Why farmers say red tape and policy are undermining food security

They are excellent – well got and plentiful. The biggest challenge was getting contractors and ensuring we had fuel on farm to keep their kit running. The bills will follow, but their commitment to top-end machinery and staff to operate it comes at a cost.

Our businesses cannot justify owning or paying for lesser machines to sit idle for most of the year just for the convenience of choosing our exact start date. The first of this season’s lambs have gone to auction and the prices are where they need to be – long may that last.

Winter kale has been directly sown into silage stubble and is growing enthusiastically. I am painting a picture of an elegant swan gliding along serenely on the pond of farming life, but the undercurrent of the conditions we are operating in is far from this – notably more so in other farming sectors.

I feel I’m being haplessly herded like a sheep by dogs controlled by naïve shepherds, by our governments just now, and the pens are getting ever tighter. We are being constrained (the pens) by over-regulation and tax (the dogs) by career politicians and bureaucrats who have relatively no business experience (naïve shepherds).

They are using public money/taxation as if it were Monopoly money, in a game they cannot lose because it’s not their stakes. I want to thrive and grow. I need the freedom of an open hill to make best use of the asset it offers while making it better for following generations.

The SNP have formed a minority administration, and one of their headline‑grabbing manifesto commitments was that food price cap. No explanation of how it would be delivered, or who qualifies for this benevolence. We are told it will come at no cost to farms and crofts or the public purse.

You must assume that the intermediaries will be liable – that’s supermarkets, corner shops and high street outlets. In my experience, that is not how the food chain works. Morrisons announced in May it was closing 100 of its outlets as uneconomic in the current trading environment. Good luck in getting them, or any supermarket, to cough up any money for a political sop. It looks and smells like the energy price cap, yet the price of energy keeps rising. Why is the Scottish welfare system failing to deliver adequate support, and why is this fanciful project a solution to what already are some of the cheapest and most competitive food prices globally?

This ill-conceived idea is bureaucracy gone mad. Food security must be taken seriously in today’s world. Despite political rhetoric and promises, there is a lack of confidence for our industry to invest in its own future, with a pitiful snail’s-pace policy development undermining decision-making – trust has gone.

The UK is barely 60% self‑sufficient in food production, and similarly so with energy. A large part of these shortfalls is policy driven. Our industry is being legislated and taxed into a non-competitive place, forcing offshore sourcing for nearly everything.

Small businesses like farms and crofts and their local suppliers feel the weight of this burden more than large operators who can pass it on. A friend commented that ‘God may have made the world; everything else is made in China’ – it may not be factually accurate, but the messaging was clear.

Poor policy and fiscal decisions are driving down hardworking businesses, chasing a virtuous dream labelled as green and fair, and opening our economy, livelihoods and security to other countries and companies producing at standards and costs not available to our indigenous industries, and almost certainly accessing fossil fuels, technologies and labour that we have and should be allowed to use. Our green labelling is a mucky shade of ‘green’.

Alongside this, we are losing land to urbanisation at an equivalent to the area of Peterhead or Dumbarton every year in Scotland. The Scottish Government set targets to plant trees on up to 150,000 hectares each year in the climate change plan.

Beyond this, there are renewable projects, data centres and rewilding etc.

Agricultural land is being lost by the square mile, undermining our ability to meet demands of self-sufficient sustainable food production. The Good Food Nation Bill, the poorly received Rural Support Plan, and Planning and Land Reform all need to be aware of their potential consequential impact.

No more land is being made, yet everyone is telling land managers what they can and cannot do with this ever-diminishing essential productive resource. Legislators are pushing further and more onerous constraints on agricultural output as conditionality, showing little understanding of the implications.

There have been many hollow promises of consulting the industry from before the farmer-led groups. Simon and Garfunkel provide fitting song lyrics with ‘Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest’.

We are not seeing impact assessments and cost-benefit analysis using real figures such as Orkney provided on EFAs. Coming forward are plans to create digital currencies by trading both carbon and natural capital – by monetising nature.

The Digital Assets Bill, caveated with the need for it to be constantly reviewed as an evolving process, exemplifies this. Threat or opportunity? I don’t know without seeing what it actually looks like or how it works. Fintech businesses are involved, suggesting money is to be made by them. I am nervous as both are intangible ‘things’ I can’t actually physically hold or see either.

The intention is to create, subjectively, digital tradable tokens held on a computer blockchain programme somewhere ... anywhere, creating a market that land managers can get involved in by delivering outcomes.

Trading platforms will be created, NGOs and governments are already involved. Undoubtedly, intermediaries will be deriving margins, and governments will be taxing transactions and assets. It’s like printing money from nothing, with no governmental commitment or liability, provided there are enough believers in the collected data.

Drop anything which is a cost and not recoverable with interest. Short‑termism is the operating system currently coming from legislators for our long‑term industries.

Economic and fiscal necessity will drive future decisions, not political wisdom.

As with Covid and the Beast from the East, all farmers and crofters will be needed and valued to ‘farm, baby, farm’.

Churchill nailed it with ‘some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow to be milked. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon’.

Farmers and crofters should only be limited by their own ambition and the supply and demand market. The political elite need to realise that everyone’s success needs our growth and success, by pulling us all up, not grinding us down with the wolves of tax and legislation.

Open the hill gate and let those that do know best get on with it.

Where money is made there is risk, and as with the food chain it will move onto the primary producer, land managers who are liable to deliver the monetised outcomes. I intend adopting the approach of FTSE companies – seizing any opportunities that can be exploited, whether I agree or not with the ethics behind them.