Farmer's View: What now after SNP 'rapid unscheduled disassembly'

Something similar happened in Scottish politics. Only time will tell how the SNP fall from grace will affect their long-term popularity, but it is becoming increasingly hard to ignore that the Bute House agreement with the Green Party is causing serious rifts between the rural and urban wings of the party in government.

Numerous rural SNP MSPs have expressed disquiet about some of the more, let’s call them imaginative, policy routes the Scottish Greens are leading their senior coalition partners down.

During a visit to the British Museum, in London, last year, I was struck by a graphic about Europe before farming – which might give an indication of where it will all end up.

“At the end of the last Ice Age, 12,000 years ago, the world’s climate became warmer and thick forests spread across western Europe. People still lived as hunter gatherers and depended on what nature provided.

"They hunted, fished and gathered nuts, berries and mushrooms, adapting to life in the forests. People moved their campsites as the seasons changed in order to find the best wild foods.

"Except for dogs, no animals were domesticated and there were no cereals to cultivate.”

This was also the kind of life which 16th century philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, described in Leviathan as 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.' Life expectancy was 20-30 years at the end of the last Ice Age.

This idea of getting back to nature has a kind of millenarian, cult-like feel about it sometimes. According to the Greens, if only we dismantle our current economic and social structures and return to basics, we will all be content and live happily ever after. There will also be a lot fewer of us.

Looking elsewhere for some sensible thinking, I took a moment to look at the proceedings of the Rural Affairs Committee, last week, only to be left amused at the sight of Jim Fairlie, the normally very outspoken farmer MSP for Perthshire, being left momentarily speechless by Ian Boyd-Livingston, of Stockfree Farming, claiming that livestock farming is 'not part of nature’s cycle' and advising the committee to introduce measures in the new Ag Bill to encourage the end of livestock farming in Scotland.

It’s a view certainly, but not a sensible one for a country that has plenty of grass and water. Morgan Vaughan, farm manager with RSPB Scotland was quick to point out the biodiversity and carbon capture benefits of having livestock and grass in an arable rotation.

The Climate Change Committee is little better. A recent letter to the same Rural Affairs Committee advocated that 30% of Scotland’s farmland (predominantly grassland) be removed from production by 2045 and converted to trees, hedges and energy crops, and to restore degraded peat.

I love a tree and a hedge as much as many of my countrymen – we have planted lots of both on our farm – but is 30% a realistic number? They have also indicated that livestock numbers should reduce by between 26 and 29%.

Wiser heads than me have already pointed out that if livestock production falls much further, loss of critical infrastructure will make livestock farming unviable.

What do the CCC propose to do with the carbon gains? Sell them as carbon credits so other industries can do a bit of 'greenwashing' naturally. The whole thing stinks.

One of the biggest problems with all these proposals is that they will inevitably drive up the cost of food if less of it is produced – even accounting for less waste as people become more careful to use what they buy.

Food price inflation is at 20%, higher than anywhere else in Europe right now, although it’s important to remember that the UK is coming off a low base. The impact on people on a lower wage is disproportionate, however.

As Professor Tim Benton, of Chatham House, pointed out in the same Rural Affairs Committee meeting last week, many of the proposals to get to Net Zero are in direct opposition to the idea of an affordable and secure supply of food.

If we decide to export our food production abroad to try and make it cheaper, you need to ask the question – why is it cheaper? Are we merely exporting our carbon footprint out of sight and out of mind to places less suitable for livestock?

Also, will it ultimately be cheaper at all, as imported food price is undergoing inflation at a much higher rate than home grown?

Professor Benton also suggested that Scotland could become a source of higher value, higher quality food and I suppose that could mean a potential for exports also. I think this can be part of the solution, but it still leaves a big chunk of the population dependant on imports and it doesn’t solve the problem of food poverty.

The idea of public money for public goods doesn’t take food security into account and the fact that direct support for farming has kept food prices historically low in the UK.

Is cheap, healthy food a public good? I think it is, but the 'wine bar revolutionaries', as Fergus Ewing called the Greens at Holyrood, last week, don’t. We need a bit more evolution and a bit less revolution, a bit more pragmatism and a bit less pie in the sky.

That doesn’t mean we abandon our efforts to improve how we farm, far from it, but Scottish Government ought to listen more to rural Scotland, which makes up a sizeable 17% of the electorate.

I sometimes think I might be a bit unfair to the Greens – much of what they want to achieve in the countryside is admirable and worthy – more biodiversity, less fossil fuel, a fair society. Unfortunately, the solutions they propose are too often misguided and unachievable.