URGENT ACTION is needed to prevent long-lasting damage to Scotland’s farming and land management sector, Scottish Land and Estates has warned.
In a new report, titled '#Route2050', the landowners organisation outlined its proposals for the 'direction of travel' for Scottish land management to 2050, looking at the wider context of the climate emergency and the future of the sector post-Brexit. Aiming to spark conversation and debate, the report challenges the current system of land management in Scotland. 
SLE suggested priority areas of change for the Scottish Government to focus on to ensure a resilient, efficient and thriving sector – improved access to skills training in the sector, as well as access to capital and knowledge to improve productivity and resilience. Rural businesses needed support from the government in understanding their carbon footprint and how they can offset it.
SLE executive director Sarah-Jane Laing explained: “Rural businesses are already making significant efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and carbon levels, and we must continue to encourage that. Through planting forests, regenerating peatland and renewable energy projects, the sector can play a crucial role in carbon capture and storage and reducing emissions. New policy relating to the climate change emergency must recognise this."
Ms Laing said that after nearly 50 years of being ‘tied’ to the Common Agricultural Policy, the Scottish Government now has the ‘opportunity to create new policy which rewards and invests in farming and wider land management, tailored to Scotland’s requirements’. She stressed that action was needed now in order to prevent long-lasting negative consequences for the sector.
“Our #Route2050 report isn’t a rigid plan of how things should be done,” she continued. “Instead it is intended to spark debate and conversation, and to focus our thinking on how we can create the right conditions for rural Scotland.”
It calls for stakeholders to have a voice in the design and piloting of new schemes, drawing on their knowledge of the land to design a more 'common-sense' approach which is both accessible and achievable. The report also calls on ScotGov to target investment in ways that address specific challenges, with the onus on the recipient industries to demonstrably justify ongoing investment.
Ms Laing continued: “It is only by farmers, land managers, the government, environmental organisations and wider society working together, that we can create a plan for the future of land management that is realistic, workable and helps Scotland lead the way to being net-zero carbon neutral. This will help ensure a resilient, efficient and thriving rural sector,” she concluded.