Scotland must follow science-led approach to farming, professor urges

Brexit presents a chance for Scotland to follow a 'science led policy' approach to farming but time is short, according to a professor at Moredun Institute.

Professor Julie Fitzpatrick, the scientific director at the animal health and welfare institute said a Scottish perspective must be put in front of the UK as the policies are being written.

"I have been at meetings recently in London where it is clear agricultural strategy is being written and it will be interesting to see how much discussion there is round that," Prof Fitzpatrick said.

"This is an opportunity like no other before to show how science led policy decision making takes place, not policy led science. It has been the wrong way round in the past. We would like to see health and welfare, low carbon economies and precision farming being in some way wound back into subsidy payments."

'Everyone looked at the downside'

Prof Fitzpatrick said in the past 'it was about pillar one and pillar two subsidy payments', but now she urged Scotland to take into account sustainable production methods.

"That would mean you were in receipt of subsidies for doing farming better, so it might be litres of milk per unit of nitrogen applied to pasture or the number of beef calves reared per 100 suckler cows.

"When Brexit happened everyone looked at the downside, but a more focused agricultural policy on the needs of UK farmers is an attractive one. There are differences between Scotland and the rest of the UK, but wouldn’t it be fantastic if you got a really good UK strategy and then within that you had the capacity to make regional ad geographical priorities and that might help ease farmers eventually on a trajectory where there is less reliance on subsidies and more reliance on farm productivity and profitability."