SIR, – In response to the letter from Alistair Culbertson and Duncan MacDonald in last week’s The SF, the Scottish Crofting Federation (SCF) is aware that there are many crofters who are not happy with the conduct of the Crofting Commission and some who call for its abolition.

If my comment in The SF gave the impression that SCF are in some way blindly supporting the commission, my apologies, as this is not the case (I think that our media coverage is testament to that).

The first action called for by the SCF is for the convenor to step down, followed by a full procedural review to not only put in place checks to guard against this happening again, but to also take a wider look at how the Commission operates.

Granted, this may well lead to a rebuild of the Crofting Commission. We must keep all options open and the SCF is led by its members.

In the meantime, we need to get this commission working properly again as soon as possible as the Scottish Government has pledged support for all the ‘Five Actions for Crofting’ called for by the SCF and there is much work to do.

My comments regarding the NFUS were not meant as an attack, but rather an observation. I agree that the NFUS local staff in Skye are supportive to crofting.

The SCF actively seeks ways in which to collaborate with the NFUS and have been pleased to see support to our campaigns such as for the new Croft House Grant Scheme.

However, the SCF is the only organisation dedicated to the representation of crofting and crofters. The NFUS, a national organisation, has a wide membership with differing needs and of course will be driven by the interests of those that have large businesses and no love for crofting.

Indeed, much of the support for small farms (and therefore crofts) that was proposed in the last round of the CAP by the European Commission was actively opposed by NFUS. They lobbied for, and got, the ‘three regions €10 rough grazings payments and croft-unfriendly headage schemes contrivance’, which has caused payment problems and loss on income for crofters.

This has also been the case with LFASS – the highest payments per hectare get paid to those in the more favoured areas, under a strong lobby by NFUS.

NFUS lost us the front-loaded calf scheme and wanted the Croft Agricultural Grant Scheme opened up to non-crofters. And there are more examples.

We are at a critical time. No one knows what Brexit will bring, but one thing for sure is that the budget for agricultural support will likely reduce and as the pie gets smaller the fight for a fair share gets tougher.

Crofters and large-scale farmers may be in the same industry but have differing needs owing to scale of operation, land quality, distance from markets and so on. Crofters need to think carefully about what lobby they want.

To finish, I return to the grazings debacle. My comment about the NFUS came from being asked about what I thought of them opening a branch in Lewis. I offered the irony that the two grazing committees that were removed in Lewis got no support from NFUS whatsoever – in fact the NFUS line was ‘we believe that the commission has handled the situation appropriately’.

Patrick Krause

Chief executive,

Scottish Crofting Federation.