Cleaner and greener farming?

Cleaner and greener farming?

Yellow flag iris and machair on North Uist. Photo by Genevieve Leaper.

What to make of last week’s decisions on CAP implementation in Scotland? That’s decisions about how to spend £4.2 billion of taxpayers money, by the way[1].

In his statement to Parliament, Cabinet Secretary, Richard Lochhead said, “The CAP must support productive agriculture. But it must also protect biodiversity, reduce agriculture’s carbon footprint, and conserve landscapes.” We couldn’t agree more. But this deal has turned out to be more about the former and little about the latter.

Some 70% of the total CAP budget will be given to farmers through a variety of direct payments designed to support production. Most of this money will go to the more intensively managed arable and grassland regions with High Nature Value farmland i.e. that found in the hills and islands, receiving a very low share. The one glimmer of hope in this ‘production pot’ was a so-called ‘greening payment’ but, due to a combination of EU rules and lack of ambition here, the vast majority of farmers will receive this payment but will have to do very little to earn it. The only positive note is a requirement for some intensive livestock farmers to have a fertiliser plan which should encourage more efficient use of fertilisers and manures. However, given such plans generally save farmers money and make good business sense, it rather begs the question as to why we need to pay farmers to produce one?

With so little environmental gain from production subsidies, all hope rests on the next Scotland Rural Development Programme. This will receive £1.3 billion between 2015 and 2020 and, whilst this sounds a lot, it won’t go far given the range of challenges the SRDP has to address.  This budget could have been £200 million larger if, at the end of last year, the Cabinet Secretary had decided to transfer 15% rather than 9.5% of the larger ‘production pot’ into the SRDP. But, once again, supporting productive agriculture trumped other concerns. A win there for the  NFUS.  As a result, spending on the agri-environment-climate scheme will amount to only £350 million. This is unlikely to lift Scotland from its second to bottom position on the EU league table for expenditure on such schemes or, more critically, enable the Government to meet its own environmental targets for wildlife, site condition, soils or landscape.  

Both the farming industry and the Cabinet Secretary are keen to promote a ‘clean and green’ image of Scottish farming to buyers of its produce; just as farmers in other countries are trying to do. But the evidence shows there is significant room for improvement.  Many species of farmland birds – those that rely on crops, grasslands and features such as hedgerows – are in decline along with butterflies, bees and other farmland wildlife. A quarter of our most precious wildlife sites – those designated for their environmental importance – are in unfavourable condition as a result of inappropriate land management, including agricultural practices. At the same time, agriculture is a significant cause of water pollution and accounts for 20% of all emissions of climate warming greenhouse gases in Scotland. Take care not to over claim Mr Lochhead!

The greatest frustration is that we know the solutions to these problems and most of them aren’t rocket science. There are many simple steps that farmers can and should take to help wildlife, improve water quality and reduce their carbon footprint. Many of these are requirements of regulation and need to be properly enforced. Other activities come with a cost and, where the market fails to reward these, it is right that Government steps in to provide funding. The decisions on CAP were the best chance the Government had to deliver that clean and green image, and get many more farmers to step up to the plate; but have they just blown it?