Sir, – As farmers, the original environmentalists, we are often inspired by the nature we witness every single day.

During this morning's dawn rounds, something caught my eye! A big bold dog fox casually strolling through the field. He stopped, looked at me sideways and as if acknowledging the rifle wasn't on my back this time, with that peculiar brand of nonchalant arrogance unique to the fox, he merely strolled onwards into the safe darkness of the unidentifiable owned mono-block of Sitka spruce, belly crawling under a low gap in the fence.

The LFA committee of NFUS, representing the majority of NFUS members, has 'conditionality' on the agenda for next week. We are being 'invited to approve' proposals – which, as far I can make out, do not demonstrate any pounds and pence for members, do not lay out what the threshold might be (how many 'conditions' need box ticked), nor how onerous they will be, nor gives any clue as to whether they would be cumulative.

Guessing and gambling are not clever, but in this instance I would confidently bet that cumulative will not feature. Nor is there any indication of whether funds potentially derived from unmet conditions would be redistributed within industry.

History shows us from prior policy circumstance around LFASS, BES, the Bew Uplift, or even prior inspection regime reductions etc, that it probably will not.

The way in which the now submitted ag bill consultation on 'powers not policy' was structured, certainly enables the diversion of funds away from farming. Not a ring fence in sight.

A pig in a poke, where the cart is some way in front of the horse and blank cheques are subtly laid before industry for signature, by way of demonstrating a dubious consent, irrespective of how informed one is.

Buyer beware, caveat emptor: No NFUS member would buy a used tractor without knowing the make, model, age, hours, history, nor the type of flaky paint obviously used for the respray job.

This all stems from a Scottish Government pathological failure to consider any potential advantage of Brexit. We now witness across the North Sea, beyond the soon-to-be-banned fishing boats, what Holland is doing to their farmers thanks to EU alignment.

Instead of empowering Scottish farmers to do the day job against a backdrop of extraordinary increases in cost of production (which incidentally some members have tried to address via this once in a generation opportunity for new, better policy), all we are hearing is a new, untested, unmandated proposal to create an entirely new line of snares called 'conditionality'.

Yes, half the money being conditional on X, Y, and Z to meet other policy aims of insidious land reform, woke climate targets, damaging commercial mono-block forest goals and uncosted, unplanned food and drink targets.

These in and of themselves take no account of the fact that the overall programme for government is rapidly losing credibility in the eyes of real Scottish people.

Deposit return, HPMA, trans rights, education failure, strangely failed ferry deals, the list is endless, and is entirely symptomatic of a group-think echo chamber.

Nobody within, or outwith NFUS, has asked for conditions to be put in front of us. Nobody has considered any sort of impact assessment on what is at the core of the remote, rural economy – profitable farms, relatively more reliant on public support than other sectors of ag simply by virtue of where they are.

Such proportional dependence means that the imposition of conditionality on the LFA, is a coercive mechanism – a policy so good it has to be compulsory.

This is reason enough for LFASS to remain separate and distinct, the receipt of which is already, literally, conditional on attempting to provide a living on land 'less favoured'.

Conditionality suits the committees of the clean-fingered, highly lucrative climate brigade; it suits the forest lobby, whose only obstacle to increasing absentee-ist tax free profits is profitable LFA farming; it suits the new breed of 'greenwashed' lairds who will simply choose to do Tier 2 actions to receive half ofour entire budget, without troubling themselves with inconvenient risks of farming, or employing one to do so on their behalf, or letting land to a youngster to do so on their lands' behalf.

It certainly suits the crafty backdoor plan that Scotgov, propped up by their bedfellows, have long desired:

Destock our hills;

Defund our glens;

De-listen to rural constituencies.

All the while conveniently removing a budgetary obligation from themselves in the knowledge that if policy differs across the UK, they will have to fund it themselves.

The Holyrood Parliament committee for agriculture is pondering the same, without receiving a credible solution, nor an answer as to how the budgetary demand is being quantified, not qualified.

The party of government who only first gained rural credibility by 'middle-personing' themselves between the EU and UK, have now, surgically, entirely removed the old chestnut 'Scotland has the lowest farm payment per hectare in the EU' from every page of their propagandist website.

But the committees of NFUS were told last year, under no uncertain terms, we cannot risk our credibility in the eyes of this scotgov, seemingly without knowing who indeed the arbiter of credibility even is.

The fox moved from the fields to the woods, because the shepherd didn't stop him.

William Moses, NFUS LFA committee member.