Two old friends of mine from university days recently became judges – considering their frequent displays of delinquent behaviour in their youth (which I am ashamed to say I was frequently a party to) – they are a shining example of the wonders of redemption.

No doubt they will have a particular empathy for the poor, misguided souls upon whom they sit in judgment and the gavel will not fall too hard or too fast.

I mention this because I have recently been judged and found wanting. In 2016, I exceeded the terms of my water extraction license by 9000 litres, which led to me dropping from a good performance to a poor performance level according to SEPA.

I didn’t bother replying to the letter informing me of this because I found the whole thing faintly ridiculous. In retrospect, this was a mistake, because a couple of weeks ago I received a letter from a politician noting my transgression, asking me what steps I would be taking to rectify my wrongdoing, and pointing out to me that we all needed to try and work towards a clean environment.

It was fair enough to ask the question, but before a final verdict is passed, I would like to lay out the case for the defence.

Firstly and most obviously to a farmer – though to be fair not necessarily to someone based in an office – 9000 litres is not a lot of water over a whole season on a busy soft fruit and potato farm. If you imagine a box 3 steps wide by 3 steps long about chest height, that is 9000 litres, about enough to fill two or three large paddling pools.

I think it’s also fair to say that we are not short of water in Scotland – getting rid of it is more of an issue and if I’m converting some of it into strawberries and potatoes, frankly I think I’m doing all of us a favour.

We shouldn’t be wasteful, however, not because water is scarce (we all know it isn’t) but rather because of the environmental cost of the electricity used to pump it.

That’s why we use drip irrigation on our potatoes, which reduces soil erosion and also water use by almost 50%. All of our soft fruit is watered by dripper, which is controlled automatically by a computer connected to a sunlight radiation monitor – when the sun shines, the polytunnels are warmer and the plants are watered more, and on dull, cooler days the system shuts down.

One full time employee monitors the fertiliser, water use and checks for leaks and faulty drippers throughout the season. That is all he does, and in the busiest months he has a full-time assistant.

We are not perfect by any means, and we still have many improvements to make, but I think it’s important to point out that we are trying.

The renewable box is ticked by 43 kW of solar panels on our packhouse roof, which provide much of the electricity for the cold store and packing line in the summer. We have also invested in an expensive power saver for our main electricity supply which reduces our consumption of electricity by smoothing out surges.

We use bio pesticides and biological predators wherever possible. Amblyseuius cucumeris and phytoseilius control spider mite and thrips, parasitic aphidius wasps kill aphids, nematodes control vine weevil.

We use specific bacteria based pesticides to attack mildew and botrytis, two of the worst diseases for soft fruit. We would plant gene edited potatoes to drastically reduce pesticide use for blight control if the Scottish Government would let us.

Our plastic use is quite high on the farm, but much of it is recyclable and recycled. Where it isn’t, I am hoping to trial some biodegradable plastic in the future. We are also trialing a biodegradable punnet for our fruit this year.

We have wide crop rotations with grass, which adds biodiversity and captures carbon in the soil. We out-winter cattle on kale strips, which harbour wildlife. Our recently completed carbon audit shows that we have a very good carbon footprint.

Also, we recently planted over 4km of mixed species hedgerow, some new, some replacement, and throughout my life there has hardly been a single year where I have not seen my father plant some trees.

Because of this, anyone walking across our fields would be guaranteed to see many species on the endangered list as well as some that are not. There are skylarks in every field, hares aplenty, at least half a dozen roe deer, big flocks of lapwing in the winter in particular, tree creepers, woodpecker, sparrow, hedge sparrow, linnet, blue tit, great tit, coal tit, chaffinch, wren, goldfinch, (which love our willow windbreaks) flocks of yellowhammer, two or three coveys of grey partridge (though they are all paired up at this stage in the season) mistle thrush galore, curlews, oystercatchers, tawny owl, reed buntings and occasionally an elusive corn bunting.

I have also seen a kingfisher at our dam two or three times, but I’m not sure if she is resident or just passing through. We have at least three species of wild bumblebee buzzing around in our fruit tunnels.

In short, like the vast majority of our fellow farmers, we care deeply about the wildlife with whom we share our farm, but it might not always be apparent to the general public if we don’t engage with them and let them know that, and that is what I have tried to do here.

There has been a bit of SEPA bashing lately, largely as a result of an ill-advised move to introduce license fees based on extraction rates. Personally, I have a reasonably good relationship with my local SEPA office – they are trying to do their job in a sympathetic way in my experience.

As in all things, it is about the people in place and building trust on both sides. The only way to do that is by engaging and being open about what we want to achieve.

I want to grow more much needed fruit and veg on our productive land without having to pay an excessive bill for one of Scotland’s most plentiful natural resources – water. SEPA need to be funded to make sure that they can fulfil their obligations, but a cost per litre extracted is not the right way to do it.

I’m not sure what is, but to the charge of not contributing to a cleaner environment, how do I plead? Not guilty m’lud.