Dear Sir,

Your article in The Scottish Farmer “Kennedy comes out fighting” is a fairy tale of where we are today. Recent publication of the second edition of Agricultural Reform Road Map. The NFU Scotland President has finally woken up to the fact that he finds himself in an intolerable situation and his letter to members of an organisation who have virtually 50% of Scotland’s farmers and crofters paying an annual subscription to the union have every right to feel let down by the relationship their leader has with Scottish Government officials.

Martin Kennedy’s letter to members stating “red lines” I am afraid is far too little too late. He has said that he has yet to see enough government decisions on the Agriculture Bill against Union policy to consider leaving his position as co-chair of the Agricultural Reform Implementation Oversight Board (ARIOB), and to his credit he has said that if decisions do go against NFU Scotland policy that he will walk away from ARIOB.

But wait a minute, it’s a situation he knows full well he is unable to follow through with, for leaving ARIOB would mean he and the nine thousand or so farmers and crofters he represents would have no further part in shaping the Agriculture Bill, a state of affairs his co-chair, Cabinet Secretary Mairi Gougeon will have been aware of when inviting Mr Kennedy to share the chair with her. He’s damned if he stays and he’s damned if he doesn’t.

Scottish Government publish abbreviated minutes of ARIOB meetings when they occur, but from memory very little talked about is deemed newsworthy enough for a press release or gets leaked to a strong agricultural press in Scotland.

What a terrible shame before accepting the Cabinet secretaries invitation, time wasn’t taken by Mr Kennedy and his top team to consider the pros and enormous cons taking up a position at the top of the ARIOB table.

Sad to say farming input to the Agriculture Bill has been a con of mammoth proportions.

I have recently been drawn to take a closer look at Climate Change, prompted by a video of an interview with Dr Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, I decided to take a look and see if there has ever been a close correlation between CO2 in the atmosphere and the temperature of Earth’s atmosphere. Experts in their fields, fields of historic global temperature over the last 450 million years that planet Earth has been around and experts in the field of CO2 in the atmosphere, again over the last 600 million years show that at this moment in recent history, CO2 in the atmosphere is recovering from an all-time low. If you are told that CO2 levels are at an all-time high, reply by asking since what point in the history of this planet we live on? Over the last 270 million years it has been too warm for polar ice to exist for 80% of that time.

Farmers are being vilified for our carbon emissions, something through time will prove that has again been a con of mammoth proportions, and yet we, and our farming leaders are not challenging the data and are about to be face some of the biggest financial challenges in living memory particularly if farm payments are to be diverted to halt climate change. Climate change that man has never over the history of this planet ever had control over due to the fact that homo sapiens have walked this earth for less than 0,01% of its entire existence.

Wake up and recognise that when the Agriculture Bill becomes an Act, that unless we stand up for the benefits we have brought to society then many, many, family farms will be lost forever, and those elected to stand up for us are going to let it happen.

As far as I am aware, never in the history of the Union Movement, all be it unintentionally, never has an organisation capitulated in this way on day one of a campaign. It seems the cuteness and lack of sincerity of Mairi Gougeon and her team has been totally misjudged by the echelons of NFUS.

Hamish Waugh, Effgill, Westerkirk