Election day in Scotland: but the real work carries on

That contrast matters. Elections are often fought in studios and town halls, but their consequences are felt in lambing sheds, grain stores and livestock marts. For Scotland’s farmers, the Holyrood vote is not an abstract contest of party brands. It is a decision about who will shape the conditions in which rural businesses survive or fail over the next five years. Too often, that reality is treated as a footnote rather than the central question it should be.

Every party promises to ‘back rural Scotland’. The test, as ever, is whether those promises survive contact with government. Warm words are plentiful on the campaign trail – delivery, far less so once power is secured.

The next administration will inherit an industry under pressure from every angle. Costs remain stubbornly high. Labour shortages have not vanished. Supply chains are more fragile than politicians admit. Climate targets are tightening. Markets are volatile. Meanwhile, farm businesses are expected to produce more food, restore more nature, cut more emissions and somehow remain profitable.

None of those goals are impossible. But they are impossible if government treats agriculture as a convenient backdrop rather than a strategic sector.

The first requirement is clarity. Farmers can adapt to almost anything except uncertainty.

Support schemes that change direction every budget cycle, environmental rules that arrive half-designed, and consultation processes that drift for years all carry a cost. Investment decisions are delayed.

Successions are postponed. Confidence drains away. In any other sector, this level of policy inconsistency would be considered unacceptable. In agriculture, it is too often shrugged off.

The second requirement is realism. Net-zero ambitions might be important, but slogans do not plough fields. Scotland needs practical transition policies: grants for efficient machinery, support for livestock systems, credible carbon markets, and investment in research that works on real farms rather than just in policy papers. If targets are set without credible pathways, they risk becoming little more than political theatre.

The third requirement is fairness in the supply chain. Too often, producers carry the risk while others capture the margin. If ministers are serious about food security, they must be equally serious about transparency, contract fairness and public procurement that values Scottish produce beyond rhetoric. Without that, ‘backing farmers’ becomes an empty phrase repeated for effect rather than action.

Then there is infrastructure. The unglamorous cousin politicians prefer to mention only in passing. Roads, broadband, mobile signal, ferries, vets, abattoirs, local banking, housing for workers: these are not side issues. They might not grab headlines, but they are the foundations of viable rural economies. Lose enough of them and no subsidy scheme can compensate. Neglect them long enough, and decline becomes not a risk but an inevitability.

Holyrood also needs to rediscover a simple truth: farming policy should be made with farmers, not to them. Farming unions might be inside the room, but are their opinions and that of their grassroots members actually being translated into productive and beneficial policy? The jury remains out. Rural communities are weary of being spoken about by people who rarely listen and seldom visit except during campaign season. That disconnect is no longer just frustrating, it is actively damaging.

Whoever wins will claim a mandate. Fine. But a mandate is not a substitute for competence, nor is sympathy a substitute for delivery. Power without follow-through is precisely what has eroded trust in the first place.

Scotland’s farmers are not asking for special treatment, contrary to the opinions of online trolls who blast those who feed the nation as Barbour-clad grifters, who appear

open-handed at any opportunity. They are asking for what any serious industry would expect: stable rules, workable policy, fair returns and respect for the job of producing food.

That is not a radical demand – it is the bare minimum.

As ballots are counted, ministers-in-waiting should remember this: governments come and go, but the morning milking starts regardless.

That is the rhythm of rural Scotland. Politics would do well to keep up.