in terms of biodiversity climate change and so on but when we look specifically at enabling rural communities to thrive do you see any inherent tension between the objectives that are there already and rural communities thriving or maybe not and secondly and this is a specific question that i'd really value a specific answer to inevitably in a round table like this everybody will have ideas about the additional objectives that we need to add if you have too many you actually don't have a very focused bill what do you think is the optimum number of objectives is for right is it too many too few so those are my my two questions thank you thanks that seems to be aimed at me a wee bit well just in terms of and i'm quite happy tensions i'll be i'll be very candid about this so when the when the bill was published on the 29th of september and it had agriculture and rural communities written on it that obviously raised a few eyebrows because we'd anticipated being an agriculture bill but actually the title agriculture and rural communities i think is absolutely right to include rural communities in that because it underlines the fact that if we support agriculture to deliver on food climate and biodiversity and we're focusing on active farming and crofting then that absolutely underpins what we've argued for a long time that the value of that support doesn't just go into farms and crofts it actually permeates throughout rural communities and that's absolutely critical particularly as you get into more remote parts of Scotland our less favoured areas in particular and one of the key objectives of this bill must be to sustain active farming and crofting in those areas in order to underpin the socio-economic dimension of what happens in rural scotland it's always been a key aspect of of agricultural policy through the cap and obviously it's it's been so utilised in in the scottish context to very good effect using using the the tools at our disposal but now i think it's really important that we fundamentally ensure that the rural communities aspect is front and centre alongside climate and biodiversity and food production the multiplier effects if you like upstream think of all the tens of hundreds and then tens of thousands of jobs and incomes and livelihoods that are dependent upon farming and crofting upstream in in our rural areas and then obviously what then leaves the farm gate in terms of underpinning jobs in all sorts of communities in terms of our agri agri food sectors it's a it's a linchpin if you like farming and crofting in terms of what it does in a socio-economic context as much as anything else so i have no difficulty whatsoever in rural communities being sitting alongside agriculture the key will be ensuring that that support underpins active farming and crofting and i'm quite specific about that not just production but active land management that builds resilience has a flourishing and thriving environment and on the back of that you get thriving rural communities if you don't you certainly start to see a decline in rural populations in certain locations you see decline in rural services in certain regions as well and and that's something we absolutely need to avoid and the ag this particular piece of legislation can and will provide the means to ensure some of that so 100 support for rural communities being in there a number of objectives number of objectives i think i think is right we've we've been quite clear for some time that we've got it's it's been put in front of us as an agricultural industry as an agricultural community that we have challenges around climate we have challenges around biodiversity and we certainly have challenges around ensuring that the sustainability of our rural communities so with agriculture being at the heart of all that in terms of farming and crofting and farmers and crofters being uniquely placed to deliver on those things i think linking food production that inherent aspect of what agriculture is all about with the delivery of these other objectives that are so important in the national interest not just in agriculture's interest then i think linking food climate biodiversity and people is absolutely right thank you david thank you and declare our history here because as a civil servant i used to be responsible for both food processing marketing and collaboration grants and the leader programme once upon a while so both of these were the grant programmes that sat underneath the common agricultural policy to support both food processing and communities i won't talk about communities because that's nothing to do with my current job however and the reason that we've got these objectives in this bill is because it's a direct replacement for the framework that's at under europe and i think you could absolutely argue that each of them should have been potentially treated separately but that's that's not where we are and so you know from from our perspective one of the key elements here is the element to support food and drink production and processing in schedule one four and that is a way to allow the government to support small and medium-sized food and drink processors to make the best use of Scottish high quality food and so for us that's a really really important part and if that wasn't part of this bill then we would absolutely be seeking another mechanism in which the Scottish ministers could support those elements and that's one of the reasons why when we were talking about the definition of high quality food and drink and you know in response to Jenny's point about where nutrition is is considered if you use a definition of nutrition that says a biscuit is not available for support here then you're going to cut out quite a lot of Scotland's high quality small and medium-sized enterprises from using Scottish produce because you know if you're aiming for nutritional benefits for everything you do then you're going to lose that flexibility to do that for a small biscuit producer for example. Thank you. Joe. Yeah just to echo what Johnny said around rural communities I think from our point of view of Scotland food and drink we're interested in quite a holistic view across the landscape we're also interested in looking at how the economic and social and environmental goals can be achieved and the social bit is very much bound up in how does good food that's grown produced in Scotland serve the communities within which it is produced and having rural communities as a headline is probably no bad thing to get that achieved and certainly we see that in for example as CAP is evolving even in 23 to 27 plans each of those plans that are produced by member states as strategic plans reference the rural communities that agriculture serves and I think that's a foundation that underpins a lot of agricultural support and policy around certainly Europe and it doesn't hurt to have that front and centre and I think from our perspective at all and just in terms of their objectives I think the only one you know the numbers sort of less relevant than what each of those delivers and the only one that we feel could have been potentially added or included is around that value and we see the EU recognising that the value in the supply chain the value at the production end value for farmers and growers which could have been potentially included back again because I think there was a really useful point that actually threaded together quite a lot of the discussion this morning and that comes back to rural communities and critical mass particularly of livestock production so I come representing quality meat Scotland here in terms of a supply chain we're worth about £2.8 billion to the Scottish economy and £839 million of that is gross value added and activity within our supply chain will be taking place in every single parish across Scotland so there isn't a parish that doesn't have crofting, farming, manufacturing and I think that's really important as a driver of the wider economy when we start to see that wider supply chain because we are very interlinked in in red meat in terms of producer going through to consumer in that wider value chain we spoke about animal welfare earlier one of the biggest challenges that we are seeing just now in terms of being able to deliver sustained positive animal welfare is availability of vets and some of those you know the highlands and islands in there so and that's where that critical mass of livestock production if you don't maintain a critical mass of livestock production some of the other objectives that we want to focus on become very difficult to deliver and that then you know so in the heart of all that you have businesses crofting businesses farming businesses that if they don't have the support that enable them to you know provide high quality food and high animal welfare outcomes they don't have vets they don't have you know the other support mechanisms been able to reach them in parts of the country because there aren't enough livestock to maintain a service that business will potentially then disappear that happens again and again and again then suddenly you find that you have parts of the country with no agricultural production and we don't have enough critical mass to then sustain the businesses downstream which are a critical part of our manufacturing sector in terms of the wider economy so I think I just wanted to you know to highlight that you know what it's really really difficult sometimes to to bring it to life what it is we're actually talking about you know that that is how little things and particularly in our livestock value chain not having the critical mass of beef sheep cattle pigs whatever we're talking about we need to have a critical mass of numbers that enables us to deliver these services to enjoy and make the most of that really really strong value chain thank you that from our point of view we were absolutely delighted to see that agricultural rural communities bill was its title you know I think for too long there's been that element that is almost perceived as neither or you know at the end of the day farming agriculture is at the beating hearts of rural communities just as fishing etc are you know from a maritime communities so so that was you know i'd say delighted on that front I mean from our point of view you know representing all the agricultural corps in scotland I mean there's multiple corps in every constituency represented around this table and and they're all rural all rural employers then you know the farmer and businesses that are employing people in those communities and that kind of then you know brings on to the fifth objective which you'll let that be aware of through our our consultation feedback the kind of the elephant in the room from my point of view is that we won't get high quality food production we can't have sustainable agriculture we won't get climate mitigated nature restored agriculture and we won't have rural communities if we don't have viable farming and if we don't have resilient farming you know and that becomes that is the missing there's the elephant in the room from my point of view in terms of a or our point of view in terms of a fifth objective and a kind of a you know we've heard Jim talking about critical mass we've talked David about the needs of manufacturers to have resilient agriculture resilient production base if that's not an overarching objective of the bill then everything else potentially can become worthless and you know faced with the reality of an environment where there is unlikely to be more public support more direct support for farming but farming is going to have to rely more on the market to for its returns become viable to remain viable unless we have that as an objective in the bill unless that becomes one of the key one of the fifth driver within rural support plans then everything else potentially is worthless so can I ask should there be other objects in the face of the bill you've talked about a fifth we've only got four but the common agricultural policy has 10 should we see more objectives on it on the face of the bill from my point of view that the one about the viability the profitability of farming becomes the key underpinner we have no other asks beyond that i can see that there's a risk that it becomes all things to all people and you lose focus but certainly that would be our ask around a fifth one to help support success of all the others okay Johnny just echo what Tim's just said about the unit and I hope I conveyed that in my response to to Kate in that you have to have viable sustainable and I'll use the word profitable agricultural businesses of all sizes and types and shapes in every quarter of Scotland if you're going to underpin that social economic aspect which is so important and then be able to deliver on climate and biodiversity but to answer the convener's question around should we have more objectives on the face of the bill I think this bill doesn't sit in isolation it is part of a collection of policy objectives through other pieces of legislation and strategies that the Scottish Government is pursuing we know there will be a land reform bill coming forward in the early part of next year in the next parliamentary session we know there'll be a natural environment bill to deliver on the Scottish biodiversity strategy so lots of other pieces of existing and forthcoming legislation mapping out what the Scottish Government is trying to achieve in across not only rural Scotland but across Scotland is that's all very well but we've got an agricultural bill in front of us is there any indication within the bill as it's drafted at the moment that that's going to be the case so all the things that you aspire to and you suggest are going to be delivered where in the bill does it actually suggest that's going to happen do we just have to rely on the bill the government coming forward with central legislation that fulfills all your ambitions because in the face of the bill I don't see these things that you're describing at the moment I don't see a link to land reform I don't see a link to biodiversity plan I don't see a link to climate change plan so where do you get your confidence that this bill is actually going to deliver everything that you aspire it to deliver because this will be the vehicle to deliver the outcomes we want because the secondary legislation that will follow from the agriculture bill will be tasked with delivering on existing targets around climate and forthcoming targets around biodiversity and certainly around how do we underpin our rural communities so I see this bill and we've used the phrase often as doing the heavy lifting it's that piece that how do you transpose the powers that will be in the bill into actions and deliverables in terms of secondary legislation that's the key question but that's not in the in the bill that's what will have to come next what we need in the bill is broad-ranging powers that we can then adapt and utilise to deliver the outcomes we want and at the moment if you look at part two of the bill I think the sufficient scope flexibility and necessity within the powers to support activities and outcomes in that in that section of the bill okay thank you Pete there's a different point there's a tension in this discussion and in the bill about whether basically in Scotland we're pretty much good enough or whether we need to change quite a lot and I think that's at the heart of this conversation I don't think we're good enough not just in terms of our obligations on climate and nature but also what the market is increasingly going to be wanting us to deliver we have to make some pretty significant changes and telling ourselves we're doing well is not enough so that's a general point but I want to respond to Kate's points about the rural communities bit in the bill I think rural communities are short changed by this bill I don't think I think it is very much as Johnny said bit of an afterthought we were surprised to see that on the bill when you look into the bill there's actually very little about rural communities there's not even a commitment to spending five percent of the budget on leader which is a cap commitment you know leader was one of the best things about the cap to be quite honest because it got local people involved working together adding value to farm produce generating local food economies doing useful things in their communities and we'd like to see that reinstated in as a commitment to that local community led development and we'd also like to see that extended to urban authorities just down the road here we've got larson farm 130 acres of urban farm so rural isn't agriculture agriculture isn't rural so I think every local authority should be getting some money from this to be able to support what Joe talked about the short food chains the community growing making food something which is accessible to more people not just something which happens in rural areas we need a big glasshouse sector in Scotland there's lots of things we could be doing local authority led local development community led local development that actually enhances our food sector so I think but if you look at the bill there are lots of other things that rural communities need which are not addressed in the bill and it may be that they're addressed in other legislation but the problems of rural communities or the challenges for rural communities aren't going to be sorted out just by this bill and there's a danger that we think rural done because we've put it in the agriculture bill on your objectives I would commend the Wales agriculture bill not all of it but significant elements of it because it sets out four high level objectives on the face of the bill food nature climate and helping rural communities including the Welsh language and culture and landscapes and it then has 15 sort of objectives further down the track but the nice thing about it is that it requires government to come forward with targets indicators on those objectives on those 15 things what do we mean by those things whether it's high quality food or animal welfare whatever and they have to take advice when they're doing that including from the future generations commission in Wales and they have to come back to Parliament and say here's our plan and they have a date on the face of the bill as to when they have to do that by and they also have a date on the face of the bill as to when they need to produce their equivalent of the rural support plan with budget envelopes with you know uptake estimates and with estimates of how well this is going to deliver on the objectives right on the face of the bill so it's a much more joined up approach to holding government accountable to what Parliament and people want our agriculture system to look like. Okay, I'm going to bring in Rhoda Grant where we kick off on the theme and the code of practice for sustainable and regenerative agriculture, Rhoda. Yes and I fear this conversation is going to be a wee bit like the last one in that some people are responding telling us that they want to know what that means on the face of the bill they need to know what to expect and others are saying no believe it for the code of conduct because that changes with time and I suppose secondary to that is the scrutiny of the code of conduct in the bill correct is that the right level of scrutiny. I'm happy to pick that up obviously the bill in part 4 sets out the requirement to produce a code of practice for sustainable and regenerative agriculture and we have absolutely no difficulty with that whatsoever given that the vision for Scottish agriculture is to be a world leader in sustainable and regenerative agriculture. The obvious question that has been raised is it's not defined in the bill but the bill does require ministers to come up with a code of practice through consultation and through consideration of what that might mean and how does it work in practice because clearly that code of practice for sustainable regenerative agriculture will be one of the tests if you like maybe test not the right word for how we distribute support and people become an eligible support because they will have to adhere to that code of practice and again know difficulty well that's whatsoever I would have significant difficulty if we try to again define it very hardly very tightly on the face of the bill. I was in the European Commission talking to DG Agri in October about this very issue of regenerative agriculture and officials from the European Commission seriously advised not to try and define regenerative agriculture it's more a set of principles than anything else and their advice was don't define it tightly because then it becomes something again that might box us in in terms of how we adapt how we develop because all codes of practice need to be able to be flexible adaptable and changeable over time so I think it's it's going to be a really important aspect of what happens beyond the bill and the creation of that code of practice how that's consulted upon what does that mean how does it then how is it then deployed in how do we allocate support it needs to be a litmus test if you like for how we do that but having it defined tightly on the face of the bill I don't think is is what's required at this stage yeah good Sarah and then Pete yeah so I just wanted to come in specifically on the regenerative farming term and it does fresh off the plane from COP 28 just on Monday this was the word of the conference of the last few days and interestingly this morning with the latest global stock take text there is now specific reference to regenerative farming coming out of the high level COP 98 negotiations so there's a clear level of alignment there in terms of global policy filtering down here into Scotland I think the one thing you know we've spoken about how important it is to to define regenerative farming I do think it is important that we as a supply chain as an industry do define what regenerative farming means to Scotland because what's right for Scotland is very different to other types of what other people are talking about in terms of regenerative farming and I think you know again going back to that principle of co-design with industry there's a big opportunity there to to do that have that conversation and make sure that there is a really strong definition of regenerative farming that we can own that we can then build through our rural support plans so that we can then enable producers to embed into their farming practices you'll come back into Peaks Point about you know enabling the production systems we want to see and then most importantly again how do we link that to the marketplace that's QMS do in terms of providing that brand we can then link that brand to the marketplace to make sure that consumers are given the opportunity to invest in food that is investing in the supply chains and the producers that they want to see and I think so getting that definition right for Scotland I think is really really important and again I go back to something I said earlier Scotland is a broad church what's right in one part of the country isn't going to be right in another so we do need to make sure that we enable producers at the heart of communities you know we spoke about communities earlier are enabled to produce the right products in the right place and I think that's a really really important moment to announce that so where is it defined given it's so important for the future where is sustainable and regenerative actually defined to give that clarity I mean there are a number of different definitions that you can find from a number of different organisations and like I say I ask this question quite regularly at any conference event seminar I go to you know have we been good enough and I think that's where it's important that we define it for Scotland rather than picking something you know it's important that it has to be a Scottish definition that works for the Scottish context and Scottish businesses but where should it be so it's named on the face of this bill as an overarching objective so where do we actually do it who does it and where does it sit so I would say that has to be that co-design between businesses and government you know going back to that co-design principle it is right that we involve businesses who are going to deliver in the design of of that whether it sits within that rural support plan or on the face of the bill I'm actually we wouldn't want to give an answer on what's right to do that I think the core principle of making sure that businesses who are delivering it are involved in the definition of it is the important one implicit in part 4 of the bill about the code of practice around sustainable and regenerative agriculture that it isn't it isn't given in the bill but if the elements within that section of the of the bill talk about engagement with the sector and so on I would just emphasise Sarah's point further let alone doing it for a Scottish context actually even within Scottish what would be regenerative agriculture for our soft-fruit sector it's going to be very different from what will be for our extensive hill farming sector in the west coast different aspects of regenerative in play there so that's why we need a code of practice rather than a hard and fast definition can I bring Peter in and I'll bring in Jim it's given a lot of prominence in the bill and the question is why because if it's just a nice to have a bit of advice for farmers here's some good things to do we don't need it in the bill we can have that from the advisory services so if it's in the bill it must have some legal power some it must do something and the question is is it as the journey says to be used as a ticket or a come on the exact word but some sort of you know entry point to either tier two payments or tier one payments that you comply with the code just like you have to comply with the mule burn code you have to comply with this code if you're doing business in scotton farming and so the question I think for the committee is what work is this code doing in the bill and in the in the in the holding government and and you know moving the objectives forward because if it's not got any legal impact or impact on how much money farmers get there's really no point having it in the bill it might be nice to have but it's not going to do anything and then your point about how you drew it up it's going to be really difficult Sarah's absolutely right you know I love eggs I had eggs for breakfast it's really hard to think how a poultry farmer can show if they're importing soya and it's not ip soya or it's not guarantee free from deforestation how can they show that they're doing ridgleted agriculture it's really hard for them but we need eggs you know so so I think we have to be really careful about defining something that excludes some people from support that we want to support so and I think we should take our time about this if it's important make it part of the tier system eventually but take our time to do this involve a lot of people in it so that we're really moving forward together but as David will say I mean the supply chain loves regenerate agriculture because it covers so many different things and and as we keep having to come back to most of the a lot of the heavy lifting is going to be done by the supply chain in the next few years and what government has to do is to be ahead of that and look at what the perverse consequences of that what are the potential consequences for small producers for marginal producers producers that don't have the money to invest in change you know how can government make sure that the impact of the market is beneficial to all farmers and crofters not just to some thank you head jam it's just a minor point that when we're talking about how we define it I was looking at the 1946 hill sheep farming act to discover things about murburn recently the 1946 sheep farming act prescribed that only specific types of tups could be used as defined by the minister how many ministers know what a good hill tub looks like and what it should what its function should be so it's it's there is a danger here that if we be very prescriptive that we send farming into a particular direction so surely we've got to look at something that is allowing ministers to let the industry develop into the objectives that the bill has is set out in part four of the of the bill and it talks about a code of practice it doesn't say we will have a definition of sustainable regenerative agriculture it's about developing a code of practice and then it outlines how that implicitly how that needs to be brought about by the points that Sarah's made, Pete's made about it being a co-designed approach to ensure that it actually fits with different farming systems different contexts Scottish agriculture is remarkably diverse as you know and we need to ensure that whether you're crofting on the west coast or you're operating a large arable unit in Berwickshire that it's equally applicable but to the context in which you find yourself so it's my question is why why does it not just say the adoption of a code of practice rather than actually say the adoption and use of sustainable regenerative agriculture as one of the objectives? Well I would argue that Scottish Government would probably argue that because that's the vision for Scottish agriculture is to be a world leader in sustainable regenerative agriculture and that's in black and white and that's clearly a part of the agricultural reform route map that they've published over the last 18 months then that would be the link into that. Just with the parliamentary process should that code of practice come before the committee to scrutinise before it comes into action if you like before it's activated? I would argue a bit that the point that Pete's made I would endorse is that if it's of any worth of value and it's going to be used as some sort of leverage either to access support payments or if you like the baseline of what we would regard as not only good practice but getting to the best in class piece that we want to get to then I would have thought if it's got that legal status that influence then I would have thought this committee has to have some sort of scrutiny over it but that again will come further down the track and secondary legislation. Well, not necessarily. If this committee is going to have a role to scrutinise code of practice and future farm plans, there is a suggestion that the Government has to bring forward a plan and it will consult in that but there is nothing within the bill that suggests that this committee or Parliament has any role so are you suggesting that when they face the bill there should be an obligation for that code of conduct or practice or the future plan to come before Parliament? I certainly think if it's part of the conditionality of receipt of payment then it should be. Thank you. Joe. It's just to say a lot of the debate around this particular question seems to be process based and I think from Scotland Food and Drinks perspective we're really concerned with the outcome and what we are achieving and at some point we will have to define these terms, we have to understand what they mean and we'll have to assess and measure whether or not they're being implemented across all the different sectors all the geographical areas and in order to do that the process is less relevant than that it is achieved so we don't necessarily have a strong view about upfront but I guess the people who are saying it should be upfront are probably the people who are concerned about it being watered down or having less scrutiny on the bits that come subsequent to that but as Johnny's touched on that needn't be the case you know if these plans are there to be measured if the objectives are there to be reviewed and the processes are in place to review them and it's vital that they are because brand and reputation of Scottish Food and Drink is the thing that underpins our ability to sell it to the world and is the thing that will allow us to sustain Scotland through our strategic objectives of sustaining Scotland's supply in the world so we have to get it right but I don't know that it's absolutely critical that we get it right now versus through other mechanisms down the line. A small point in terms of the commercial side of things, so lots and lots and lots of people who buy primary produce have specifications and audit and assurance that will be well above I would imagine anything that can necessarily be put in the place of a code of practice so that's the you know in that commercial reality farmers and producers are dealing with those independent audits and independent codes of practice in order to supply Tesco or in order to supply a manufacturer in any case so I think you know some of the points that Pete's made in terms of actually where's the market failure what's the where are the things that the Scottish Government needs to step in and support and the Scottish Parliament needs to have an eye on are the critical elements of this from from our perspective because the you know the danger is that you set standards that are not commercially viable. I just want to make it clear to people that the code of practice will be subject to the negative procedure which is the Government devise a code of practice that can consult on it but it comes to the Parliament as lead if we don't like it in the Parliament we have to put forward a motion to annul that follows now my understanding because this is part of the objectives of the bill that the whole funding of farming depends on this code of practice being in place so that means that it will be very difficult for a committee to annul given that that might delay farming support there are other procedures you can have an affirmative procedure which means it's laid and the Parliament have to vote for it but again it's a ticket or leave it and in other pieces of legislation they've had what we term a super affirmative where the draft is laid in front of the Parliament the committee scrutinise put comments back to the government and then the government come forward taking or maybe not taking the comments of the committee on board and then we vote on it so those are the different tests I guess and I suppose what I'm asking you is is the negative process which is a move to annul sufficient for anything on which farming payments depend should we be looking at super affirmative for parts of the legislation and codes that are coming through through sworn at legislation should we be looking at that if farming payments depend on them? Tim wants to come in just for a bit of clarification the Scottish ministers may make regulations about guidance but the guidance itself actually doesn't come under any parliamentary scrutiny so we've got to be clear there's the two different things here Tim? Just in terms of what Rhoda has talked about then I'll reinforce where I was going to endorse what Pete was saying you know just in terms of you know the purpose what is the purpose of the code and how is it going to be deployed and if Johnny says it is something then may get linked to conditional support and that should be clearer in the bill and come back to your point Rhoda then that's something that there should be a more affirmative process behind it now if it's not if it's aspirational then that's less of an issue but then if it's aspirational we've come back to Pete's point what's the point so what? Yeah I think we're going to be clear that again I've said this before this is the business end of the bill we can talk about aspirations but if it's not on the face of the bill what how we can ensure our aspirations are realised there's you know there's a little point talking about it. Johnny can I bring Johnny and then Leslie? Because that point of view can maybe go on challenged I mean we have heard that you know it's quite useful to put many of these things in secondary rather than primary legislation so that point isn't a statement that would go on challenge. No no it's my opinion thank you Johnny and then Leslie. If you look throughout the bill I mean this as we all know is a framework bill primary legislation so so much of this is about creating powers and about how those powers are then used will all come through secondary legislation and therefore throughout the bill particularly in part two which is all about the support payments aspects there's a whole raft of clauses talking about either affirmative or negative procedures and the one thing I would say is that clearly we need scrutiny because there is no counterbalance in terms of what the Scottish Government might pursue this committee and this parliament are the means to scrutinise the secondary legislation it's the checks and balances piece. So where on the primary legislation is there anything to suggest what the role of parliament is and some of these really important aspects like guidance and code of practice? If you look at all the support elements the types of support that might be created by the powers in particularly in part two as well as that and that's the key bit for me is the part two piece all of that is underwritten in subcloses or whatever they're called about being subject to affirmative or negative approval and that takes me back to Rhoda's point you could argue quite strongly that you need to ensure that it's not just a situation whereby things have to pass in order to stop in order to prevent things being stopped or delayed and things like that so we would want to see proper and full scrutiny of the secondary legislation but that comes with secondary legislation so the key point for me would be to ensure that there's amendments in the bill as drafted at stage two to ensure that those checks and balances are in place. That was exactly my point. Not to say what the secondary legislation should be but to say that when the secondary legislation comes forward it is subject to the affirmative if that's the better approach or even sorry the super affirmative to ensure that there is a proper check and balance but that's not saying that what's actually in the bill itself is how those powers should be used that's got to come in the secondary legislation the scrutiny bit has to be in the secondary part the scrutiny bit has to be in the primary legislation if that makes sense. Yeah it absolutely doesn't it it leads on to it's how those code of conducts and our practice and whatever are measured, monitored and evaluated that's unclear on the face of the bill and the moment that needs to be in primary to ensure that secondary legislation is monitored and evaluated. Leslie and then I think Pete. I think specifically to this point the question that I'm asking myself is what are the mechanisms that need to be in the framework that will enable it to deliver those outcomes and so for example is there something here that needs to ensure that value chains are fair and viable etc etc so what are the things that you need equally what do you need in terms of requiring the code of practice and requiring the mechanisms that will deliver the the bill and deliver these outcomes to actually measure and monitor outcomes across those holistic requirements in terms of the definition of regenerative agriculture it kind of it feels very strange to be creating a bill that's about sustainable and regenerative agriculture without a definition or at least a set of key outcomes and deliverables that it is going to achieve and that might be in your objectives but this is a thing that has no formal recognition anywhere in the world at all the closest you will get to it is the FAO's definition of agroecology which some people you know are allergic to but it basically says the same things that people and incomes and environment and so on are the key deliverables that that you want so i wonder if there is something to Pete's point around having those objectives and outcomes that the bill will achieve up front that says there are effectively your definition of the things that your new regenerative and sustainable agriculture system will achieve otherwise i just think you leave potentially Scottish farming flapping in the wind with anyone being able to push it in a different direction and certainly to that point of scrutiny if this is the future of Scottish agriculture it has to be scrutinised my one question to the room would be um oh sorry just to that final point there are already mechanisms out there that have started to look at what do you need to put in place to deliver and scale regenerative agriculture so i would simply point towards the sustainable markets initiatives agribusiness task force that delivered a plan for action across finance markets food companies and policy um and that was released at cop 28 so the sustainable markets initiative but there are also mechanisms like region 10 the global farm metric and so on which have already done a lot of the multi stakeholder work that would allow you to be able to say how is this relevant to us in scotland but my question was going to be about timing one of the things we have seen in the uk in it sorry in england rather i apologise what are the things we've seen in england is the um the kind of kicking the can down the road and the confusion and inertia from farmers to be able to invest in transition because they don't know what they're going to be asked to do and secondly that they are being asked to carry the risk for that transition as well and so i would simply say to you that that surety that clarity needs to come sooner rather than later for people to know which direction they're going in and whether they're even going to have a viable business and i particularly speak to the the english legislation now which basically means that once basic payments go hill farmers have limited or no income because the market doesn't work for them so people need to know what they are investing in and where where they're going and my concern is that you could end up potentially if you have secondary legislation with years of people not knowing where they're going okay i'm going to bring peter and then i've got supplements from rich one gem yeah i think we're all agreed this is a framework bill the bit that's going to translate the framework into action is the rural support plan and the bill as it stands is very weak on defining the rural support plan i've already mentioned the wales bill which has more definition we want to see it much more like the cap strategic plan we want to stay aligned to the cap strategic plan has really clear obligations what needs to be in that plan we need budget envelopes we need uptake estimates we need estimates of impact of those different measures on climate and nature but also on food production and farming comes we need to look at differential impacts as lesley said you know at the moment most of the money goes to the people with the most land on the best land not to the hill farmers who are struggling you know so the rural support plan has to set up all of that how are we going to translate the broad framework of the bill into how we spend public money to do the best job for scotland and parliament has to look at that rural support plan and it has to look at it with some time and effort and also ideally external advice because there's a danger that we just look very parochialist the example is lesley's given a really good of how other places are handling this you know we need to look at that in detail because that's the engine of change and as i said in the wales bill there's a date for when that has to be produced and laid before parliament and i think that the difficulty for the committee because we've seen this with other framework bills is that essentially they leave it to government to make the plan and then the plan takes a while to come back and parliament's moved on to other things so we have to we have to strengthen this bill particularly around the rural support plan thank you a brief supplementary from rachel and gem excuse me it's just back to lesley mitchell please um you're absolutely right around i i believe that uh it should be about viable farming within the objectives it talks about uh thriving rural communities but it doesn't talk about the viability of farms we visited um uh a progressive uh arable unit in the borders collin mcgregor's place coldstream mains he he described to us what he'd been doing over the years in terms of um low tillage low inputs he described it as regenerative but my question would be if we don't have an objective to ensure that we de-risk um farming and ensure there's viable farming units that actually regenerative means nothing because all it is is some sort of label that allows a government to describe that they want to meet a net zero target um and it doesn't have any meat behind those bones and i think i think that is something that we're missing here because without farmers being sustainable we cannot meet net zero absolutely absolutely and i i think that is the key question not just around how they continue to be viable in the future but how do you create the conditions for them to make any transitions that they do need to make and i think there is one other question around the economic um uh the economic arrangements which is that these farmers and these thriving rural communities if they are to thrive they are the stewards of that land and they are also the producers of food so this is about land sharing not land sparing so to speak but the the important point for me there is that we don't want to create a situation where we reward restoration from degradation but we don't reward the people who have already to your point been investing in making this work um but we can't simply leave that to the market we need to create the conditions for the market to work effectively thank you i think joel wants to come in this briefly just very quickly is in a cap strategic plan uh reference that Pete made i know we might talk about cap later but the cap strategic plans within each member state come out of a toolkit or a template that they have to follow and the top line of the one of the first pages of that talks about the need to protect the people who work in agriculture because they still earn on average less than other sectors and that's got to be fundamental to um the rural sport plan okay thank you jump fairly um david you might want to listen to this one you're talking about how retailers and the processor are looking for specific requirements from producers to um have in their systems so scope three emissions that's absolutely going to be taken into account as this develops we've had retailers in here saying that they are prepared and are already doing some retail risk share so if a farmer gets flooded out and loses 30 acres and that is a nice they'll pick up some of that share that's not the same across the board the risk is all in the farmers plate so if we're talking about sustainable agriculture then farmers can't carry all of that load at all times is there an appetite in the retailer's mindset to say that um we will support agriculture we need farmers to be there so therefore we'll take on some of that risk and if there isn't should there be something in the bill somewhere that pushes them in that direction i don't speak for retailers directly thankfully but yeah you're right each retailer will have a different relationship with its suppliers and in fact a different relationship across different sectors even with the same retailer so that's part of the issue and from a manufacturing perspective manufacturers will be the same some of them will have very good and productive relationships with the suppliers and others it will just be on a more commercial basis than otherwise i think we've seen what risk sharing looks like over the past few years with the amount of inflation in the supply chain and i think depending on which element of the supply chain you're talking to you will get a different answer as to where that risk sharing has been so retailers will say that they are protecting consumers and paying as well as they can manufacturers will say they're getting cut to the bone from both the farmer and the and the retailer and farmers will say that they're at the end of the chain and have to have to deal with all the costs and i think you know there's a bit of truth in all of those things there's nothing in the bill that puts that risk sharing in in place i think my members would be they haven't sanctioned me to say that there would be a desire for risk sharing amongst manufacturers but yes i mean it is a supply chain and the best relationships and the most productive ones are ones where you know there's mutual respect and there are standards in place and manufacturers and retailers are supporting their producers but there's nothing in the bill that guarantees that. Johnnie. Yeah just just to add it and i agree with Jim's comments about risks and the need for risk sharing to be to be built in somewhere clearly within the bill there are powers for Scottish ministers to make payments in extreme circumstances when for example with the flooding situation and a crop gets washed out whatever that might be but that's closing the stable door after the horse has built that sort of thing and that's not necessarily the most effective use of taxpayer funding what we need to build into the whole system through our agricultural policy going forward is is more resilient anyway and i think you know Tim touched on that earlier on and i think would all recognise that having an element of risk sharing built in in terms of the whole supply chain i in principle i think we would support that but in practice how would that work i'm not a hundred percent sure so it definitely bears thinking about because i think going forward the whole supply chain if it's going to be a resilient robust supply chain that we do need to have risk built into it and and the different links within supply chain share different elements of risk appropriately rather than all that risk being passed down to the primary producer tim and seara yeah i mean nothing you know i talked about resilience earlier and following on from johnny's piece you know you obviously expect me to say that but you know certainly supporting producers to cooperate in various guises is a good way to do that but then you know it's good to forget retailer commitments you know there might not be comprehensive there might not be long lasting they may they may float around a bit like in the wind so you know from my point of view if you if you if you provide the mechanisms in the in the you provide the i suppose have it within the objective about increasing the resilience of farming first and foremost and then the secondary legislation have programs in place to support producers to cooperate then that helps producers minimize risk or or pool the risk as it were and you know we we sort of good example of it sort of four or five years ago there's a group of where potato growers in the kind of east of scotland who had one customer that customer relationship had worked well for quite a number of years and then over two or three years they were put under severe challenge in terms of pricing and then actually they just said well we're actually taking away a 30 a tonnage so they had the complete rug pulled from underneath them and though to the credit of those producers they ended up saying oh enough's enough um and they established uh coops the scottish potato coops is now in play they now have 15 percent market share of the uk production uh supplying nearly 100 000 tons of potatoes they have six customers and in this year which has been a terrible year for people selling where potatoes every single potato has been sold at either standard or at premium value and that's only because they've done that together if they have those 25 producers hadn't been there someone would have gone to the wall by now so and there are mechanisms in the bill to enable to do that. Sarah I just need to pick up on some of the points David made there around the wider supply chain retailers and processors and I think it's important to remember that the primary objective for both a manufacturer and a retailer is to supply product through the supply chain to you know for a retailer to have product on the shelf for a manufacturer or a processor to have raw material coming in that they can then make into a final product and this could have comes into a wider discussion but we've not quite touched on today around you know what we're here talking about the scottish ag bill but we have to remember that this is also set in a context of global food security. Now the war on ukraine of 18 months ago gave us a flash forward of what climate change is going to do to our food systems over the next few years and you know in generations to come and therefore I think it becomes an absolute priority for us as a food producing nation to remember that producing calories from Scotland that moves through our supply chains on to retail shelves and manufacturers in Scotland reduces our reliance on other parts of the world who are also going to be looking for those calories produced from food that aren't going to be able to be produced in places that they aren't and I think that's really important because if we reduce our ability to produce food produce calories in Scotland we're then looking for those calories to be brought in from somewhere else so the more that we can encourage as Joe started with you know a couple of hours ago now short local transparent supply chains that benefits our society our economy our environment but also benefits the world there's a real opportunity for us to be global leaders by focusing on food production here at home fully endorse what Sarah has just said and also I would recommend the committee reviews the environment audit committee's report published by the UK Parliament just last week which basically you know in a much more long winded way said what Sarah just said that climate biodiversity and food security not food production food security are all inherently linked and that committee is calling on the UK government in particular to really look at food security as a public good now in an economist's head it's not technically a public good but it should be put alongside the the likes of tackling climate change and biodiversity food security and I remember food security is all about affordability and availability so it's back to some of the points we discussed earlier about ensuring that everyone in our society has access to nutritious healthy affordable food and we're not going to do that if we run down our ability to do it here in Scotland or indeed the UK and become more reliant on other parts of the world who are also facing their own social economic challenges around producing food. Food security is a public good because my understanding has always been that food production food security has never been regarded as a public good. I'll stick an economist's hat on if you're an economist it is not because you buy it and sell it so it has a price right but the the thinking in this day and age is that it should be regarded as a public good because it is so much in the public interest and if we have market failure market intervention that's why governments across the world need to step into food security and food production as a consequence technically it's food is not a public good but it is absolutely in the public interest that it's affordable safe nutritious all the other things that we touched on earlier on and that's why government needs to step in ensure that you have the continuity to supply at the right price at the right standard et cetera et cetera and it also delivers in a way that is beneficial for our environment and so on. I'm very conscious of time briefly Jenny and then I'm going to take Pete and very briefly Joe. Okay well to be very brief can I just pick up on the idea of food security um Sarah you said about calories I think we need to just be clear the definition of food security is actually includes nutrition so I think if we're looking at sort of what we're trying to achieve it's food and nutrition security so I think we've seen in lots of examples where the focus has only been on calories and then down the line there've been consequences for health because of nutrients et cetera so I think when we talk about food security we either talk about nutrition security or we're very clear that it isn't just calories. Can we try and frame this within what's in the bill again so if we need something that addresses food security as Jim has mentioned or Johnny there is nothing in the bill about that or the public good for food so if you can frame your responses around what is in the bill or what needs to be in the bill to address your concerns because again we're at the business end this is we're legislating for this stuff and if it's important where where does it come in to the legislative process so was that's really what we want to look at Pete and then Joe. Absolutely support food production has been part of the bill central projectives I think the difficulty is that doesn't mean we keep producing the same things in the same way forever you know Scotland eats less than 1% of the barley it grows its main crop we don't eat it it's one of the most nutritious things people can eat is barley you know we don't eat it we don't eat very much of our wheat you know very small portion of wheat we grow is fed to humans it's fed to lots of other people in between or to drinks but it's not fed to humans so I think Jenny's absolutely right this is about how do we nourish the people of Scotland well from our land and some of that has continued to produce red meat for export you know we're very good you know we're well set up for that but we can't assume that the job is to maximize red meat production it's not it's to optimize red meat production we need to increase production and consumption of vegetables and other high fibre things that we can grow in Scotland really well you know so it's just we absolutely support food production as a core of this agriculture bill but let's not take that to mean we carry on doing exactly what we're doing now in exactly the same way in exactly the same places I would say we're not arguing or advocating for the status quo here there is a change that's required through these objectives and policy alignment if there was anything in this bill that could probably achieve some of this food security bit would be to make sure it syncs in with good food nation plans and we don't end up with siloed policies which almost compete good food nation can deliver a lot around food security depending on what the plans when they do come forward look like and they could synchronize in with this bill to make sure that when we talk about food we are talking about what we eat and drink Johnny on this topic I just echo entirely what Pete said about the fact we can't continue to do what was done with the same outcomes the same results we do need to change the way in which we support agriculture to enable it to deliver on on the challenges that we do face however where I do disagree slightly with Pete is about the fact that actually producing that grain that he didn't say that word alcohol but it goes into an alcohol industry which is actually really really important to the economy of Scotland and there are lots and lots of jobs and incomes and livelihoods and rural communities that depend upon a whisky sector another sector so I don't think we should downplay the fact that yes you know we need to produce high quality nutritious food but we also need to produce you know sustain a whisky industry in particular is so important to the prosperity of the country and then you could get into all sorts of debates about even producing the feedstock if you like for renewable energy you know producing energy biomass and all the rest of it that doesn't go into the food chain but is that part of that balance that we might have to find in terms of producing energy and so on so thank you I'm going to suspend the meeting until 11 10 to allow for a top-up of coffee and a comfort break we'll resume it 11 10 okay well we're reconvene and we're going to move on to our third theme with the question from Beatrice Wishart Scottish Government officials stated that the rural support plan would be a summation of how rural support delivers against the four objectives and that it would be co-developed with the industry and stakeholders so what level of detail do you think needs to be on the face of the bill in terms of producing and the content of the plan? Beatrice, we'll just elaborate on what I said earlier I think Deb she convene her that the key thing is it sets out how spending public money is going to deliver the objectives we need to deliver and at the moment I think Finlay referred to this earlier on there's a bit of a danger that the climate plan says sea agriculture and the biodiversity plan says sea agriculture and the agriculture plan says sea biodiversity and that we never actually nail down the jelly and say what actually we're going to deliver here so I think it's really important the rural support plan sets out very clearly over finally a period how is this £700 million of public money going to deliver on food production climate nature and if we want nutrition in there on nutrition how what difference is it going to make and the evidence for that so if we're spending x amount on tier one what's the intervention logic what does that deliver what does this amount on tier two deliver if we've got specific schemes how many farmers do we think are going to take up that scheme what difference will that make it needs to be granular at that level to say this is a plan for spending quite a lot of public money over five years this is why we're spending it in this way these the alternatives we've considered for spending it this is why we've chosen this way to consider it it needs to be really granular otherwise I think it doesn't give parliament the opportunity to say we're going to approve this secondary legislation for all these tiers and all these schemes because you can't see the whole picture and the danger is in our book is that you get asked to approve possibly by in a quite a rush timetable instruments which set out tier one tier two tier three tier four but you look at them one at a time and you don't get to see the whole picture so that's why I think it's really important that we have a a real support plan that's detailed and granular and it has an environmental assessment that's independent that says this is what we think it's going to deliver and that comes to parliament before you approve the secondary legislation Johnnie I would like to agree with what Pete's just said actually in terms of the rural support plan in a way sounds a bit more like a big strategic high level thing at the moment and what we actually really need and Pete used the word several times just then about delivery so how does it translate into delivery actions and how will we then use the support framework around tier one two three in particular but also underpin by tier four to deliver on those actions so in a sense a rural support plan I think is high level but we will need some sort of delivery plans underneath that just as you do with any plan whether it's a business plan or you know in terms of trying to deliver a broader policy objective I think the fundamental point from our point of view though around the the rural support plan is that yes a five-year commitment on ministers to produce one but I think it's worthless unless it is also backed with a five-year rural funding plan if that's the right expression to go alongside it you need a support framework a funding framework that says that these would be the commitments in in aggregate terms around underpinning that rural support plan and then it's the debate in the discussion about how those funds are then allocated on the delivery aspects that Pete just referred to but as well as having a rural support plan as an obligation on ministers in the bill I think immediately after that there should be an obligation on ministers to have a rural financial framework in place to underpin it. Thank you. I'm going to bring in Jenny to give a perspective on the the health wellbeing and nutrition aspects what might have to be in the in the plan. Well I mean the first thing I think is particularly joining up with the good food nation and sort of making sure that they're complementary. I would also say if you want to put in nutritious food there has to be more in the bill about what that actually means sort of we spoke briefly about where in the supply chain but if we're talking about health nutrition and wellbeing is that of the population in Scotland because then you're talking about what's being produced and where does it go so that does for me needs to look at that whole sort of system of if the end point or one of the end points is to get a healthier nation then you've got to think about if it's high quality means it's going to be more expensive how do you get to some of the populations that most need some of the nutrition and that may particularly around the water cultural sector but also is it ending up at the health point and if not then I think that needs to sort of be thought through within the bill that there can't be an assumption that because it's produced in Scotland people in Scotland benefit from it so I would say very much if it's going to be healthy and nutritious food that you're talking about I think there needs to be a bit more detail about that because that's in the top line but there's very little detail once you go further down in the bill to say what that is or how it's going to be as you say delivered so I think there does need to be either more detail or a real think about what actually it doesn't mean to be in there as opposed to maybe just a term that sounds like we should be doing okay I'm going to bring a question from Karen and then Rachel thank you convener yeah I find that quite interesting a lot of the feedback was in regard to you know particularly not in plans like the good food nation plan but also the national environment bill there's a whole list here land reform particularly coming up as well and it's just how to how to tie that all in and Jenny you're saying there you know how do we look at good nutrition healthy nation how do we fit that in this bill would would that not then just tie into the good food nation plan can we then so if this agri bill within itself overarchs all of these different things and encompasses that then that would be quite a full and fulfilling document in itself yes I mean I would I think it would be fabulous if it overarched all of these different areas because there are sort of trade-offs having to look at you know what land is used for what and obviously we have a finite amount of land in Scotland so I think having something overarching that actually talks to all the different sectors you don't end up with its unintended consequences of for example exporting a lot of our best food without thinking about a healthy nation and where some of it should go obviously there's the human rights bill that's being discussed at the moment and a right to food so I think that needs to be part of it and yes using this as an umbrella to sort of say we will you know going forward draw in some of these things to make sure that we're not contradicting things in other bills would be a significant way forward convener so one of the interesting points brought up for me was in regards to the food security aspect of this and how that fits into it you know we have seen an environment lately where there is that upset in the markets and delivery to people into supermarkets and it is quite a concern in the time how can we then ensure that that is included here do you see that as being something in specific that do you think payments should be tied to production no payments I don't believe should be tied to production it doesn't necessarily drive efficiency and and clearly efficiency is one of our keys to to meeting a number of challenges simultaneously no do I think tying payments to production would be a step forward I think it would be a step backwards and things people like the WTO would probably have a view on these sorts of things as well but you do make a very valid point about how do we build sort of resilience into our whole system food system it actually goes back to Jenny's point about land use and how we utilise our land the best effect and I notice you said trade off rather than balance so it is absolutely vital that we use this legislation and yes it has to relate to other things around our climate change update plan our just transition plan for for land use in agriculture the Scottish biodiversity strategy coming forward and all all these other things have to connect because the common denominator in so many ways is land use and within that the serious common denominator is agricultural land use so rather than having payments based on blunt areas of occupation of land which is the current model which clearly doesn't work because that incentivises a nursery if nothing else nor can we have payments based purely on production or volume of production because it needs to be of quality rather than quantity I think we've all agreed that so importantly this piece of legislation has to be the pathway to supporting farmers and crofters to produce in a way that delivers not only on high quality food but all the other outcomes we're seeking at the same time and that's the intention behind the new sort of tiered framework whereby farmers and crofters will still get direct support payments but less for occupying just for occupying land but more about how they manage the land of their farming enterprises to produce high quality food whilst at the same time delivering the outcomes that we want so the support will remain vital but the means of delivering that support must change and this bill has to be the the initial step in that process Pete, do you want to come in on this? I was just picking up on that point the government's vision for agriculture which came out last year I think heads off saying we want to produce more of our own food sustainably from our own resources and I think that's a worthy intention in the context of food insecurity at the moment there's not much overlap it's the same with fishing between what we produce and what we eat and I think one if we look back in 10 years time one of the successes of this bill hopefully is that there's more of an overlap between what we produce and what we eat as Joe was saying earlier about short food chains more vegetables being produced more value added in Scotland to primary produce to create high value nutritional products which are affordable to the wider population so I think that's a worthy goal excuse me jawd like to come in I mean I mean I just to say I think yeah from Scotland food and drinks perspective there's sort of an entire landscape to look at with within food and drink and this bill feels like it's more at the production end of that food and drink landscape or supply chain and our concern is as much about the demand end so what are people eating and drinking and in Scotland at the moment we have a challenge in that some of the things we produce are unaffordable and inaccessible but I would just say I would struggle to see how this bill would address that issue which is possibly more about inequalities or poverty than it is about the food that we produce and the drink that we produce so our strategy sustaining Scotland's supply in the world unfortunately cannot address to the extent we would love to address getting nutritious high quality food into communities of high deprivation and that you know it's just it's just too much to expect this bill to achieve that outcome it should link into good food nation which has some hope of potentially looking at the local community distribution type activity including the critical role of the public sector in purchasing local even if it costs a bit more and obviously all the things that go with local sustainable etc but there is a limit I think to what any of these bills can do in terms of deprivation which underpens unfortunately a lot of the inequalities again I want to bring the focus back to what we're looking at the rural support plan and what currently the legislation suggests needs to be considered within that plan and it suggests relates to agricultural forestry rural land use environment climate change plan but it doesn't actually mention cost of food it doesn't mention the good food nation so that's something it would appear that you're suggesting should potentially be in there we'll just ensure that it links across to it and doesn't try and override it or sit above it but there needs to be in mind you know some kind of mindfulness of what that that work is doing as well and that's you know it's probably across other has done in touch on other policy areas as well okay but how you join that together is quite it's quite complicated I'd imagine okay I've got questions from Rachel Ariann and Alistair thanks convener so the NFUS are calling for a funded commitment to accompany the rural support plan am I correct before I ask my question considering the recent cuts to the agricultural budget would you be confident that the rural support plan will be accompanied by the resources that you need to achieve the four objectives that have been laid out in the bill I don't think anybody can be confident about what funding settlements that either Westminster or the Holyrood will provide for rural Scotland and delivering the outcomes that we want from this bill and what will follow from the bill what is absolutely paramount in in our view right now is to seek a multi-annual ring-fenced commitment from the Westminster government whoever that might be from 25 onwards or middle of 24 onwards wherever it might be for at least that parliamentary term to 2029 but not only ring-fenced and multi-annual we needed to be significantly increased because the value of support has eroded in real terms and yet farming and land management across the UK is being increasingly asked to do more so that's that's the first ask we need that commitment across a UK basis if we then get that ring-fenced multi-annual commitment coming into Scotland it's then about ensuring that the Scottish government also adds to that to deliver on the outcomes and expectations that the Scottish government places on farming and crofting to deliver that multitude of outcomes that the bill is asking us to do because all of those things do come at cost if we're going to meet our aspirations around all the things that we've talked about this morning that fundamentally comes at cost you cannot expect the delivery of public good and we've talked about public good quite a lot at private cost on a sustainable basis and if the market returns aren't there to cover those costs then that's when the government sector has to intervene if we want to ensure that there's no market failure around those things so there's an obligation on two governments first of all the Westminster government to provide Scotland with that commitment that we've just received and is about to come out to run to an end in 2024 so we need a continuity in that respect but then we need Scottish government to add to that and then also allocate that to best effect to get the outcomes that we want okay so in the situation that referred to where the agricultural budget was increased then that money was taken away are you then saying that the Scottish government should ring fence that money well the funding that Scottish government currently gets from Westminster is ring fenced and that has been allocated to Scottish agriculture but not used for agriculture no all the funding that has come from the UK government to the Scottish government 620 million pounds has been allocated through basic payment scheme of us all the other things treasury of issuers of that and the scotland officers of issuers of that let alone Scottish government assuring us of that the bit that hasn't been allocated was additional funding that Scottish government put into that budget okay so are you saying that so going back to the rural support plan and to achieve the four objectives are you saying that the money that the Scottish government put in should be ring fenced to agriculture we believe that agriculture and well the not just agriculture but the the rural economy and the rural communities bill and what it's trying to achieve should have a ring fenced budget on a multi annual basis because it's only then that you can actually plan with best effect not only from a farming crofting land use communities point of view but also the administrators of these of the schemes and the support payments that there is a clear plan in place that says this will be the financial profile over the next five years to match what you're trying to achieve with a rural support plan okay so do you think there should be a consent mechanism in the parliament to ensure that that the importance that you're placing on the future of agriculture has the ability to maintain those funds rather than divert or defer them yes just as in the same way as I think there should be a mechanism in place to ensure that you know going back to Rhoda's question earlier on that secondary legislation is properly scrutinised and agreed not just by Scottish government but by the parliamentary process because you need those checks and balances okay thank you so to the wider panelists a couple of questions when would you like to see a draft rural support plan should there be a statutory requirement to consult and how do you see the role of parliamentary scrutiny of a support plan including monitoring and reporting on the effectiveness of the plan Pete start with you perhaps 1st of January 2025 I think to come into parliament there's a difficulty because of the sunset clause that we've got in place on from the 2020 act about what Scottish government can do because the last thing we want I think we all agreed is any more delay in starting to make these changes and payments but I don't think that means we should get things wrong because we're in a hurry because we've not you know we've we've been a bit slow I think and there's lots of reasons for that but we have been a bit slow getting this to this point so I think we need to get that rural support plan and into parliament and I do think we're crying to consult externally I think the Welsh example of the wellbeing future generations commission is a good one we'd certainly to consult with the UKCCC with nature bodies and to make sure that the plan is robust and there's a question about monitoring and evaluation throughout this the cap you know is externally valued by European Court of Auditors we're not quite sure what the external evaluation for this Scottish process is going to be but does all it's got now have a role in it does somebody else have a look at this and say this is value for money or not and I think that's really important to parliament I think another element in the plan needs to be I think Johnny would agree with this that you and others dedicate on the principles for responsible that's capital investment some of this work of changing things can be done through investment private finance Scotland's looking at a major carbon and nature bonus coming our way as well as renewable energy because of the way our land is but we have to make sure then that we're not doing things with public money with private money could do but equally we're compensating for the negative effects of private finance flooding in and at the moment the plan is a little bit in isolation from what private finance is going to do and I think it's reasonable for the rural support plan to set out where do we see the contribution of private finance and public finance sitting together but we'd also want to see in the rural support plan some clear targets for how much progress we're going to make on things and how we're going to measure that Sarah mentioned the COP28 the FAO just brought a roadmap for food systems in a 1.5 world it's got you know these are global big numbers but really clear targets about where we want to be by when to deliver that. Roda's got a query and something every said Pete. Just a tiny supplementary to that you're talking about the sunset clause and when the support plan has to come in place should we be using this legislation to remove the sunset clause to give more time to make sure we don't end up with unintended consequences? I think that's above my pay grade I'm not a lawyer but I think that is something in the bill that allows an extension of the sunset. The main thing was just not to delay the change because we're waiting for the rural support plan. I think everybody would agree on that. 25 would probably be a compromise on both sides. I think it's really important to remember particularly when we're talking about livestock production systems that they are long term and if you're looking for producers to make differences it makes changes to how they produce food you know farmers might only buy a bull once every five years so you have one chance particularly potentially within that timeline of the rural support plan to influence their decision making and I think you know we cannot lose sight of you know when we're talking about farming and crofting businesses they are biological businesses impacted by things like the weather and it's not a closed loop system where you can just you know pull a lever and the production system changes so having as long a running time as possible to give businesses the chance to prepare is good and I also think it's important that we consult I think consultation is good because it helps to explain the why what it is we're trying to do to bring people with us and then also allow the wider industry ecosystem roundabout farmers to also place themselves in the best way to help support that transition and I think that is why it's worthwhile putting time into consultation explaining the why but also making sure we understand how businesses will react to different parts of that rural support plan because there's no point in putting something in there if a business can't actually make a change within that time frame. Thank you for all that clarity around the multi-year funding because that was one of the questions I had around you know how's that possible if the UK government isn't coming forward with that I wondered how you were getting on I think you've been in conversation with them and then the other simple question I have is that I think Pete in the nourish evidence written evidence you were calling for longer than five years support plans so I'd be interested to maybe start with Johnny and come back to you. Of course on that funding question we're dealing with a current UK government but that current UK government in all likelihood is only got 12 more months to go at max and therefore you're looking at who will or might form the next UK government so our responsibility on behalf of our members is to lobby all the political parties in Westminster to get commitments so that arguably you would have cross party support on such a commitment but certainly talking to all the leading parties in Westminster to seek as I say a multi-annual ring fence budget for the whole of the UK and increased in order that you know Scotland's share is safeguarded if you like for at least the 25 through the 29 period and that then gives Scottish government a foundation to build on that as the core budget to then ensure that there are sufficient resources in there and I've said many many times we could come up with the best ad bill in the world the best schemes and measures and all the rest of it but it's a house of cards if we have no funding behind it so that you know that that's always the elephant in the room in my opinion is if the resources aren't there then we are really going to be struggling because farming and crofting and the entire agrifood supply chain is being asked to do more but with less and I would agree sorry just to echo what Pete said I think we've really got to get a bit more ambitious and a bit more creative about how do we leave her in private sector finance as well we can't simply keep relying on it on a public place which is already under significant pressure Pete do you want to address the question on the longer plan term I think what I'd suggested in our evidence was that we have a 20-year horizon for this that we look at for you know so that we're setting out from the beginning a long-term ambition that this first five-year plan fits into laser ground for contributes to you know so that we've got our eyes on the longer term prize because as Sarah says into 20 years in the life of farming business actually isn't very long but it's it's the only 20 years we've got to get to net zero and restore nature and also to get us on a more prosperous trajectory so so just having a later that 20-year timescale but I think the SIUC evidence was interesting because it says and I don't know if we can do this try not to align them too closely with the parliamentary terms so that it doesn't become you don't get a sort of hold-up when you're in election year that's all. Can I just ask if johnny can build on some of his earlier points about that link between production and support appreciate it's a link not a tie but I wonder we've heard earlier on from Leslie about the regime that is likely to exist for safer English hill farmers so there is a distinction being made or likely to be made in policy in the two countries so I suppose my question earlier on is how do we ensure that we're able to act in a way that meets Scottish needs on this and we're not pressurising to doing something that breaks that link completely in the way that may be happening I think that's a really really important issue to raise in the context of how the bill and the powers within the bill will be used going forward and as we're all aware Scottish Government's intention is to produce a four tiered system with tier one and tier two being the sort of where the heavy lifting is done the difference between what we're intending to do here in Scotland and what's happening in England is that we will retain a component of financial stability in tier one which is very much equivalent to what we have under our basic payment scheme and our things like a less third area support scheme that is absolutely critical if you look at the profile of Scottish agriculture to have that financial underpinning that financial stability component is vital for so many farming and crofting interests in Scotland yes there are businesses and enterprises that can stand on their own two feet there's no doubt about that but you know traditionally they've been relatively unsupported sectors like pigs and poultry soft fruit the vegetable sector and so on but once we move into a sort of livestock permanent grass upland areas the reliance on an element of direct support is critical however we are very very clear that simply occupying an area of land to receive a support payment to do the same old things that we've always done is not going to cut it when we need to tackle new challenges so therefore the difference with the system we want to move to and where we are today is to ensure that that tier two element of management options the enhanced payment is not about occupying land but is about how you manage the land and how you manage your agricultural enterprises and you're doing that in an efficient way in an effective way that delivers on the environmental needs as well as the bottom line of the agricultural business and that's the big departure so the difference between ourselves and england if we can draw that very direct comparable is that their direct payments are being phased out completely and will do so by 2027 and for upland producers and you know certainly speaking to colleagues at NFU in england upland producers in the north of england down in the southwest they are now on something of a a cliff edge to use that phrase which is being used a lot because they don't have the options in terms of picking up the environmental measures and so on to make that stack up as a viable business and it goes back to a number of points that have been made unless you have that underpinning financial viability you don't have the people on the ground to carry out the types of land management and high quality food production that we actually want to achieve simultaneously so that's the fundamental difference between what's happening in scotland and england and as our president martin kennedy often says he'd far rather be on this side of the border right now with that trajectory rather than being on the other side of the border facing actually some really stark choices it's one thing if you're a big agri business in the southeast of england and your market focused you can just say well i actually don't need that and i'll just farm and i'll farm hard so i think we'll see some previous consequences in certain parts of england it'll actually be counterproductive in terms of environmental delivery whereas actually if you're a hill farmer on the island mole you absolutely need that underpinning so to ensure that you can continue to deliver the environmental and social contribution that you make to those areas and that goes back to Kate's point about underpinning rural communities thank you convener we sort of jump there is there any any members got any further questions on rural support plans jim the johnny you mentioned earlier on that you would look to see an increase in funding largely because of inflation so let me ask the question what justifies farming getting an increase in funding when every other sector across the country is looking for an increase in funding largely because of inflation where's the justification for farming to get it i didn't say largely because of inflation i said it's been eroded in real terms because of inflation repressive my apologies but the the real reason why we need an uplift in funding is that farming and crofting is going to is being asked to do more and that comes at a cost in terms of delivery the outcomes that we we all want to see but they don't come without cost and as i said earlier you can't deliver those public goods whether it's food security climate biodiversity at private expense otherwise that that is the quickest way to run down the viability of agricultural businesses currently scotland gets about 17 percent of the agricultural budget i think i'm correct in saying that if there is a have you got any indication of whether that level of funding will continue to come to scotland at that percentage rate or is there a need for that to increase as well well that's why we're on record is asking for at least the UK government future UK government to provide a further one billion at least for the whole of the UK which means it was going from about 3.5 up to about 4.5 billion of which currently scotland gets 17 percent now i'm also very clear that actually there's a strong justification for scotland actually getting a bigger share of that budget and if you go back to the view review of 2020 a lord views recommendations not only was it that scotland should get this additional 25.7 million per year during the current spending review period but actually he recommended to the UK government that there was a review of how those funding allocations were made across the UK those funding allocations were based on historic production levels not on what we are doing in terms of delivering on climate biodiversity and other things and if you look at scotland's land mass and not just its land mass but actually its it's comparative strength in things like peatland restoration woodland creation biodiversity there is a very very strong case that scotland should receive more than 17 percent i couldn't put a figure on it but i would say at least quarter of the budget 25 percent should become in scotland michael gove gave a commitment some time ago that under no circumstances would agriculture be barnatised on the basis of what you've just said have you got any concerns about that happening in the future if it wasn't ring fenced on a multi annual basis and just came part of the block grant i'm pretty sure it would become barnatised and would fall from 17 percent of what our commitment would be to nine percent or whatever it might be and that would be effectively halving what we we get so that is an additional reason why we needed to be separated out and if and it's quite clear that the UK government can give ring fence multi annual commitments to certain sectors there's there's a component of funding comes from UK government to the fisheries sector for example or indeed to different parts of UK government in terms of different departments so that's the reason why if it's ring fenced and therefore those funds can only be used for specific purposes it does not have to be barnatised it's not part of the block grant now it's not to stop scottish government utilising what comes in the block grant to add to that but essentially it's it's an effective separate budget and retaining that in order to maintain that at least 17 percent share and as i say there's an argument for it going higher is really really important for all of us if we're going to achieve the outcomes of what okay thank you john kerb one of the civil servants said that there was a semantic around the multi annual multi annual year funding which was promised by the UK government up until the end of the parliament would you say that that was multi annual funding the commitment that George Eustis made in November 2020 which was a basically a reiteration of the Tory party manifesto commitment of 2019 said multi annual funding and when Rishi Sunak was chancellor of the Exchequer in the budget of 2021 his spending review then made it multi annual it was a three year to the end of the parliament to 2025 effectively so in my opinion it is multi annual and that's what we want to see repeated from the next UK government okay and there is one area that's just missed on the rural support plan but if you might want to just stick into this topic so up to now we've had multi year funding ring fenced but again i mean ask you ring fenced and when's it ring fenced when it's not ring fenced you talked about unallocated money but there was 61 million taken out of thought most people regarded as ring fenced money because the bureau of you as you said identified that scotland didn't get enough money but the scottish government took the decision to remove that from the agriculture budget so was that part of the 17 percent that you mentioned or was it over and above it was over and above so why do you think let's be very very clear so it's scottish government received 620 million pounds per year from the UK government as a ring fenced contribution as part of the UK delivery of agriculture excuse me and rural development spending we've had it on record from the UK treasury and from the scotland office that that's 620 million pounds has been spent the piece that has been the uncommitted piece is additional funding that scottish government provided to that rural economy budget and therefore it's not being taken out of the ring fenced element so what happened to the but money the 61 million additional that is part of the ring fence it's in it was part of the 620 million yes because it's it was 595 million of direct support another support the but is the extra 25 million taken the 620 million so so they i'm just to get this clear on my head so the ring fenced money was all spent in agriculture yes but the scottish government still removed how much from the 33 million in september 22 and 28 million in november 23 in about 61 million pounds despite the inflationary pressures i'm just stating fact you're obviously convenient trying to draw me into something of a political discussion well i'm not because you're asking for guarantees on ring fenced funding and funding it was allocated to agriculture to be spent on agriculture and that that has not happened in the last couple of years yes the ring fence has been spent what hasn't been spent is the additional funding that scottish government put in and where clearly on record is calling scottish government to return that we've written we've had meetings with the deputy first minister and we've written last week to the first minister seeking that that be urgently addressed that the money is fully returned and is it allocated to appropriate use in that budget okay so i'm when it comes to the five year funding plan that we'd like to see go alongside the the future rural plan and the moment the expectation is that future farming funding should still be UK money and not by the block grant is that correct so it would be UK government for agriculture however the bill would suggest that that money could then be diverted to wherever as a saving or whatever so it's not actually ring fenced within the legislation that's in front of us is that right if it comes through the existing process it would be ring fenced and has to be spent on the elements to or the purposes to which it is intended that's exactly what UK treasury were looking for okay and whilst ring fencing is not a legal binding term it is a commitment in that sense that any devolved administration who receives ring fenced funding from Westminster cannot then shovel that sideways into other parts of spending okay thanks Kate Forbes is that sorry can i just ask is there not a danger there going on the premise of the points that you've just made that if the UK government don't ring fenced it they could then banlethite it they could simply allocate it through the block grant and therefore it is not ring fenced okay thank you that's why our sorry that's why our ask of whoever forms the next UK government is to effectively cut and paste the settlement that we've just had over the last five years but with additional funding in it so it is ring fenced Scotland gets 17% and actually the argument is we should get more because that was a recommendation of the B review okay Kate we just very briefly on that point and the distinction between ring fencing and non-ring fencing and my i would assume that the agricultural sector would is more interested in what is ring fenced over the next five years because that provides a basic minimum guarantee notwithstanding that future Governments may wish to top that up in terms of devolved Governments as additional commitments become available but the real focus would be on ring fencing and clearly extending that as much as possible i think your assumption is sport and my second point is just for the record my understanding notwithstanding your understandable concerns in terms of budget movements that that budget will be returned in subsequent budgets according to the the cabinet secretary but clearly again the point being that you would prefer ring fenced budgets which ultimately come from the UK government so that five-year plan is more important than anything else yes but clearly we have had it on verbally and in writing that that funding will be returned our continual request of Scottish Government is to say when and what will it be used for and that's that's the issue that still remains outstanding thanks thank you arianne bodges thanks convener we've kind of started to get into this area already which is the we wanted to move on to the section part two in the bill which is the powers to provide support so provisions in this section gives Scottish ministers powers to provide support and additional powers about supports of such as conditions eligibility requirements guidance capping refusing or recovering support and exceptional market conditions so i'd be interested to hear from maybe maybe not pete and johnny for a wee while but get to hear from them too but some other people to start around the level of what you think what your thoughts are on the level of detail in the bill and also your views around powers to cap the agricultural payments and the whole kind of potential for redistribution and also ideas of tapering and we also started to touch in on the tier system and you know what kind of detail we might want in there so and also the levels of power parliamentary scrutiny let's start with all of that and then i've got a special question for professor Jenny McDermott as part of this to say that you want to kick off i just want to kick off by saying that we are fundamentally opposed to the concept of capping that we don't see any evidence from any other support schemes that capping has worked and i think that there are different ways to deliver the outcome in some ways and one of the the best ways that we have seen used operated in in recent years is this concept of front loading and again when we come down to businesses there's quite often a cost of doing business that exists whether you are a large farm or a small farm so this concept of front loading would actually help the small producers you know that we know who are more exposed to market volatility and the cost of doing business and are often in more geographically challenging locations you know in terms of that that more holistic support so i think i just wanted to make sure that that was part of our evidence and i wanted to reiterate that again today around providing support to exceptional market conditions i again i think this is something that should be fundamentally you know a strong part of this element of the bill again reiterating it in a climate crisis in a biodiversity crisis we know that different parts of the globe are being impacted by weather events by you know the ability to produce food including our own and it is important that we have the mechanisms within this bill to be able to support businesses whether it's from disease movement of disease so you know that the big challenge worry at the moment is around african spine fever and you know will it ever reach our shores in the UK and what ability do we have to protect our businesses here and mitigate against that as that as a market challenge so i think it's really important that in this very very uncertain you know geopolitical and you know wider landscape that we have that ability to intervene quite rapidly to the different challenges that may come across our producers to maintain the business viability at the core we're asking a lot of our businesses at the moment you know to change production methods to reduce emissions and to invest in new pieces of technology and i think you know if we're asking businesses to invest in the long term it should be a piece of this this legislation to say that actually should something that we do not foresee right now that we've got your back that's risk mitigation and i think that speaks very clearly to businesses to save you invest we'll make sure that you know should something happen that we're there for you at really basic level johnny i appreciate you don't really want to hear from me anymore but i what it does encourage us around part two of the bill is that there is clearly a lot of scope and a lot of flexibility within those powers the bill creates the powers and i've said time and time before and i'll continue to say it's then about ultimately how those powers are used and that's going to be the key element the important thing though is the flexibility there are powers to provide support on a on say a regional basis there are powers to provide support on on land quality land type basis which is good because that then creates an opportunity for things like a disadvantaged area support where you might want additional support in our what is traditionally less favoured areas and there is powers to support particular enterprises which again you know thinking about where we are today and coupled support within our circular beef sector is important so that would still allow us opportunities to do that in some form albeit we might want to attach more conditions to that support in what we're trying to achieve so the scope of the powers i think is is right because fundamentally we need that flexibility and we need that coverage the big questions are though about how those powers are then used and and that's that obviously when you step away from the primary legislation and the secondary legislation and can i just entirely endorse what sarah's just said about capping um front loading would be a far smarter way to do things and we have a history of front loading uh if you think about the previous iteration of the of the of the coupled support scheme that we have in in the particular beef sector the old beef calf scheme that had a a significantly higher payment rate per calf for the first 10 calves and that that skewed things towards the smaller producer towards particularly in the crofting counties and so on where see clearly the the cost of production per unit if you like the without the the economies of scale it's really important that we actually do that so capping is a very blunt thing but i think there are different ways to do things and certainly the concept which is also referred to in the bill of tapering payments merits some looking at as well i've got seara and leslie and then peat all big apart it was peat sorry peat first sorry so it's the rural support plan as we said what jim said what's the justification for how we're spending these different bits of money and parliament needs to look at that and say why we're spending money here rather than there at the moment if we went if you look the base budget which is in the financial memorandum around 89 percent of the budget is going to go for tier one and tier two measures with only 11 percent for tiers three and four which has to do a lot of the change management heavy lifting advice training support for co-operation you know support for organic support for agroforestry you know capital investment is got a lot is expected tier three and four and at the moment the base budget isn't going to allow much for that so because my understanding of it is sorry through through the convener my apology convener my understanding of it is that tier one and two may well be getting the vast majority of the funding but there's going to be additional condition sorry additional conditionality added into that which will actually pave the way for tier three and four to be able to do its work and if i'm wrong no absolutely and as johnny says you know tier two is going to make a change to how what farmers get paid to do so all i'm saying is that parliament needs to look at it in around how is that budget going to deliver on things so if you look at the moment at how we spend that money we need probably to move more money to supporting supply chains rather than individual farms particularly support the sort of vulnerable areas that sarah has talked about how can this bit of the economy the bit of the royal economy be supported because not just about individual farms it's about supply chain but the question is at the moment there are egregiously large payments going to wealthy businesses which as johnny says could stand on their own two feet you know very large payments going to businesses which are very prosperous and that's not a good use of public money and we need to scrutinise that when the royal support plan comes forward and says are we spending this public money wisely and i think it's important to say whether we call it capping whether we call it tapering whether we call it digressivity the whole point is that giving businesses very large sums of money which they don't need isn't a good use of public money and Ireland which is not the most most unsuccessful livestock producer has introduced very sharp digressivity so that 66 000 euros is as good as it gets if you're an Irish farmer in terms of base payments so and Ireland's managing to run the livestock industry in that way so i think we just have to scrutinise these things really carefully and not just assume that the way we spend the money at the moment is the way we're going to keep spending the money. Leslie. Just very short and brief point i think one of the key concerns that i have is the issue of transition and if i had the time we had the time i would ask you johnny about what you think it will cost to your members to enable that transition to happen whether it by it be buying new equipment it be new organisations it be building new infrastructures for for local networks and so on but what it strikes me in this whole conversation is whatever powers we have we need to be able to support that transition and potentially that yield gap that you get as people move to more regenerative systems so simply that that comes under consideration when you are looking at developing those support plans thank you and i think you had a question for for jenny yeah thanks cuvina yes so um i asked that this question last week as well but i'd be interested here from your perspective when you mentioned the cost of living crisis and people being able to access nutritious food so in terms of support i wondered what your thoughts are with the Scottish Government having powers to subsidise not just the production side but also the sale price of certain foods like fruit and veg to help more people afford healthy sustainable food well i think it should sort of i know we're talking about the agricultural bill here but i do think it has to be all the way through the supply chain if it's going to be affordable and it's going to make a difference in terms of health so subsidising or giving payments to horticulture for example it needs to make sure that that then provides a product that is affordable to people in terms of a cost of living crisis we know that in terms of what people purchase if on a very very low income doesn't tend to be fruit and vegetables it's expensive relative to other foods so it's not that's where you don't have a choice in terms of people talking about food choice but when you're at that level of income there isn't really a choice and so i think yes it needs to be at both ends of the spectrum if you're actually going to sort of draw in health i know this is again agricultural bill but as Karen sort of said can you make sure that you know it is a food systems approach so yeah i think it has to come from both directions and in terms of your work on food systems have you done any work on how the government could subsidise Scottish farmers and subsidise customers or the sale price and ensure that that works for the Scottish farmers because you aren't keeping it local is there any mechanisms in place for that that you're aware of i'm not aware of but other people might be of that um and i think sort of some of the messaging again it's this how the messaging comes out sort of there's a very strong local fresh sort of view on fruit and vegetables for example in terms of fresh it doesn't necessarily mean it's the most nutritious so frozen vegetables can often see can be more nutritious they may be more affordable so um i'm not sure how much link that has been made there but it definitely needs to be sort of a link through the food system through the supply chain to see what comes out the other end and it's got to be sort of beneficial at both ends for the production but also making sure that goes all the way through to something like the consumer term like this point yeah just to draw a few of these bits together really in terms of johnny you know talked about food production being public good nutrition environmental change affordability etc then to come back to Leslie's question about do we know the cost of so the dairy sector i think it'd be fair to say milk kind of fits a lot of these brackets in terms of something we can produce well in scotland it's very nutritious has environmental progress to do there's been estimate that to achieve net zero we're 15 per litre and to put in the context of the current uh i i i i can't guarantee its exact price this week but we're talking roughly 35 per litre that's what what farmers have been getting to a height of the cost of living crisis after Ukraine got 50 per litre so the price that has come back is the amount of money that would be needed to hit net zero how much does it need to be 15 per litre 15 well that yeah an additional 15 so so to come back then about income yeah yeah so basically you know to come back to the point about public good good use taxpayers money to help contain that and that's kind of the qualification of it it doesn't come for free there is a cost associated with delivering these outcomes absolutely um ritchell hamilton i just want to challenge um professor mcdamit on the concept that by supporting um horticulturists that um vegetables could become cheaper because if you look at seasonal vegetables such as kale turnips potatoes cabbage kale they're very affordable right now what is the mechanism through this bill that you believe could be um implemented in order to allow horticulturists to ultimately produce it for free to give to customers because that's what would happen through the lens of the bill through the lens of the bill uh well i guess it's where you've decided to put subsidies i mean one thing i would say on certain produce in terms of local um going down to the consumer end it's also got to look at what is desirable and local may not always be desirable but if you're trying to um say make it more affordable then i guess from a lay perspective then that's where some of the subsidies are going to have to come in if it's not affordable to produce at the moment so how do you determine what is affordable and what is not affordable so for example the things that i just talked about like the cauliflower the kale the cabbage the potatoes the carrots i mean what is what i'm trying to establish i think is is trying to work out through the lens of this bill what you're trying to suggest should be achieved if say a bag of carrots is currently 19 pence i get well it's i mean it is sort of if it can be that and it can be profitable to produce that but not necessarily consumers want to buy all of that there's all sorts of complex issues which Pete can probably go into a bit more around it isn't just making something like that cheap how do you sort of what do you do with it how does it form into sort of meals we don't eat individual foods so how can that a be desirable as a food compared to something else i mean one of the issues are you buy kale or get it at a very low price if you're on a very low income you can't afford to throw that away and perhaps children won't eat it there are other things that are safer to buy so it's got to be a bigger picture i think i'm not answering your question no you absolutely are because does this then mean that through the lens of this bill what you're trying to do is achieve a change of culture to or change of attitude towards food i think it's a change of society in terms of the attitude to food in terms of what people across the whole of the population are eating we've not had a lot of success in changing diets over the last several decades apart from probably making them worse so it is looking at the whole culture of why people are doing it and tying that up with what's being produced thank you thank you we're probably going to enter into the good food nation rather than what this this bill is actually capable of delivering i've got Pete and then got Tim then a question from rhoda yes and just really following on that point i think we can't expect this bill to do everything good nation has to join up with it but i think it is worth saying that the end point we all want to get to is where we support a strong local food economy and more scottish veg are ending up being eaten by scottish people and more scottish high quality food is being eaten by scottish people and i think we already do have some mechanisms where we do that we provide best start foods which potentially could bring a higher scottish content in we do have public procurement and we still seem to wrestling with getting more direct short food chains from scottish farmers on to the public play in schools and hospitals and prisons we're still struggling with that i think but there's some really innovative stuff that's happening that we need to build on in terms of that and some of it's happening in the third sector last night we were down at empty kitchens fool hearts in granton they just about three said two millionth meal made to support people local community and we're discussing what is it people like most about your meals people said the vegetables that's what the feedback they're getting from their customers who they're supporting over a number of weeks when they're going through a difficult time with free freshly cooked meals and similarly we've seen on uist fantastic project there five hundred meals on wheels going out using local uist produce to vulnerable households so there's the beginnings of this work happening i think and we need to join up those those dots and it's worth remembering the original us farm bill back in the 30s was all about supporting consumers to eat farm produce from the states 80 years on 80% of the budget in the farm bill goes to consumers not to producers now there's all sorts problems with SNAP and where it's turned out but it is worth saying that you know the us joined that up a long time ago and we need to be thinking in scotland about how we join this up so we're not just putting money in one end and but not getting the results we want out of the other end. Let's come back to your your terminology convener about the business end of the bill and the topic there i mean the within part three of the bill is the very welcome power to modify the cap legislation around the fruit and veg aid scheme now that whole scheme the whole funding behind that has enabled the continued production of affordable fruit and vegetables and you know the reality of that is i mean there's three po's in scotland who between them produce about seven eight percent of uk vining peas 15 percent of strawberries and 20 percent of broccoli for three million quid a year so affordable food high quality environmental improvements investment in technology for point five percent of the overall agricultural budget so you know there's a mechanism there that ultimately we should be looking not to extend to all sectors but certainly those sectors whether it's not whether the whether supply chain challenge and whether there's a lack of price discovery. Rhoda Grant. Can I just turn to section 10 which is the refusal or recovery of support where it's in the public interest and ask people what they believe that to include and when would funding be refused or recovered? I suppose this comes into the cross compliance ecosystem that we have at the moment where rural payments and services you know effectively audit farmers go out and they'll do a check on what they've claimed versus what they have delivered. There was quite a comprehensive piece of work done under Fergus Ewing in 2017 I think or around that area which looked at basically how we could ensure that we're delivering good public services you know good value for public money but also you know in this space where we are asking things that are new of farmers that we're not just going in with a very blunt instrument and saying you know you say that you have claimed a payment for establishing 10 hectares of wildflowers and there's only eight hectares here well yes because there's been a slug or a bird issue etc I think what that was proposed there was more of a penalty kind of red card system which worked to enable farmers rather than just being a blunt instrument around recovery and I would suggest that you know that's a piece of work that is re-looked at because I think it involved a lot of stakeholder collaboration and potentially provided a lot of the building blocks and Brian Pack also did quite a comprehensive review of this back in 2011 which again there's still a lot of you know an unactioned pieces in there that we could use to help build a better system than what is in place at the moment. Johnny. I was actually part of that simplification task force that Fergus Ewing established and it was effectively to look to see how we could create a bit more flexibility and simplicity within what was the CAP's rules and regulations around compliance. Now I'm the first to put my hand up and say we absolutely have to have going forward and I think Pete Ego would this earlier on. We have to have some sort of verification and audit process to ensure that you know we're not just throwing taxpayer money and it's not accountable and all the rest of it so we'll have to have that but we also have to ensure that it's light and it's proportionate but equally it's effective so that actually we remove the fear factor for many farmers and crofters about breaching rules and regulations around the receipt of support so I think we've got an opportunity here but I'm not surprised that there's an element in the bill that says the ability to refuse or recover payments. I would have been really surprised if that wasn't in there. I think the key question eroder is what will that look like in practice in terms of that compliance framework and the ability to recover. What will be the inspection regime going forward because at the moment we're still 90 odd percent given by the rules and regulations of Europe. We did a cut and paste in the Scots law under the agriculture EU retained law act of 2020 so I think there's a this bill one of the additional side benefits if you like is a chance to review how we put in place a compliance and an audit mechanism that is more suited to our needs and doesn't put the fear of God in the farmers and crofters or indeed those who are carrying out the inspections. Can I just make one point on about the carrots and the broccoli and other things? I think one thing we need to be really mindful of is actually how it goes back to that conversation we had earlier about risk and sharing risk. The cost of establishing a field let's say 10 hectares of carrots or broccoli runs into hundreds of thousands of pounds that's the investment that farmers have to make up front and then if we get extreme weather events which we've seen certainly in Angus and Perthshire and southern Aberdeenshire recently or indeed a supermarket just effectively saying well that's out of spec I'm not having it so all that risk is carried by the primary producer and I'd add into that the availability of things like seasonal labour has been a big challenge in a concern over recent years as well so there are plenty of people who are currently producing high quality fruit and veg in Scotland but if we let the risks escalate any further then it's an easier and very much simpler decision to say I'm not taking that risk I'll just plant some grain and then I'll really irritate Pete and I'll sell it to some distiller and that is that is the choice facing an offer you know and it's important I mean 1% of Scotland's land mass is under some sort of fruit and veg production but it's 16% of agricultural output punches way above its weight and we need to nurture and nourish that in many ways to actually grow that but therefore things like reducing the risk elements out of that and there's lots of risks and as I say issues around labour and all these other things the capital investment required energy costs all these other things which have really impacted on that sector is is making people wobble right now and that's the last thing we want to do just before we move on to the last theme you know this this is a very uh the bill has got lots of scope very little limitation on it um NFUS think it's a great bill rspb think it's a great bill so it's all going to come down to the second legislation because it'll either deliver for NFUS or it'll deliver for RSPB or it might or it might be somewhere in between so you've talked about capping and Pete has got his views on on capping our front loading as we might call it and we know that the government already have the ability to to cap but is there any safeguards you would like to see before we leave it to secondary legislation relating to where the bulk of the money goes so the NFUS would like 80% of the funding in pillar one you know what guarantees are you going to be able to deliver on that what confidence have you got on the bill as it stands just now that you're going to get what you want and Pete what confidence have you got that you will get what you want and that is front loading and whatever so as the bill says just now how can you have any confidence going forward the bill is silent on on things like funding allocations and and that's that's probably right um yes we're very clear that we want at least 80% or the vast that vast majority 80% to go into the the future direct support which will be tier one and tier two but farms and crofters will have to you know you know deliver on the outcomes required if they're going to unlock that support um if we put something like 80% on the face of the bill but let's say that budget was actually cut from 600 whenever or 700 million down to 300 million 80% ain't going to cut it all of a sudden we're talking about so you need flexibility in terms of what budget shares going to each of the different tiers because you don't know what your absolute amount is to start with this so that would create overnight the cliff edge that we all refer to and they all say we have to avoid if we want a just transition out of this process so having that sort of thing on the face of the bill or even in the explanatory notes i don't think would be helpful because because there are unknowns we need to have the ability to put that into the secondary legislation there are so many unknowns that we we cannot factor into the face of the bill because we don't know what the funding settlement will be in absolute terms and therefore why would we say 80% is what we need but when it might be actually 100% or near 100% or it might be 60% okay pete i think main thing is bring forward the rural support plan before the secondary legislation because we need to have that logical setting out of why we're spending money on these schemes what are we going to deliver as a result of these schemes some of the current schemes are dead weight and everybody agrees with that that they've led to inertia they haven't been helpful so if we're going to keep spending that money in that way we have to justify why we spend that money in that way and not on other things i think from our point of view and for RSVB as well if i speak for them is that we need to see more money going into the engines of change in tier 3 and tier 4 particularly around innovation UK now England has innovation grants for farmers we don't spend nearly enough money on innovation we don't spend enough money on corporation and supply chain support on farmer clusters we don't spend enough money on agroforestry it's good we got commitment to organics and we need to follow through on that we don't spend nearly enough money on up the farm track advice direct advice to farmers that we're going to need to support tier 4 transition so the main thing is not to treat tier 3 and 4 as a residual budget which is whatever's left over once tiers 1 and 2 have had their say we need to give those equal status because we won't get the change we need without investing at that end do you mean that in terms of mindset of how what is set to deliver or volume of cash well both i think it's having a strategic approach to managing this transformation for food climate and nature in Scottish agriculture over a 20-year period initially with the first five-year plan but i think so it's a mindset thing these other engines of change are really really important we did a big consultation exercise support by scots government this time last year and people came up with all sorts of ideas for how to spend tier 3 and 4 money and wanted to see more cash going into those we can't decide how much cash is needed until we have the real support plan but i think the real support plan should come forward and say if it's 10 million quid a year for advisory services what will that deliver if it's 20 million quid a year what will that deliver if it's 10 million quid for corporation what will that deliver we need to have those figures in the real support plan so farmers can scrutinise that and say okay for now for the first five years that's a good way of spending public money okay thank you very very very briefly johnny actually that transition piece is critical because you know we are saying 80 in direct support today but in five years time we might be actually saying that that's cheap that those balances are shifted so if you put it into the primary legislation you kind of locked into that and again i go back to the point 80 or 20 percent of what that's the fundamental question i don't think anybody's suggesting a percentage per se it was any few s it came up to saying they were wanting 80 percent at this point but not on the bill no this is about how we allocate the funding we get going forward absolutely but it's the direction of travel that we need to be clear of rather than any specific amounts of money or percentages it's it's you know you talked about a transition there's very little about transition on the on the face of the bill that's not there we might think that's going to be part of the process but currently there's nothing to legislate for for that transition um beaches a final theme final theme and i think it was touched on at the beginning of the session i think by sarah um so interested to hear views on the power to provide for continuing professional development and are there any areas where you think cpd should be required or particularly encouraged since and so i think that alongside any capital grant funding and any direct support you need to have a really strong cpd system i think there's a couple of of you know cpds not something that you know new concept it's used for almost every professional work works working environment and i think what's important in with farming and crofting and supply chain associated is that it is led by the businesses so for example quality meet scotland has ran the monitor farm programme i'm through government funding for the last i think 20 years and that has provided you know communities with the tools and you know bringing experts into the local communities working with local farmers to help share knowledge that already exists farmers learn best from other farmers and i think it's important that we can't just use blunt instruments that work for the accountancy sector but we provide the tools the toolbox is effectively for businesses to to take what they need from them and enabling time to be spent on that we have a lot of single operator businesses within our supply chain so providing time for you know people to be away from animals and you know is important that we get that style of cpd correct but i do you think it is really important that any grant system or any direct support is aligned with a really comprehensive cpd knowledge exchange knowledge transfer system or anekis system and that also allows for innovation you know we can't forget about the role of innovation in this as well i agree with sarah you know cpd is an important aspect of many professions i'll say farming is absolutely a profession takes a lot of expertise and skill and continual learning to do it well and there's a really exciting opportunity within this bit i would say of the bill to join up what we keep asking for which is joining up the production and then the demand side of the supply chain and cpd could really help with that in terms of helping farmers and agricultural workers to understand the market opportunities that exist for their products what's coming next we try and do that without manufacturing members but absolutely could be doing it with primary producers too i think and could form part of this. Johnny. I would echo what's just been said by sarah and joe you know i think it's fundamental that the whole issue that we need to wrestle with as an industry is about managed change and that cpd element and the advisory services and the stuff peat referred to in the sort of tier four element is going to be critical in terms of enabling change and enabling us doing things differently so in that context there's a principle so you have no difficulty with it being part of the bill but there is a key word in there and it's not i don't think it's enforcement but it's effectively making that cpd compulsory and that i think is where we need to tread with extreme caution that's the bit that i think we need to really think very carefully about because actually if if that then excludes individuals from direct support because they are not able or indeed you know have the opportunity to do the right sort of cpd at the right time that they are then have their support withdrawn going back to Rhoda's point then that's probably the ones that we actually want we might not want to lose they're the ones we actually want to improve in terms of their performance and so on so i just think the way in which it is applied will be critical and the bit about enforcement of cpd is what gives me concern not the principle is absolute right but so in your view does it need to change because there is a the line you're referring to is um that persons must must well it says may or must but you know let's lead it as must um meet a minimum criterion for successful completion of cpd does that mean you need to get 20 out of 30 or scores whatever successful completion monitoring and whatever charging of fees there's a whole range of things that must could be included so how do you say that for many that might be easy and accessible you know going back to Sarah's point about monitor farms and all that that sort of thing but it might not be the case for certain individuals in certain circumstances that they can do that similar sort of cpd as others so if that then becomes an eligibility requirement to unlock support i think that's wrong so so this in your view this may need to be amended on the on the face of the bill because it does suggest that uh as you say that there might be a minimum requirement to milk cows or to or to produce beef if you don't come up to a certain standard because the the legislation on that will be subject to negative again providing very little ability for the parliament to scrutinise that so that that may be something that we need to to look at in a bit more depth uh Pete I mean I actually agree I think making something compulsory at this stage in the process potentially generates resistance we don't need you know David will confirm that a lot of existing farms already have to do cpd as part of the contracts with retailers that's common you know and you know it's a benefit qms to put it in as an expectation for for their their standards their farm should standards then to make it compulsory because then if you want to sell your product you've got to have some cpd i think that for a few years you know sell sell people really high quality cpd stuff that's interesting and engaging and that they enjoy doing and then if in 2030 we think oh there's still some farmers who are going no i'm not learning anything you know then i think you look at well actually can you keep on getting public money but it feels to us that the last thing we'll do is to sell a good thing by telling people they have to have it just to confirm that and to agree with joe that there's an opportunity in here to you know support the broader supply chain as well so thank you lazily exactly to that point i think gem first of all incentives are better than compulsory secondly i worry about barriers to entry around cost of having to do things that are compulsory and what that does to smaller farmers but the biggest thing from my experience of having looked at regenerative agriculture transformation across a number of different countries india and the us as well has been that you have to look at the whole supply chain because it's actually actors like procurement managers in organisations that are the ones who hold the difference to change and also the businesses are orientated around those new requirements as well there's an organisation called the future food movement who is doing exactly that and they are working with whole organisations to build that capacity and capability within supply chains in food companies thank you any other points or comments gem popped into my head and it may be absolutely nonsense so please feel free to shoot it down is that farmers who are going going back to the point that you were talking about david farmers going through particular requirements to supply whoever you've got qms you've got tesco you've got march and spencer you've got all of these different schemes all asking different things and if we want to make this as simple as possible for farmers who are already fully stretched to the limit of their resilience in terms of when able to continue to do what they're doing is there not an opportunity in this to be able to have one single scheme that everybody accepts that that's the standard that it should be and i'm talking purely from the farmers point of view saying oh my god here's another layer of something that we're going to have to deal with so how do we take that burden off of them and allow it to be something that they want to buy into it i would say in my views all this of working with different retailers and different processors is that that would be very difficult to do because different retailers are always looking to achieve different outcomes and i think what i think is important is that there could be funding given through this mechanism to provide a suite of options that can then be tailored to different supply chains and two different processors and retailers i think i think that as we look at ricks as the cpd scheme for land agents and things they have a suite of different options that land agents can access whether it's things like you know reading local papers you know the scotish farmer or the farmers weekly attending events or attending a longer term training programme that give different levels of points basically what was kind of flashed through my head as well could you use this as an opportunity to incentivise the bringing in of young people to businesses and say that you know if a business has a younger person working you know as part of the business partnership you know that actually that automatically creates a kind of tick in that cpd box because they may have more recently been to add college university there's different ways to do this i think the important thing is that the bill provides the mechanism for funding that then has input from industry to make sure that the courses in suite of options are suitable for what supply chains require but doesn't that again allow the supermarkets or the big retailers to put that pressure back on to the farmer in order to achieve something for them because they are looking for a market differential differentiation so that's loading it back on to the farm community i think you could see it like that but you could also see it that if that retailer sorry i didn't finish the point that was in my head it stopped it's that whole market supply chain so is there something in here that we should be looking at from the whole market you know we talked previously about the the supermarket adjudicator only stops at that door rather than going right through the whole supply chain so is there not something in here that we should be thinking about in terms of if we're going to put that cpd in there it's everybody's responsibility but not to the point where it's all detrimental to the farmers i think farmers as businesses will make the decision about whether they want to service a particular supply chain and what the demands of that supply chain is so if one supply chain is asking a farmer to do a higher amount of cpd than they are willing to do then they may choose to service another supply chain which is in a detriment to that retailer because then they don't have that same option of suppliers that's what i think it's really important to have the core principle and a wide suite of options for cpd that producers can make that informed choice themselves based on their business their capacity and actually what they want to achieve of their own individual business outcomes you know and that's where i think the flexibility is important but and ultimately if you don't have that within the bill you know bringing it back to the face of the bill you won't then be able to tailor it to individual supply chains and individual retailers and processors thank you johnny yeah i mean jim you've opened up a complete can of worms and it's not just in respect of cpd um i would say fundamentally what we need to get to is whatever the supply chain is asking of the individual producer that that is also then recognised by government in terms of the the support payments that might be associated with that business so if you're being asked to do a carbon audit nutrient management plan waste plan animal health and welfare plan because of your commitment to a contract or whatever it might be or to access a market then that has to be recognised as being equivalent in order to complete your whole farm plan which might be an eligibility requirement for your future tier one or tier two payment the last thing we want is a multitude of different asks for essentially the same things otherwise that will send many farmers you know even more okay so let me be sorry mr sorry convener you okay for me because this relates to the bill it does relate to the bill because what that then does is we've all talked about the the ability for the government to come under scrutiny to say how are we spending this money so if tesco's man march and spenders and any other supermarket says these are the requirements for you to come and supply us and the government says well okay so that you don't have to do that there's therefore no scrutiny other than you're reliant you're asking the supermarkets to then be your credit checkers you see what i mean yeah but i don't think it works that way i mean we've got quality assurance in place and i would have thought membership of quality assurance should be a sufficient safeguard for government in terms of you know that that's all verifiable whether you're producing red meat whether you're producing milk through a red tractor quality assurance whether sqc for our cereal sector the vast majority of farm businesses are quality assured and we want to ensure that they continue on that pathway so as long as there's one of these quality assurance schemes then you're saying that that should be sufficient that to me that should be sufficient for scottish government to say that individual is operating at a standard above the minimum regularity requirement but they're also carrying out things like carbon audits by the busy animal health and welfare plan and and other things if we end up with this whole plethora of different demands for different reasons and they're all slightly different and they don't align that's a recipe for disaster i mean that's just going to put people off and that's you know going back to Pete's point we need to actually engage and incentivise people to to utilise things like their carbon audits to understand whether they can make good decisions around which tier two options for example they might go into it's about informing people rather than being a compliance issue these are decision making tools that we want to get people to think about rather than i've got to do this on that so what if the decision of a business is not to take up single farm payments or any payments and whatever oh yeah but how do you then regulate for zero because you have the backstop of regulation we've got existing regulations around all sorts of environmental standards and animal health and welfare standards which are in regulation they're called statutory management requirements right now under cross compliance so do you have any fears that some regardless of whether you get a direct support payment or not you have to adhere to those conditions yeah but do you think there's any risk of this legislation resulting in what i think some places to refer to as freedom farming so they just go we can actually run a business without having to comply with all these things on to get payments we'll abide by the environmental rules we'll listen to sepa we'll do all that but we're going to freedom farm do you think there's any risk of any businesses opting out of the support system yes because because we're seeing it happen in south of the border thank you can i explain a wee bit more by opting out of the support system you are no longer subject to things like good agriculture environmental condition and actually that's a really important lever for any government to sort of use with farmers to say we need you to do x y and z because if you're not taking that payment you're not under that obligation yeah and you are left to just those basic regulatory requirements and it's very very difficult then to say what's in the public interest of if there's been a breach of those the biggest deterrent or the biggest incentive to comply is actually the loss of direct support and i think we don't want to lose that so keep the direct support and the conditions attached and then you'll get the outcomes from farmers and crofters okay thank you and bring in tim for last word on this yeah i mean i was just going to say on that one i mean certainly we don't want to decouple those the use of those levers but i think in reality for most products most supply chains then freedom farming inverted commerce is probably less for risk because most market supply chains are miles ahead of where government legislation regulations are coming to Jim's point i think it's really around just smart collection of data how we use data it's not very difficult to record whether someone's calling it assured or whether they've passed x number of course with some supplier let's collect that data report it back and then govern the disvalidated data in beneath it okay thank you britchell did you have a very small you want to come back in on that to back up to his point about supply chains are going to do a lot of this but i think actually enforcing environmental standards is still a challenge and it's going to be a challenge as this goes forward for the people who do end up straight in the rivers or you know digging up a rocky knoll because they have a bigger field you know those things do happen we don't have a hugely good track record of actually making sure that we we get on top of those things so so i think what goes with this bill and with the next national environment bill is a you know not a punitive compliance regime but an effective compliance regime okay on a different topic as long as it's a very brief question yes no responses convener thank you yesterday we received a gi q and the government response to the timetable of the land reform bill a number of people in the room today have mentioned what ministers which cross-section legislation ministers should have regard to and one of them being land reform now that has been delayed and i think it is incumbent on this committee to seek clarification from marie gougion the cabinet secretary when that will bill will be we'll see a draft of that bill in relation to this this bill it's our agricultural bill okay i don't know if any witnesses want to respond to that i think yeah we can certainly write to the minister and ask for a clearer idea when the land reform bill will be laid okay well that's been a mammoth session but it's been fun filled and we've we've got a lot of information to digest ahead of our stage one report so thank you all very much for your time come out with this morning it's very much appreciated now formally close this meeting