Scotland-Hill farmers.
SCOTLAND-HILL FARMING.
Scotland is largely a land of hills and mountains, but with a broad strip of hugely productive land down the eastern coast from the Black Isle to the Borders.
But the fact remains that almost 83 per cent of the Scottish land mass is technically classified as being a "less favoured area," which entitles farmers who rear sheep and cattle to an annual payment of £61 to support their businesses. It has been re cognised for years that, without such subsidies, there would be virtually no productive livestock farming: the economics simply do not stack up.
The European Commission as far back as 2003 expressed concerns that some EU member states were manipulating the regulations to the advantage of their farmers. It is difficult to understand how Luxembourg should find its land mass mostly categorised as being LFA.
A consultation has been taking place in recent months to discern whether the current designations were both fair and equitable.
The good news from Brussels yesterday was that Scottish agriculture in the hills has been shown to be more than worthy of continuing support.
Sandy Tulloch, the chairman of the NFU Scotland’s LFA committee, was clearly pleased with the indications from Brussels.
He said: "We have received a clean bill of health from the auditors in Brussels. However, we have to be alive to the dangers posed by a re-classification of the LFAS. We (Scotland] provided a robust response to the commission’s original consultation on designations. In January we gave evidence to the House of Lords enquiry. Only a few short weeks ago, members of our Banff branch sat down with the Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU agriculture commissioner, to tackle this specific issue."
She appears to have grasped the core of those arguments. In Brussels yesterday, she said: "The delimitation of areas with natural for agriculture needs to be rationalised and the aid the aid better targeted and all of these areas continue to be farmed so as to prevent environmental damage.
"The objective of our discussions is not to reduce or enlarge the less favoured areas, but to set up a system that is clear and transparent, but taking into account the peculiarities of an area as large and diverse as the EU."
Tulloch broadly accepts those comments, but he still has some reservations. He said: "We remain concerned that the biophysical criteria favoured by the commission – based around such things as soil, climate change and terrain – are simply not relevant in the Scottish context. The communication from Brussels offer the possibility of fine tuning, but the flexibility this offer may not be sufficient to prevent serious disruption to the current designation of LFA land across Scotland."
It would appear that the ball has been thrown back into the remit of the Scottish Government. Budgetary constraints are inevitable, but Richard Lochhead, the Cabinet secretary for rural affair, who represents a largely rural electorate, has made it clear over the last two years that he will fight the corner for hill farmers.
During the last decade Scotland has seen its breeding flock of sheep slip by around one million ewes while there has been a parallel decline in beef production. The message that farmers want to make clear in Brussels is that Europe is becoming dangerously close where supplies of beef and lamb will fail to meet demand.
