Surely the time has come when we farmers say enough is enough!

I have been both a farmer and a rural chartered surveyor for the last 40 years and lived through the ups and the downs of farming. I was appalled to read in The Scottish Farmer recently that two thirds of farming families received in 2016 less than the legal minimum agricultural wage for their labours. This at a time when they are having to complete more and more forms to receive subsidies to support them. This surely is timewasting and illogical.

Not only have we had to put up with a computer system, which is complex, expensive and not fit for purpose, but we live in fear and dread of inspectors arriving unannounced on our farms, crawling all over our properties looking for the least indiscretion to fine us. We are made to feel like criminals.

Maps and yet more maps are produced with minute variations to field areas all adding to the annual complexities of form filling. Small piles of horse dung too close to the bank of a river or semi-dried ditch, ploughing inadvertently within the field margin, the addition of 40 fields of 0.1 hectare to a holding following a 2 week inspection are just some of the examples of what we have had to contend with and so the list goes on and on. No doubt your readers can supply me with lengthy lists of their experiences and idiotic transgressions.

Life after Brexit is unlikely to be any easier and we may have to go the way of the New Zealand farmers in scrapping subsidies. Until then, surely the time has come when we farmers say enough is enough! Keep the efficient organisations such as BCMS, do what is necessary to keep the public on our side and put pressure on Government to do away with unnecessary paperwork, rules and regulations and take a new radical approach to subsidies and form filling. If we do not it will be our own fault, many of us will not survive and there is no point in greeting later.

James C Osborne FRICS

Bell Ingram LLP, Manor Street, Forfar