THE REMORSELESS decline of farming in what was once a jewel in the crown of Scottish agriculture, the Isle of Bute, should be a worry far outwith the confines of that small island.

Prompted largely by a disastrous fall in the milk price which provides the mainstay of Bute farming plc in 2015 and '16, and the consequent release of tenancies, the signs of decline were evident much earlier than that.

Some once proud steadings are now smitten by decline and the pernicious weeds which are prevalent on the once verdant fields they lorded over are symptomatic not just of landlord/tenant disagreement, but of a wider malaise of non-investment.

The country-wide implication of all this is that some of our most fragile, yet beautiful areas in Scotland, have suffered such a chronic lack of investment, that it will be difficult to get the land back to what it once was.

A good start would be for the powers that be who are charged with re-inventing the agricultural subsidy (I prefer to call it 'improvement') system following Brexit, to get back to basics.

Liming, fencing and drainage are key areas that would immediately attract interest from progressive farmers and it was good to hear the word 'lime' coming from Fergus Ewing in his address to the QMS breakfast at the recent Royal Highland Show.

Lime to land is like sugar to tea – they are both sour without it. Its benefits go far beyond sweetening the land, it will also ginger up watercourses and burns, to the profit of flora and fauna.

As an industry, we have to face up to the fact that intensive dairy farming in particular and the slurry that it produces year after year, might act as a short-fix fertiliser, but is not helping produce a long-term asset. What the land and its margins really need is a long-term solution to re-invigorate not just the land, but the wild-life that depend on it.

There is every reason to suggest that such a plan would allow good farming practice to co-exist with ecological interests. The massive danger to this, though, is the worry that deskbound activists have as much – maybe even more – of government and civil servants' ears than the honest working people make their living off the land.

That must be addressed by politicians who act like rabbits caught in the headlights every time an environmental scare story hits the headlines. We need pragmatic and strong people to stand up and be counted in this world of misinformation and fake news, or the lands of milk and honey will turn to dereliction and rushes.