OUT-TAKE: 'The report recommended that as part of strengthening the regulatory baseline, Nitrate Vulnerable Zones should be extended to cover the whole of Scotland in order to promote best practice in management of inorganic fertilisers and organic manure and slurry'

It might not have been given a lot of coverage in farming papers, but I found myself thinking that there’s a real risk that a report published last week could have considerable consequences for Scotland’s farmers as we anxiously wait on details of the country’s brave new farming policy.

It would be fair to say that the report – which outlined the UK’s independent Climate Change Committee views on how well Scotland has been doing at meeting its highly ambitious (and some might say unrealistically optimistic) targets for the reduction of emissions in uncompromising detail – has probably set a few alarm bells ringing in various places.

To sum up, if it had been a school report card it would have read: “Must try harder”.

Basically, it told the Scottish Government that it wasn’t putting its money where its mouth is as far as leading the world in terms of emissions reductions – bluntly pointing out that the administration had failed to meet seven of its 11 legally binding targets.

The report also made it clear that Scotland’s lead over the rest of the UK in de-carbonising had now been lost – with progress being pretty much on par with the paltry levels being achieved by the rest of the UK as a whole.

Two years after the publication of ScotGov’s Climate Change Plan update, the CCC said it simply didn’t see evidence of sufficient action being taken to meet the Scottish Parliament’s ambition: “There are now glaring gaps in the Scottish Government’s climate plan and particular concerns about the achievement of the 2030 goal to cut emissions by 75%,” the report stated.

Transport, housing and, sadly, agriculture were singled out as three of the main areas where the Scottish Government was failing to deliver.

However, looking into the detailed recommendations, I guess in one respect the report certainly went some way to vindicating farmers’ feelings of frustration at the lack of policy detail on how agricultural policy is going to develop to meet these targets.

Now, I’ve always been a bit in two minds about the committee’s chair, Lord Deben – since, prior to his enoblement and under his old name of John Selwyn Gummer, he made a right pig’s ear of handling the BSE crisis when he was ag minister back in the 1990s – but he certainly seems to share our concerns about the Scottish Government’s inability to come out with a clear plan.

The CCC report couldn’t have been any plainer when its list of action points demanded that ScotGov: “Provide detail on how post-CAP agricultural subsidies and schemes in Scotland will target funding and delivery for climate mitigation alongside wider environmental goals such as climate change adaptation and biodiversity.”

The report also called for the administration to develop an understanding of how the transition to Net Zero in the agriculture and land sector would affect employment, including a timeframe of change and the scale of impact, a request which would pretty much square with our own calls for some sort of impact assessment of any new proposals.

It also demanded an explanation as to how the change will be managed so that it is fair and equitable, ensuring new skills and training are widely available to both support communities, but also to facilitate the meeting of targets in these sectors.

There was even a welcome acknowledgement that there should be support for tenant farmers to overcome contractual issues that restrict the long-term commitment and investment required to reduce emissions and sequester carbon on the land they manage.

Things started to go downhill a bit, however, when the report recommended that as part of strengthening the regulatory baseline, Nitrate Vulnerable Zones should be extended to cover the whole of Scotland in order to promote best practice in management of inorganic fertilisers and organic manure and slurry.

For, apart from the fact that we are now pretty well practised at drawing up nutrient budgets, the chances of anyone throwing fertilisers – organic or otherwise – about willy nilly at their current value are pretty slim …

But, looking at all this from a farming point of view, the biggest worry surely has to be the possibility of a knee-jerk reaction from the Scottish Government apparatchik to what can’t be painted as anything other than a highly critical report – and the knock-on consequences which such a reaction could have on the industry.

For not only did the report point out that legally enforceable targets of ScotGov’s own setting were likely to be missed, but it also bit directly into the showboating and conceit which the administration had frequently displayed at events like last year’s COP 26, in Glasgow, and again at this year’s COP 27, about Scotland leading the world in terms of cutting emissions.

So, the Scottish Government has found itself contested on two of its most sensitive areas – legal challenges and loss of face. From the industry's point of view, with farm policy currently hanging in the balance, that’s probably not a good thing.

That's because it comes at a time when everyone involved on the industry’s side has been working to convince policy makers that we have to avoid a cliff-edge situation where overly-dramatic solutions, which don’t address the whole picture, are introduced as a quick and dirty way of achieving the promised results.

There is, undoubtedly, a real risk that the sector’s carefully constructed reasoning for supporting food production, which would see the introduction of the well thought through measures drawn up by the Farmer-led Groups aimed at minimising the possibility of unintended consequences could be dismissed out of hand – and replaced by ill-considered radical measures introduced for nothing more than avoiding both the risk of legal challenges and the loss of face.

All this is before we know what is going to be promised at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which is currently underway in Montreal. This is likely to feed into the new 25-year Scottish Biodiversiy Strategy, which is currently being drawn up – and which, surprise, surprise, the Scottish Government is proposing an ambitious new strategy to halt biodiversity loss by 2030 and reverse it by 2045.

Which would all suggest that the next few months – and the years ahead – are likely to prove to be a bit of a challenge for Scotland’s farming industry.