Hello, and welcome to the third meeting of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee in 2024. Before we begin can I ask anybody using an electronic device to please switch it to silent? Our first item of business this morning is to decide whether to take item 4 in private. Are members agreed? Thank you. We now have a fourth and final round table on the Agriculture and Rural Communities Scotland Bill. Today's evidence session will focus on enabling rural communities to thrive, is one of the objectives of the bill and we will also have the opportunity to discuss the bill more broadly. We have up to three hours' schedule for this discussion. I welcome to the meeting in no particular order. Douglas Bell, the manager of Scottish Tenant Farmers Association, John McCulloch, the chair of the Agrarian Rural Affairs Committee from the Scottish Association of Young Farmers, Theon Morrison, the chair of Scottish Rural Action, Professor Stephen Tomson, Professor of Agricultural Economics and Policy at SRUC. Grant Moyer, chief exec from the Cairngorn's National Park Authority. Jerry Moody, secretary and adviser from the Central Association of Agriculture and Valueers in Scotland. Professor Sarah Skerritt, chief executive of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Rob Clark, head of policy from Highlands and Islands Enterprise. We've received apologies from Dr Bob Mackintosh from the Scottish Land Commission who's unable to join us today. We have, as you've just heard, we have quite a few participants this morning. I can ask everybody to keep their questions and answers as succinct as possible.   If a point has already been made, rather than repeat your support of that, if you just indicate that you agree or disagree and we can move on to next contribution, that would be helpful. I'm going to kick off with the first question. It's just a very broad question on the views on the objective of enabling rural communities to thrive and your views on how the sustainability of rural communities and the wider rural communities can be supported through the development of this new agricultural policy and how you foresee that objective being delivered. Who would like to kick off? Stephen Thomson. I suppose for me there's two elements to that question. The first element is the role that agriculture plays in the wider rural economy. We have to consider that for some localities, some very small localities in regions, but also at some local authority levels in agriculture is a big contributor not only to GVA but to business turnover, business count, et cetera, et cetera. The sector has a very important role in some parts of rural Scotland. Then you've got the associated multiplier effects upstream into the supply chain and then downstream into the processing and food and drink sector. The thing that people quite often assume is that all of the processing is done in rural areas, it's not quite often done in peri-urban areas, so we need to consider those kind of urban rural linkages as well. The bill enabling farmers to be paid and supported is important for those economies. The wider rural community bit is how important is agriculture to those areas and then the community-led local development element, the leader formerly known as leader. That bit to me is a bit unclear because I don't know how much budget is going to be spent on it. I don't really know what the provisions of the bill are trying to do because it seems all-encompassing, but the general feel is right is that it will support continued economic activity in rural areas. I agree with Stephen, I think. He would expect me to push home the role that farmers play in the economies of rural areas. We would describe them as a cornerstone, so I totally agree with Stephen on that. I think that there is potential as the secondary legislation comes to put measures in place which support rural communities without a doubt. Thank you. Fiona. Just speaking as a crofter, but I would just turn it around and say, I think, without rural communities you wouldn't really have an agricultural landscape that you need people and I think if all of us reflect on why we choose to live in a place, it is all those things that support our lives separate from our working life that we need. So it's our primary school, it's our medical care, it's our shop, it's our pub, it's our church, it's our sports activities, it's all of those things and if you think how rural and island areas are underpinned by social enterprises delivering a lot of those things and community-led local development has enabled a lot of that to flourish, then I think we need to recognise that for me who absolutely believes that agriculture is about feeding the people of Scotland and we should be able to do that, but in order to do that, people delivering on agriculture given the average age of farmers is 59 and maybe crofters 120, we do need to support the rural communities, the lights on in all those communities so that folk don't need to travel to cities for anything that they require. Rob Clark. I agree with comments thus far. I think my point is around the fact that rural communities are, they're more than just about agriculture and crofting, important though that is, so we have people in rural communities who are doing many other different things, we have people who are running businesses, working in creative industries and the like and I think I'm very heartened that the bill has the breadth as it's currently written to support of these areas. I guess the devil will be in the detail about how much the focus is on agriculture and land management as opposed to why the rural development is really critically important and shouldn't be lost as we get into the detail of the specific support that's going to be provided. Okay, thank you. I've got Grant and then Sarah. Yeah, I mean just to follow up on some of those points, but I think the fact that the rural economy and the agricultural side are obviously intertwined together, I think what we've got to look at is how much we support that wider rural economy within the overall budget allocations within the bill eventually. One of the key things around that is if you look at something like the Cairngorms economy but 60 per cent of the total economy is tourism so that's a big factor within the Cairngorms. Now a lot of that relies on work that land managers do within that area as well so you can't separate these things out in terms of saying agriculture here, rural economy there, communities there. I think it's trying to say how do we integrate these things together and look at what the best balance of funding is to make sure that we're supporting economic activity that really delivers for Scotland. Okay, thank you. Yes, certainly. Just on that point Grant, are you suggesting therefore that the agricultural bill gets split between agriculture and tourism or should any funding for tourism come from a separate pot? No, I don't think it should be split but I think when you look at things like the community-led local development, if you look at some of the stuff that we support in terms of wider economic development that is stuff that is already supported within the overall approach that we do at the moment so you look at what would be leader funding within the Cairngorms that's now CLLD, that supports a whole range of things across the wider rural economy and I think that's a good thing alongside the work that goes into the land management side. I just think it's about saying how do we make sure that we're doing the right things in the right places and make sure that the bill does cover off that wider approach which is in there in the bill, it does cover off all these different things. I suppose the question is what are the proportions associated with these. Okay, thank you. Rachael Hamilton has got a further supplementary on that. I'm interested when the responses have been connected to things that are with agriculture but the A&M group made the point that the core agricultural activity is integral to supporting rural communities so their comment around the contraction of the suckler beef herd is important because so many jobs rely on that and I just wondered if Jeremy perhaps had a comment around that relationship between rural communities and core agricultural activity. Well, thanks very much. For the tensions that have been in the remarks so far I'm finding this quite a challenging objective among the other objectives here and trying to understand a little perhaps a question of how far this is here if I put it possibly over simply for show or for meaning it touches on if you like a missing statement in the objectives which is about the productivity and resilience of agriculture itself. I think that's a point to come back to. If we are to look at agriculture as part of thriving economy rural communities and others then that I think is an important goal that is picked up in other legislation elsewhere in other parts of the United Kingdom but not at the moment on the face of the bill and so I think that perhaps is a bit that's missing. Clearly there are interconnections particularly of a landscape and we learnt this brutally with foot and mouth that firstly tourism was the bigger generator in many rural areas but secondly it relied on the landscape the farming produced and a lot of lessons came out of that experience 20 odd years ago but we're watching farming populations they have shrunk the labour force has shrunk very often they are because of the nature of the work they do and where they're located very often they are now less involved in communities than they were in many areas you know the activity and community life in many areas will now they were some areas they will actually be the residual part of the historic local population and all the connections and so on that go with that and that makes this quite challenging when thinking about how this relates with the objective of thriving rural communities and what this is about and some of this I see as a hangover from the rural development regulation being picked up in here and I could think there's enough pressure on the budget to deal with the agricultural parts of this rather than adding in an objective here I think there's some really quite serious tensions around this that I'm pleased you're touching on and exploring but quite clearly if you if you can manage profitable suckle beef production then that generates jobs it generates the downstream jobs A&M's markets among other things and that is then clearly good but it comes back to that question of profitability productivity improvement competitiveness sound businesses and and I think that's an understated but fundamental objective to achieving the other goals thank you and thank you for the invitation today I think already as you've used the word tension I'd like to follow up on that and talking about adding in items when we're talking about the term you used around enabling rural communities to thrive looking at definitions that have been used to date it's defined as assisting people to live work or operate in rural areas invest in infrastructure and services for rural areas assisting people to produce strategies for rural development and traditionally this has had a budget allocation of five percent of the 30 percent and now it's five percent of 25 percent so it's it's often the bridesmaid you know and that that amount is getting smaller and so defining rural communities absolutely critical and that from my perspective there's a danger of conflating rural communities within the agricultural definition and already we're seeing this in the discussion so I think there's real importance in defining and raising the profile of that diversity of rural communities secondly there's a need to use the data that we already have leader and its successors have been in existence since 1991 so when you're asking how do we do this through the bill we have a wealth of data and I believe those data are not being mined sufficiently and we're in danger of being inefficient because there's so much learning so many evaluation reports from leader and even the successes in recent years reports produced in 21 22 23 on the learning from leader and its very recent successes and we need to use those in order to make the most of the small budget allocation that is going to see LLD through the lags and this is even more important because those budget allocations are I think in the majority going through local authority arrangements which are more naturally risk averse in the current climate and that will allow for systematic change rather than piecemeal change which is the focus of many lags before I go to members. I'm going to bring John in to give us the perspective of the young farmers. I think from a young farmers point of view I think we're seeing more and more across the whole of Scotland when it comes to the community side of it clubs get involved in community projects and it seems to be the first thing that communities turn to is the young farmers club and I think that in a way is quite telling in my mind of that is going back to probably quite an old fashioned thing but the fact that communities turn back to the farmers to do projects and stuff like that whether it be you know I think some instances gardening and care homes and stuff like that I think you know communities are very important we are very aware of it I think probably more so in Dumfries and Galloway we see a lot of clubs getting involved in in projects in the community maybe not so much so in central belt but the same in the north region as well so I think communities as much as you know this bill should focus primarily on the agricultural side of it I think communities have to be a huge part of it as well. The James Hutton institute in our papers is quoted as saying that support for agriculture is the most effective or efficient way to address issues facing rural areas as such the bill provides a foundation for agriculture and environmental policy not rural policy more widely and we see that there's lots of opportunities in our community ownership community with those community renewables nature restoration projects and soft infrastructure that we desperately need through training and facilitation so I just wonder if the agricultural budget is the most important or appropriate source for funding for rural communities if we're going to get clear around yes there's an agricultural farming community but there's a wider community there is an interconnection but do we need to be looking at the support payments coming for agriculture and growing food and then other ways like also another opportunity coming is the community wealth building bill and how do we make that work for communities and of course I hear from the lags the local action groups how important that money is and how transformative it is that five percent so but I'm just wondering if we could look at how we do that differently so maybe I'll go to use her but I think also maybe Rob Clark from HIE for start yes so I'm not wanting to put resources in opposition to one another nor objectives my sense is that there is a need to be clear about those objectives and not assume the outcomes of one will be achieved through putting money to another and that is the evidence from years of delivering leader and working through lag so the sentence that I read out to you is from the cap arrangements that are being observed on an interim basis ahead of 2025 and those are far reaching and the evidence would suggest that those cannot be wholly achieved through resources coming through an agricultural only route and that if certain outcomes given these outcomes not if given these outcomes are to be achieved for rural communities with their wider set of businesses and entrepreneurial routes and the very real needs that are observed hence an islands act hence discussion of impact assessment relating to islands and also wider rural communities there's a recognition there there's an evidence base there the Hutton database that the Hutton data you talk about s i u c s research as well show that there are particular characteristics of wider rural communities that are different from those observed in farming communities so the the evidence shows that to actually try and achieve objectives for one cohort of the population through monies diverted to another is not a rational way of going about things or an efficient way of going about things particularly when the monies are so constrained so to me it's about looking at the evidence of what works well and we've got 30 plus years of that and saying given that how should these monies be addressed to these particular objectives for this cohort of the population not dividing them as john said the young farmers are very involved as one example but saying what's the most efficient way to spend these limited resources and then Jeremy yeah i think one of the things that's worth thinking about those how much each of these different areas underpins each other so if you've got i mean i'm just looking through what what we've supported through the community led local development plan over the past couple of years now you look at things like pathways for rural employment get supported through leader trying to get people into rural work you look at things like there was support for venison branding that set of things there's lots of things that underpin on the agriculture side and then on the agriculture side if you're looking at things where people are doing work to prevent let's say flooding off a village or things like that they're both interacting with each other it's very i think trying to put arbitrary line sometimes between rural and agriculture it sort of works for policy to an extent but actually how they then actually interact on the ground you need to have these things happening together because you need it can't be one thing or the other so i do think that having something like the clld defunding within the package is a good thing i think though what we need to say is that that thriving rural community thing isn't just linked to that one objective or that one fund within it there are things you can do through the agriculture side that do support thriving communities it might be slightly at one remove but it's still money that if you're putting into land management that does things that benefits communities whether that be clean water whether you know whatever it might be but there's a whole lot of benefits that come out of that that i think you could attach to thriving rural communities that's still payments to land management okay Jeremy yes that thanks i think this is an instance of a rather more strategic question which is that i look at the vision and see something really quite radical and driving with major change and it uses cultural change it uses transformation and the like and there's something about this part of the discussion which is more about working from where we have been and i think there might be a need to look more about where it is we're trying to go looking at the climate change objective the other goals and pressures and indeed my concerns about productivity and this almost seems to sit in the bill as legacy of past policies therefore it's here as an impression of the past and actually if you're trying to run a rational strategy for the future all the objectives interconnected of course they do but this might not be the right place to provide for that objective and that's a question i think i would leave with you out of this discussion but more generally about the whole approach to unfolding agricultural policy and this is this evolving out of what we have or is this now Scotland's chance to look at what it wants and where it wants to go for the future i mean it is a legacy of the european agricultural fund for rural development which quite often people consider to the rural development policy for Scotland where it's a tiny tiny proportion of the total budget that's spent government budget that's spent on rural development if you think about health transport housing all of the things that go into these areas this is just a this was a means of trying to demonstrate how that agricultural budget can help facilitate things like farm diversity we we in uk and in scotland went down a totally different route than other countries and leader and quite often they were sporting more agricultural rural development integrating on farm farm diversification whereas we went down a much more community-based approach to leader so it so it is a real legacy of that everybody's kind of forgotten that the the real term budget cuts that that agriculture has seen in Scotland are quite astounding so if you look if you look back so i did some numbers using the the agricultural input data from defra and basically your purchasing power as as more than a half in the last 20 years so we're stretching this budget further and further and then you know what can we realistically deliver and what is the principle objectives of an agricultural bill and agricultural and rural communities we're kind of into this mixed understanding of what the purpose of the bill is for and you've got you've got things like levelling up fund you've got the city and region deals we're starting to see things like healthcare doing more clld type approaches so we're starting to see the approach that the government seemed to be putting in this bill here happening more often and more and more in that communities are having a say as to how the services are being delivered for them community wealth bill was mentioned or community wealth building was mentioned all of this needs to needs to be coherent and structured and i was just that it always strikes me that the rural delivery plan that the first minister announced cross cross directorate delivery is the thing where we need to better understand where this sits because currently it for me appears as a legacy. Douglas? Yeah i think just picking up on that point that's even made about the the erosion of the purchasing power of the support that farmers receive one of the things i was you know disappointed to see in the objectives of the bill is you know that maintaining fair incomes for for farmers that that's one of the objectives of the the cap going forward and it has been all good since the inception i think that that in terms of that maintaining rural communities maintaining those incomes on farms should be an objective you know front and centre i appreciate all the pressures but on budget and everything else and the ambition of the rural development policy but clearly i feel there's a gap there that that in terms of objective i've got a few members i've got their hands up roda was first and then Karen and then Alistair it seems to me we're speaking about things that should be funded from other budgets that the bill doesn't really talk about but i wonder taking it back to the bill because that's what we're looking at is there anything we can put in the bill to ensure fairer funding for rural areas because lots of the things we're talking about today if we're talking about an urban area they'll be coming from a different pot not from this pot so is there anything we can do to with this bill to make sure there's fairer funding from other pots for rural areas rather than trying to carve up this amount of money between competing in real needs in rural communities sir i was just nodding then that's like bidding in a i agree i mean it it comes back to steve's point about i think sorry i might be putting words into your mouth but about this coherence between policies and we've been looking at the national planning framework as well and the the rural revitalisation and elements in there and i was this isn't really answering your question sorry roda but about what what are the elements are in play and where should resources be pulled from those other elements and how should this bill refer to those other elements in order to cross-reference or ensure cross-reference and ensure resource drawdown from those other elements because if we're saying that there's so much pressure on this and the emphasis needs to be on agriculture where is the unmet need and where is the pump priming to to support the energy in rural communities if it's not going to come from here where else in the system is it going to come from okay somebody want to just cover that question there so i've got to steven i just specifically for rodas point for me that's what the rural support plan should be determined it should be highlighting so you know if we're truly going to have a rural support plan then it needs to be in there what what the risks are what the benefits of spending the money in these areas are and until we actually see that then it's it's challenging and that's where the cap strategic planning framework and the requirement for member states to deliver on a cap strategic plan signed off by the commission has been so powerful because the commission have a say in an oversight of that but but to me the the bit and i suppose it comes back to the bit that Sarah was mentioning is there is a real risk that if you take this out of the bill then it falls through the gaps and that it just disappears and it won't happen no one will pick it up so there has to be a statutory requirement to ensure that this type of activity continues where it sits that's for others to determine but i mean it is a really important part that if it's not funded here and it's not in this bill where where will it sit and how will it get supported i've got john and uh Jeremy i want to add a little bit to that question you might be considered when your responses you talked about the plan now the dplr committee recommended that the five-year plan was the draft was published prior to stage three of this bill is that something that do you think is essential before we come to the sexual legislation that we're inevitably seeing in the back of this framework bill is that directed at me yes i would in src's response i think we were pretty clear that the rural support plan needs to be front and centre and actually i would go beyond i would go beyond just presenting it to parliament i would give power parliament power to scrutinise it and also have annual updates and annual scrutiny of it because otherwise you have a you have support or government support that's unscrutinised and if you think about the european union and where if we still have ambitions to align to you the EU have that EU have that or the commission have that oversight role and then you've got the court of auditors have another oversight role so so you know the member states are being held to account and how they're spending that money and there is a risk that the rural support plan is just a set of nice words okay with john, Jeremy, Theona and Douglas from a young farmers point of view i think there is an extreme lack of talk of how young people are going to be helped either into the industry or either to own their own farms and farm in their own right or young people coming into the industry to work in agriculture and i know there's there's a part in the bill about talking about training and cpd you know a lot of employers don't have the funding to put you know young employees through the training that they require and you know we'll need support to do that and i know there's limited grants available but you know if there was a potential way of extending those grants or helping maybe put more grants in place you know i think that's something that the bill should cover a bit more thank you Jeremy i think there's a point here that perhaps we've lost sight of during the years in the cp but was clearly there in the old agriculture act and it is sitting there in all the agriculture legislation that's coming forward now across the UK which is that agricultural policy is about more than payments in a sense we lapsed into thinking about it once intervention money was crystallised into support for production and then support for land occupation and you know picking up on the point just made now the issue picking up being picked up in parts of the land reform bill over tenancy legislation and how you might enable more opportunities for lettings uh is is critical and it was there in 48 and and structures around that other areas of policy so it may be to to come back to the the underlying question it may be that regard is had to the needs of thriving rural communities that it shapes the policies that are coming through but this is an agricultural bill for agricultural policies tempered by that so it's stated in the bill but not necessarily an objective expenditure. Theon and then a Douglas well i was i was just going to pick up on what john was saying there in terms of how the rural diaspora if you like articulates with succession planning for the agricultural landscape so just one very small example was when we introduced the crofting bill to stem population decline and recognising its economic importance within the western aisles we now see the impact of that with just as an example the average age profile of the agricultural committee being a generation younger than it was 10 years ago so directly investing in those skills that were appropriate to crofting but it could be any other sector in your locality then you've got that place-based knowledge and understanding that is relevant to the economy where you are and if that is in agriculture then so be it but it's part of the pie chart of understanding your local economy within which everything sits tourism agriculture and everything else. I also said picking up on Jeremy's point about the vision I think that's correct but this bill should also articulate of course with the good food nation bill and in that context where we should see more local procurement that will also impact those on those producing the food if local authorities are going to be using local food in education in public sector you know health sector in hospitality in prisons or wherever it is so that will impact the way farming delivers the food that is going to be used in our nation but they do articulate together and recognising that that they're not separate entities is really important I think. Okay, thank you. I've got Douglas then the current supplementary. Can we now just come back to your point about the timing of the rural support plan totally endorsed what's been said already that the earlier that can come the better. There is a real frustration amongst agricultural stakeholders just now about working in a vacuum and I think that the more we can see up front including the code of practice on sustainable and regenerative agriculture, the support plan that's going to help thinking and hopefully you know taking up a meaningful part of the co-designing and co-development process. Thank you. We're going to come to you with further questions on the rural support plan from Rachel Hamilton a little bit later. Karen Adam. Thank you, convener. We've seen some fantastic examples as a committee and myself as a constituency MSP of diversification on farms particularly in agriturism. Often I must say really driven by the female force on the farms and they do help support rural communities to thrive. We've seen some fantastic examples of employment opportunities for local young people in these environments. Do you think that this is something that should be considered amongst us? This is something that is very much tied to the agricultural side of things within itself. There's somebody that dealt with farm diversification advice for a long, long time. There's two schools of thought in this and I suppose one school of thought is that if you are diversifying a business and starting up in a non-agricultural sector, why would you not go through the usual business start-up routes or the business support routes through the business gateway through the local enterprise company or the enterprise network? The alternative is that agriculture is this thing that stands alone and has got unique circumstances and it's difficult and where farm diversification sits is a real challenge because you're right, it's a bit that we don't really understand the value to the economy of those diversified activities quite often because once they're successful the business structure is that it becomes a separate business entity so it doesn't, it's no longer associated with the farm, it just happens to be located on the farm. Those are really important elements and I suppose the CLLD funding or leader funding has supported farm diversification in the recent rounds. Previously there was dedicated funding for farm diversification within the rural development programmes within objective 1, within objective 5B so there was always this support element for farm diversification but I can also see the argument that it should sit with the wider business structures. Just a quick postscript to that if I may around women and young people, certainly the aspirations within the cap at the moment at the risk of looking backwards around inclusion aspects and that there is merit in measures which explicitly aim to include women and young people in particular in measures and looking at how to do that. Additionally the Hutton report recently which evaluated CLLD talked about burnout and capacity issues in rural communities so moving on from your diversification point to wider rural and the need for succession planning within rural communities to engage with the opportunities that are offered through funding and through other mechanisms so for inclusion reasons and succession planning it's important that these are not only thought about but actually made explicit within legislation from an evidence point of view. Douglas. Yeah I think with the background the terms of diversification might change a little bit in terms of delivering for climate change and for biodiversity loss. One of the things that STFA is lobbying hard is to make sure that tenants have equal opportunity to those diversifications and until in terms of the the consultations on this bill modernisation of agricultural tenancies was partly bill it's now not it's been moved across to the land reform bill but it's still very important that tenant farmers have the same capacity to diversify whether that's into agri environment type diversifications or more more tourism based diversification. We are lobbying really hard at the timing has to be right so as these measures are designed under this the secondary legislation for this bill we need to make sure that the land reform bill allows tenants to participate as well so just to make that point Carmen you mentioned diversification we've got a real issue that we need that to be pushed through albeit out with the scope of this bill Stephen's got a comment on that just to I was not to pick up on Douglas but it's the you know the diversification into agri environment and or climate mitigation these are these are things that are getting mainstreamed into agricultural policy so it shouldn't be seen as standalone as diversification you know these will be part of the daily life of farmers going on crofters going forward and wider land managers the key thing in the just transition commission when we were taking evidence in up in grant and was and I think that I don't like to speak for the whole commission but there were people who were taken and really concerned about the challenges that the tenanted and rented sectors the crofters will have in delivering against all of the objectives that government want in terms of climate change and or biodiversity gain as we move forward so I totally agree with that part but remember it's not diversifying it's mainstreaming these objectives I'm going to bring an answer for a supplementary I'm just thinking back to something that Sarah you mentioned earlier on about making sure that the objectives of support for communities align with the support for practitioners of agriculture and how the two aren't quite the same thing just occur to me I don't know if the crofters in the room want to make any comment about this but there is something distinctive about crofting where you have a whole community not a whole community but a big slice of the community that is is engaged in agriculture compared to most rural communities so I just wonder if there's anything anyone want to say about what might be different about that relationship in the funding model when it applies the crofter or should be different maybe if I'm the only crofter in the room but I mean crofting as you know I mean historically when they was set up it was set up so that the crofters still had to work for the landowner we're in a slightly different place today although not exclusively in all areas but crofting is part of a pluralistic economy therefore it sits alongside other modes of employment and therefore by virtue of just saying that then that's going to be part of a wider rural community any other comments Steve Anderson and we've recently been commissioned to do some work by the local action groups in Orkney, Shetland and western Isles and one of the key things that we're looking at is the difference between farming PLC and crofting and trying to disaggregate and disentangle how this bill and future support will impact on crofting areas in that you've got lots of small farmers or small crofters small users maybe in receipt of very small sums of money who may be disenfranchised by having to meet a whole raft of entry-level conditions in that these conditions meeting those conditions will exceed the support levels they get so they may fall out the system so there's a real need to really think carefully about the entry-level conditions and the disproportionate costs of entry for small holders and crofters for me there still remains unanswered questions as to how all of this pans out on common grazings so in the bill structure it talks about conditionality how are we going to do that when there may be only two or three active crofters on a common grazing but equally so in the research that we're doing we're starting to hear stories about communities that were maybe only two active crofters and the community was dying and then suddenly in the last few years you've had a huge influx of new people into the area who are all actively crofting and you know it's got a real opportunity to help communities thrive and local areas thrive we've got a couple of more questions on the theme of the objectives and this policy i just want you to consider whether and i think the discussion has points that directs that we have whether we need more definition around the objectives that are around the face of the bill but also whether there needs to be further objectives because we know the European legislation has more objectives do we need more and do we need the ones that we've got to be defined more fully who would like to have a go at that grant yeah i mean i think it i suppose my worry is if you start just putting in lots more objectives you end up covering anything and everything and that you have a bill that then has objectives to fix or everything and it's not aimed at that it's aimed at certain things so i think the the point about making sure that there's real clarity about what those objectives are really about is really key so you know when you say thriving rural communities what do you really mean by that and when you're looking at other things like production of high quality food what do you really mean by that i think that's really key in terms of defining that very carefully i'm not sure just adding in more objectives to cover other things particularly helps because i just think you'll end up with it spreading out and i suppose just to just go back on the very thing i think one of the things i think is interesting about the the clld part that i think is worth thinking about is a small part of the budget but it does lever in a lot of other money which on top of that so if you look at just in terms of the lag that i'm involved in in the past two years yes there were 630 000 pounds of funding put through that but the total projects were 1.1 million so there's money that gets levered in and i can't think of many community projects throughout scotland that don't have some form of leader slash clld funding in that and i think it's really important to know if you've got thriving rural communities and if it's not part of this bill you would lose an awful lot if it isn't somewhere else so i think it's really crucial that we know that wider rural development funding is part of this and if you have a rural support plan it really needs to define exactly what that is so your in effect your response is that we've got the right number of objectives on the face of the bill but those objectives need to be they need to be clearer and more broadly yeah i think people need to know exactly what it is they mean because you know what what i might define as thriving rural communities might be entirely different what steven defines as thriving rural communities versus and i think sometimes that's where a few years in line you start to get into all these questions about well was that what we meant at the time and i think we've got to be really clear about it up front Jeremy and then john if this is to be a bill or an act with a life of more than five or so years it needs to be very broadly framed it needs to have its objectives really quite openly cast the risk of being too specific is we'll be back here in five years time looking at what we've done we'll never be learned by doing you know you go back to the model of the 48 act that stood really till 73 and if we can manage a generation's worth of legislation we'll have done quite well in this at that point then we can all play we can all play with words and playing with words in committee is one of the most lethal trades known to man but i would suggest looking at this that i mean regenerative there is considerable dispute as to what that actually means whether it's about process or outcomes and so on and obviously the code can define some of that but it's been a theme that's emerged in the last 10 years and it might go we might find other other concepts sustainable seems probably to be more sustainable more lasting but profitable productive i think would be would be a good goal and i think but sustainable and profitable probably together high quality food has been mentioned i mean i don't think anybody's going to argue for low quality food so with it but it obviously ties in with legislation climate mitigation and adaptation absolutely and i think then the issues around nature rower the weather restoration is a useful word because to what when we are actually looking with climate change at major challenges to nature and trying rather than with the classic british trope of trying to restore a golden age looking to well what would be good in 2050 and i think thinking harder about that there's quite a lot in it the number of these things is nice cuddly words but there's a lot of lazy thinking and and and i suspect that that you don't want in principle then more objectives than you've got but i think you do need to have them right but but do give the freedom to adapt to the future the one thing we know is we're facing many more risks and challenges than we've been used to facing and to run a good policy and a flexible adaptive policy we we don't need to be tied to don't need to suddenly run into the bill and have to rush legislation and john and then rob and douglas yeah i think going back to one of the points jerryman made i think when it comes to young people coming into the industry or they're maybe you know taking over a family farm and they're looking at what they can do going forward and then they see words like sustainable and regenerative and you know there's not a lot of clarity around what these words are what do you expect that just today john i know things like that you know their fathers aren't keen to let them take over their hopes but then they want to look at what they want to do going forward and then they see these words and there's not a lot of clarity around them and it just doesn't really help the whole moving forward with their business and i think that's you know just words like that and and you know how how that'll be policed and you know do have the resources to monitor that and and you know just going forward just a bit more clarity around these buzzwords to help people move forward okay thank you and rob thanks in terms of the objective i think it is important that there is a community's objective within this as steven says if it doesn't go here where does it go i think we should also recognise that thriving rural communities isn't just going to be delivered by this bill and the funding that sits behind this bill it's it's lots of aspects of government that are charged with delivering that i guess that's why we're we're looking at a rural delivery plan i think in terms of the clld it has been a really valuable component of supporting communities with on the ground projects i think it's value particularly when we were in europe when it had multi annual funding which allowed strategic thinking in communities a long term thinking i think we've lost some of that with in-year funding so i would urge thinking to get us back to a situation where communities can think more strategically they have the time to plan and the time to deliver and they don't have the pressure which is damaging to some communities of having to do these things very very quickly just in terms of the objectives of re-iterate i think there is the you know fair income for farmers and crofters would be one that i would love to see there and the other one that i have looking at the cap objectives the other one i have a great deal of sympathy for is the position of farmers and crofters within the food chain and i know that i would support sos's call for help to position the industry within the market as the purchasing power of this the subsidies already being eroded that's a trajectory that's likely to continue so i think i would support that it's another objective thank you jim supplementary yeah i'm going to go back a wee bit if that's okay convener to the point that douglas and steven were both talking about and that is the role of tenants and how they become involved in the objectives of what the government are actually looking to do the difficulties that i'll face and it's not just about secure tenants it's about guys who are on 25 year leases et cetera is there going to be a problem in actually being able to allow these folk to get involved and deliver the objectives on the basis of that they might not be part of the partnership and delivering the long term goals that we're trying to achieve as tenants and as people are on 25 year leases i think there are some some real barriers there at the moment for the tenancy sector and it's just a matter of making sure we get these barriers down i mean even something as simple as the rules of good husbandry and good estate management if you like are there and if you delve into them an agricultural lease tells a tenant that they must adhere to these good rules of good husbandry which fly in the face of much of what's going to come under tier two and environmental management so there is obviously a potential risk of a tenant entity being in breach of the lease because they carry out some environmental improvements so we need to sort that out there are all sorts of issues and with tenants and trees and permissions from landlords for planting diversification of already already mentioned and under the what's called the schedule five of a list of improvements that tenants can be compensated for when they come out of the tenancy there is a huge job to do to bring that up to date to make sure that if tenant farmers engage in this whole process that if they get to the end of the tenancy that that improvement they've carried out in the farm is recognised and can be compensated so again this is all land reform act stuff now but it's critically important where we have even bigger concern i think would be in in the the relationship between government funding and private funding in terms of the general move in terms of environmental management and greening and everything else green capital it's really difficult for tenants in their current position to engage with that side of thing carbon credits all the rest of it is there a danger then that tenants and leaseholders are just going to go this isn't going to work for me i'll do the absolute minimum and continue to take as much base pay as i can the risk is there the way the four tier model has been developed i don't think there's many of our members can probably afford to take that view if you look at the direct payments say half is going to be tier one base payment half the other half's going to be the tier two that's a considerable proportion of their income probably more than the profit for a lot of them so they're going to have to be away to allow them to participate i don't think there'd be many of our members could say no no it's not for me and we'll just we'll just keep going it's it's you know we have a higher proportion of members who are livestock farmers and it's it's really challenging to make a living without that support so you know we've got to be optimistic and push that that we don't find yourself in that situation i've got jeremy i'm steven i think at the moment on this and i'm going to bring you back in seara thanks there are always going to be issues where you have divided interests in ownership i think that that's that's quite clear the question was couched in terms of the longer term tenancies the 91 act tenancies or the longer ldts mldts a tenant is there to be in business to earn an income that's the basic ground of security and they'll look at this therefore logically as being where are the business propositions and that will then turn on can i do it is there the money in it to warrant it can i make those commitments and the shape of a longer term tenancy there is at least the time period in which to do it the shorter tenancies are probably much more commercial in outlook and we'll take an even more commercial view on that a longer tenancy may look to view stuff alongside owner occupy neighbours and just think we're where are my rights in this there's a moderate amount of positive proposals in what we expect to come through in the land reform bill the reform of the list of compensatable improvements to embrace some of these things but of course that depends on these actually being improvements that have value and at the moment there is an awful lot of talk about these things being terribly important not necessarily evidence as to what actually has value to the incoming tenant that would generate the end of tenancy payment and so i think that there are pragmatic and practical questions around this if money starts flowing then pragmatic owners and tenants are more than capable of coming to deals clearly those who are across to each other might find that more a source of challenge but if the money is not flowing or it doesn't make rational economic sense then they will step back and they will pursue what best puts bacon on their table in the morning thank you Stephen yeah i think Jeremy and Douglas have picked up on a couple of the points that i would make but that i do quite a lot of talks up and down the country on future agriculture support crystal ballgazing and the one thing that strikes me the most is this it's the seasonal grazers the landless keepers that we have who have a flock of sheep or some cows but they don't actually own land and for them this is a really confusing landscape because how are they meant to do soil testing how are they meant to do carbon audits how are they meant to do you know for them this is really confusing so so it's not just about the those with secure tenancies or limited duration 10s whatever it's also about those that are that are trying to get in and these are quite often new entrants to the industry they're trying to get established as a business and for them you know quite a lot after meetings there's a lot of people come up and ask about those types of questions and we need to make sure that those things are better defined in the bill which takes me right back to the definitional aspect what are we doing so what is what is agricultural activity we need to properly define that to ensure that things like peatland restoration and biodiversity improvements are within that and it becomes part of our general general vocabulary around agriculture so that farmers aren't limited in the existing legislation on lfa if you do peatland restoration and fence it off technically that lands no longer are eligible for support so we need to start joining those dots up and what is agricultural land what is what is an active farmer because without those definitions then where the money flows and what the barriers to the flow of the money are are currently unseen and it's not until you have those conversations with those in the ground that really start getting in there just coming right back to your the original bit on the objectives the objectives need to be really broad i totally agree with Jeremy they need to be really broad it's whether or not you want things like practices or a sector so instead of sustainable and regenerative agricultural practice you could have sustainable and regenerative agriculture or a sector you know the actual wording in here it just needs to tweak to enable it to be all-encompassing the one thing that if you were looking at european union and if we were if we were to align with european union they have a massive emphasis on supporting small farmers or small producers and also regeneration renewal and that would be the two things that i think need a bit more explicit mentioning in the in the objectives i'm very conscious of time so very briefly jeremy i know you when you come back in that comment i just wanted to pick up on steven's very important point about the agricultural world out there in reality which is that we have spent the last 20 years essentially rewarding land occupation and the tenant as a tenant is an occupier of land i mean he a real place in the party when it comes to looking at the schemes however much the agreement on the landlord relationship may complicate that something like it's been said 40% of sheep farmers don't occupy land they are there as graziers one way or another they've been outside the payment system in the main unless things have been done that shouldn't have been done in terms of who's been claiming what and and so forth but they have no ability to cross comply on most things they've been getting on with the business of life and and and and so on and it does come back to who you want to who what are you trying to use public money for who are you trying to ask to do it and how are you going to get your objective and if the aim is in a livestock world the man with the sheep or the woman with the sheep or the cattle then that's a different question from who is occupying the land and these overlap and intersect but it's quite an important challenge if we're looking at some of the issues that we've been touching on and then the land reform bill again the skeleton proposals of the land use tenancy would provide for new agreements what looks to be quite a positive framework for landlord tenant and environmental climate change and agricultural practices but we've yet to see the bill and we've yet to see it come out as an act thank you and see that very briefly thank you convener agree with the points around definitions and flexibility of definitions that was made in relation to the objectives in our submission with reference to the RSE submission on the bill we made a point about the resources associated with objectives so i think there needs to be it's a nuance but there needs to be some scrutiny of the feasibility of delivery of objectives in relation to resource and the in terms of your question about omission in our submission we talked about the omission of any mention of local and regional land use strategies so there needs to be some linking up coming back to an earlier point thank you ties in nicely now move to question from from Beatrice to to close this first theme thanks my questions around how we know the objectives how we know in the future how we're making progress so i wonder if witnesses could comment on how that progress towards meeting the objectives should be measured monitored and evaluated and for whose benefit is that you'd like to kick off steven which comes back to my point is that there needs to be scrutiny of this over over the life of the bill in that or the act in that the plan technically is the government's set of objectives that sets it should set what they're aiming to deliver and set targets to which then the government could be monitored against progress and that could be decided and part of the issue that we have is we've probably not done monitoring and evaluation of environmental aspects of agricultural support particularly well in the past and we significantly need to improve that and my slight concern is that we're going to start embarking on habitat assessments carbon audits soil testing all of which are really important baseline environmental data but we don't have the mechanisms to capture that just now so we may know what the baseline is but that will sit with farmers or the agents so actually demonstrating the measurable benefits on a farm by farm basis or a region by region basis is going to be challenging unless we unless we better understand how to capture data and utilise that data because we currently aren't doing that. Grant then Jeremy. I think it's a really important point in terms of what you're monitoring at what scale over what length of time there's obviously the on-farm side of things there's quite a lot of work at the moment going on in terms of trying to try to look at what the how we monitor that how we get baselines and then how we do that but you know you look at some of these objectives and they're about climate change they're about nature restoration these are not five-year blocks of things you know it doing work over a four or five-year period will not lead to that straight away some of these things are 30 40 50 you take people in restoration tree woodland you know you're talking into the you know decades and decades of time so we've got to think about what we can measure in terms of the outcomes that we're getting at certain points in the milestones but we tend to measure inputs is what we tend to do and then we say that that's success but actually what we've shown is that actually those inputs have not been leading if you look at any of the biodiversity stats in Scotland they're not going the right direction but the amount of input that we're putting in would suggest so why has that been happening so there's a disconnect between those two things so the monitoring is really really important as to what that framework looks like what you're measuring at a national level what you're measuring at a regional level what you're measuring at a non-farm level and have consistency over time not chopping and changing some of that as well so I think that you know that it's a really really key issue for us is that if you're going to meet these objectives you're going to have to have a good monitoring framework around that that is both it's at different levels all the way through the system thank you head Jeremy suggest that the monitoring isn't of the objectives but of a clearly defined rural support plan that's where you lay out the granular detail the point about outcomes is fundamental and I think this would reveal quite how challenging what we're being asked to do is very few ecologists I think believe that turning around biodiversity loss is an easy task to be done within a handful of years the climate change targets reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the scale that's being demanded of agriculture is clearly more challenging than we've yet risen to but it's for the rural support plan I think to lay these things out I think there are probably some very hard figures in that and that will make the monitoring both essential and challenging we mentioned this in the RSE's submission on the bill the importance of monitoring in addition coming back to a point I made at the beginning there is a wealth of data relating to leader and now CLLD and I would recommend a systematic it can be brief but a systematic analysis of what's already been achieved because I think for this bill particularly when we're talking about smaller resources potentially we need to say well what what is now going to be the objective what's different now looking forward from what's already been achieved with leader and CLLD at national regional and local levels and therefore what are the specific objectives and what's the baseline now because in 30 years there is evidence of what has been achieved this is now going to be 2025 what now should CLLD be achieving what's the new baseline what are the objectives and therefore what monitoring needs to take place and we have again a wealth of monitoring frameworks from previous decades that can be adapted and utilised for the next phase okay thank you we're now going to move on to the next scene which is around the core of practice for sustainable and regenerative agriculture and you'll be pleased to see here after this section we'll stop for a comfort break. I was interested one of the things that's been talked about in the past is about what checks and balances there should be around the the bit that comes after the act that the action that ministers have in particular I'm thinking in terms of the code of practice here so one of those checks and balances would come down to whether section 7 of the bill was subject to the negative procedure or not in parliament now that's a very technical point but it opens up the wider question about what the scrutiny should be of the decisions that ministers make on the back of the bill but I'm particularly interested in the code of conduct or just to address the more general the more general points on the current Stephen and then Douglas yeah I mean to me to me the question is still not answered what whether the code of practice will be binding whether it will establish a new rule set where it will be part of cross compliance or if it is just a guidance for best practice because it's going to be challenging to define all of those things and I do take some comfort in the session you had with officials in the head of agricultural policy did suggest that you don't need to define regenerative agriculture you don't need to define high quality food because these are things that have been vexing some of us for a while as to how you're going to define all of these things to then monitor them so the broad set of principles as to what it and his words in that session were about if it's too too too if it's defined too rigidly then what is regenerative in one part of the country may not be regenerative in the in another so it has to just be a set of principles and guidance in my for my perspective and that then if it's not legally binding then does it you know what what level of scrutiny then is required by parliament I'm more concerned about the rural support plan as having a greater deal of scrutiny rather than the code of practice personally so yeah that's where where I would be whether it goes negative or affirmative I think in our our submission I did highlight that there was an awful lot of statutory instruments that potentially could be coming down the track to which there may be limited ability for stakeholders to scrutinise ie if we get a huge tranche of statutory instruments Sarah mentioned earlier on community fatigue there certainly will be stakeholder fatigue and you as a committee may get fatigued at some point before bringing Douglas it certainly again the DPLR committee accepted that there were some absolutely valid reasons for for the government to take powers within the bill however the wide scope and range of ministerial powers it gives rise to concern because it's a framework bill which ultimately could reduce the bill of the committee and the parliament as a whole to scrutinise the legislation and the code of practice will come into that so maybe Douglas could respond to Alasdair and address that as well I'm essentially going to echo what Stephen has said I mean the support plan is the fundamental part and given the lack of detail in the bill as it stands at the moment that scrutiny of the secondary legislation because it's so fundamentally important I think is is is key like Stephen I'm not sure how the code of practice will fit into all this either from a timing point of view or legislative point of view but if it is actually going to have some some some teeth then scrutiny is you know we'd support that 100% Jeremy I think once a code like this is written it tends to hang around and turn up in places that get to surprise you and I would pick out of Stephen's response the concern about the sheer variety of circumstances within Scotland and I suppose a particular challenge for parts of Scottish agriculture would be to ask how would a code of regenerative practice bear on potato farming with its inevitable disruption of soil and and so on and again when it's written broad enough to handle that I'm conscious of the sheep farmers who would go organic be registered as organic but for their welfare concerns that lead them to want access to medication and it's these sorts of things where everybody will feel they're in the right part of the spectrum but the rules could be written such that it's really rather awkward for more people than you would like and so these things come with unexpected consequences and particularly somewhere down the line where it gets thrown at somebody in anger this could be this could be more dangerous than you might have thought grant I'd echo most of the comments in terms I suppose it all depends on whether it's it is a guide it is or it's it's a set of rules and if it's written at such a high level that it covers all the different types of agricultural and the different types of land use all across Scotland it's going to be very high level and I think you'd then just about fit anything underneath it and then if you try and make it very prescriptive and you've got to take it out of all the regional variations it becomes a bloody big document and I suppose the other bit is just it would be good to think about the experience we've had with other codes that we've got in other sectors because we've got quite a lot of other codes and there's quite a lot of codes that came out through the Scottish Land Commission side of things then we've got a few codes on the deer side of things there's been codes on mureburn you know how have these worked have they been successful and what they set out to do when they were put in place I think it'd be worth having to think about that in terms of the existing suite of codes and guidance out there and how this might fit into that but I think it is that question about what it is really does fundamentally you know depends on your point of view in terms of that but I think there's quite a lot of different variation in that and if it is something you then have to make people adhere to I think that's where it gets it gets a bit tricky in terms of a code against us it's better it's more just a practice guide for people and rather than a specific you must do but that's to be decided far from for me to summarise but it sounds like there's not too much concern over the code of practice as long as the the rural support plan is quite clear in the direction of travel is that the steven I mean and again I don't want to speak for officials or anything but I imagine the code of practice would be explaining how people engaging in tier two measures so the the conditionality measures will actually help deliver on regenerative and sustainable agriculture is what I would imagine the code should be discussing but I haven't had sight of any of it so I I'm only second guessing this okay right I'll bring the end to this session we'll pause until 10 40 when we come back to look at the rural support plan and suspend the meeting okay we now resume and we moved to our third theme for this morning which is a rural support plan a question from Rachel Hamilton earlier in the conversation or in the round table it was pointed out that the dplr committee has had difficulty in understanding why the first rural support plan is not at more an advanced stage and there have been comments in terms of course if you made on this particular angle and that there's not a clear direction of travel which the dplr committee themselves agree with what they would like to see and what I would like to know from witnesses is whether they agree that a draft plan should be published ahead of stage three of the agricultural bill and should that be subject to statutory consultation and also on the point of annual scrutiny of the parliament should there be a place for that can I perhaps start with steven seen as you made the initial comments around this well you've heard me confirm your thoughts on the last part which is that I think that needs to have parliamentary scrutiny on an annual basis to to monitor progress throughout the life of the bill I suppose from an official's perspective and again I'm not putting words in official's mouths but I can see the challenges of delivering a a plan by stage three simply because they still have not fully drafted the secondary legislation which then means that they don't have a full grasp of the measures and targets that they are actually trying to deliver on so this iterative approach that the framework bill is permitting means that they will not have the full list of tier two measures they will not have the full design of tier three which then means setting targets setting objectives and explaining where the money will go is probably more challenging than we're all giving government officials credit for but how long have we known that this bill was coming forward you know when you're saying there's well I suppose I'm challenging you this is the role of this committee is actually to look at the the positives of this bill but also potentially I like saying that some of the issues and how we can get around those it should be not being in a position where just weeks before we vote on this bill which will give the government power to create secondary legislation with the limited scrutiny that comes with that should we not be further ahead of the game particularly when you know this bill has got to be delivered because there's going to be a gap if we don't well my perspective is that we should have had written a cap strategic plan type approach from day one is because that's the justification so we need to justify why we need to continue supporting agriculture in whichever way we choose to support it and rural communities shouldn't forget that element so so from my perspective the logic would have been to deliver to mock up a plan and then tweak the plan as you go forward with the secondary legislation so the plan is an iterative approach you can't have a plan that you know you could have a plan that's laid before Parliament before stage three that would give you some indication of where they're the direction of travel what the objectives are what the the budgetary allocations I mean I in our submission I talked about the need or the missing part of the the jigsaw is minimum spend per per tier minimum spend per type of project or support mechanism and so if the government were to do that and then amend that later stage once they've got clarity of the secondary legislation and the detail of the support mechanisms that they've got coming forward it may mean that they're going to have to submit the support plan in iterative stages but you're not going to get that fine detail and I take your point is that and again I've wrote we wrote in the in our submission that the agricultural champions described what this framework was back in 2018 thank you and Jeremy yes your question is entire your challenge is entirely to the point I am really quite concerned about the tightness of the timetable for delivering these policies on the programme that's been outlined on the timescale for this it's been slipping and slipping we now have the bill the support plan I think Stephen's answer is probably the only practical answer but the only practical way to achieve delivery is to get on because the after we after the bill is in place after we know what's in the first let's take Stephen's approach the first or after the support plan we then have the statutory instruments to work through we have the detailed IT development all to do the graveyard of many policies you know all this is on a tight timescale this is this is you know watching the timescales now in Wales where they've run it against the line for starting something in April 25 this is this is this is getting getting really very tight so I suppose the answers to your first question are yes it should be up before stage 3 subject to Stephen's refinements as to process can you afford a consultation period in that probably not you've been consulting you know the government's been consulting on lots of policies for lots of time it's just not always in places that people have been looking and and and then and then crack on it's and parliamentary scrutiny clear because that is actually the means of delivering a high-level act the support plan is is the ghost in the machine just add to what to add to what Stephen and Jeremy have said I think the other important bit that's missing is much wider stakeholder engagement in this draft secondary legislation it's something we've been requesting for quite a long time that meaningful engagement and it's it's not it's not there yet I think there's a pretty small circle of people who have got a real awareness of everything that's going on but that needs to be a much much wider circle of people that get their opportunity you furnished me originally with the tenant farmers magazine and and on that there was a specific piece around accrocital support payments which actually criticised the lack of meaningful engagement however then went on to say that you were pleased to see that born out of the frustration of that that the fast group was set up can you tell the committee how the fast group is now engaging with the government in terms of that meaningful engagement that you're looking for we've really just got started Rachel the last meeting that we had face-to-face meeting we had we did the cabinet secretary did attend that was a full year on from when the request was made for meaningful engagement but I think now that fast group of agricultural stakeholders is now being recognised as a useful sounding board it's probably not where it needs to be and the bit that's missing is a sort of overarching picture of where everything is we can get reports from various civil servants on how things are progressing in tier 2 or tier 4 i was at meeting on tier 4 yesterday given my tough and soreth on the informal consultation but actually how is this all coming together to be a meaningful rural support plan to allow stakeholders to to have their say it's still not satisfactory i think Rachel would be my you know it's it's challenging and frustrating we're here already willing to play our part in helping government and officials in the thinking but there's probably not been wide enough engagement there's too much still getting to my ears through the grapevine rather than through proper proper channels and we need to get these channels sorted out so that we can have our our say and make our contribution okay sera thank you convener given the rural support plan is around carrying out the functions of the bill i agree around the urgency and also it would seem to me that this is where issues of definition and monitoring and evaluation need to be bottomed out just looking at how that all this is coming together is actually going to form a plan that we're all obviously going to have to follow in years to come i think you know that's been slow at the moment and i think the quicker that can happen the better from our point of view thank you rhoda grant to follow up on what people were asking about in scrutiny of the support plan do you think i mean there's obviously two ways in legislation to to lay either by affirmative instrument or a negative instrument affirmative you have to vote for it negative you have to move against it and i wonder if given the importance of this where we should be asking for a super affirmative procedure where we ask government to lay a draft of the instrument first so that the committee can comment that we can take wider consultation on it and report back to government before they submit the final instrument because given the importance of it it would allow time for people to feedback would that be something people would support I feel like i'm saying a lot given the strategic importance of the plan that having 40 days scrutiny doesn't seem like an awful lot of time for your committee and parliament to consider it so whether you go to super affirmative and actually have you can a call for evidence that's probably in the long term that that must be needed if we're going to use the support plan and again this isn't in the bill but you may want to consider the role of the support plan to scrutinise the annual expenditure and actually delivery on that on the objectives and if you are going to do that then you probably need you need to change that process if if that support plan is going to be used for what i'm suggesting rather than what it's in the in the bill for just now it kind of depends on what the purpose of the of the plan is and i'm suggesting the plan might deliver more than what it's currently in the bill for that i'm going to bring Jeremy that that kind of brings us to another question we're going to ask about the areas in which the Scottish ministers must have regard to or matters to be considered which are in section 3 of the bill so that will inform what the plan should be so maybe in further comments we have a look at or you consider and your responses what the government should have regard to Jeremy I'm just going to spoke because if in practice the rural support plan is the real bill within the framework bill and that would seem to me to be an essential role for parliament looking at then the the genuine allocations of expenditure and conditions and so forth it is tantamount to a bill and so it would seem to me that the process is for that give parliament some hold on it you know i was rather intrigued by the issue things you must have regard to as to how they actually relate with objectives it's a double take and obviously a direct reference to climate change plan almost implied in the objective of climate mitigation and adaptation but nonetheless any other statutory duty well of course they presumably would have to have regard to that whether or not it was whether or not it was here so it it's slightly it's slightly strange i suppose is my immediate reaction looking at it so again i've said this a number of times when we've had stakeholders in front of us we're now at the real business end of this we're almost at the end of the process of looking at this bill we were spent quite some time scrutinising it do we need amendments firstly to to make the objectives clearer and those clearer objectives then need to link to amendments which do include a list of matters to be considered is that something we need to look at as a committee jeremy don't you come back in i think the earlier discussion was fairly clear that amendments to the objectives would be sensible to give them longer legs for the future and having just looked on your immediate prompting again at the the list of what factors to be had regards to be had to i'm struggling to see actually what that section actually adds which bit of climate change mitigation and adaptation would not consider the climate change plan which statutory duty are you proposing to disregard it's um it's almost superfluous if we get the objectives right sorry it's an immediate reaction to the question you've posed there's not an exhaustive list when we look at the um i'm going to say clutter the clutter of legislation that's in front of this and i don't mean that and i just there is lots of legislation whether it's land reform whether it's the biodiversity plan climate change plan a whole range of different pieces of legislation do we need to name them what have regard to or or do you believe that there could be a form of words which would ensure that we could hold a government account to ensure that all these considerations are actually part of the plan Rachel and i'll bring in Sarah considering the conversation that we've had earlier regarding modernising agricultural tenancies and the land reform bill which is what we don't see haven't seen a draft of yet i think it's difficult to to take Jeremy's point at face value when it's not obvious that um we know what the well with climate change plan we we do know what we're trying to achieve but in terms of modernising agricultural tenancies and then make you know ensuring that farmers are supported to make the changes with the conditionality i think it's very difficult if it's not if it's not written down implicitly did grant did you signal to come in or yeah i suppose it's the thing about if you put into legislation specific things that stuff changes and it changes quite rapidly let's face it i mean if you go back when we did the last scotish rural development programme and you wrote out what were the key things that you needed to take account of and you look at that then and this now you get a chalk and cheese in terms of where we are so i suppose my worry is if you start listing things out you end up in five years time that list won't make a lot of sense and you're gonna you're gonna be stuck with it so i think there's something about having some flexibility in there about how in regard to the relevant pieces of legislation and statutory plans that exist that impact on agriculture and wider rural communities or something like that but it would capture hopefully most of most things because you know there'll be a bit of legislation that comes along in three years time that nobody's talking about at the moment that will be relevant to this that i think needs to be taken into account of a very valid point and if you do look at the bill as drafted there is a list of certain things which might lead someone to suggest if it's not on the list the government don't have to pay regard to it so we have got things like development of law and policy of european union other statutory duties of the scotish ministers relating to agriculture so there would be a concern if you start to create a list it's not what's on the list it's actually what is missing from the list so so that's helpful i think seara wanted to come in on that following on from both your points to me it's about addressing the risk that was identified earlier of responsibilities otherwise falling between the cracks if they're not made explicit within this bill whilst acknowledging that if you get too specific then the bill becomes outdated quite rapidly so i wonder if it is something like grant suggesting where areas of responsibility or themes of legislation can then be specified without getting into particular acts or policies or plans so that those are of a high enough level that they can embrace certain areas but aren't too specific because otherwise we haven't got risk mitigation in there of areas being left out okay thank you steven i mean this is the jigsaw puzzle is what you're talking about here is that those of us that live and breathe this understand that there's a massive jigsaw puzzle that impinges on all of the stuff that the bill is doing so to pick out one or two of the specific pieces of legislation did stand out in that water quality wasn't in there so and water quality is not in there and wider environmental protection is not even in the objectives rather it's climate and biodiversity because those are the emergencies we're currently faced with so you do risk the fact that you do risk that this is just a could it be seen as just subservient to just the climate change plan rather than actually a wider suite of important pieces of legislation you know the islands act and all of the things that we need to do consideration of how of crofting and consideration of tenure consideration of wider rural economy consideration of all of the aspects that this bill is going to impinge on and welcome that's the nature of farming impinges on an awful lot of things that we're trying to achieve as society and so that's up to you guys whether you think it's vital to list things or not but I don't think it is if you if you get the right wording you can just say what has to take account of all all of the the relevant pieces of legislation and plans noting that the the good food nation plan says that this bill has to have or the agricultural support has to have and I acknowledge the plan okay thank you Duncan Douglas bigger sorry just add that it would be nice to see some evidence of that cross cutting referral the referral that's taken taking place in the in the process i'm not sure how you achieve that from a parliamentary perspective but it would be really nice to see that we've had a think about this we have had a look at good food nation we have had a look at whatever it is and this is our conclusion without maybe specifying them all in here it's quite interesting i think it's environmental link created a chart of all the legislation that came together and interacted with each other relating to rural and it was on a eighth three sheet of paper and the writing was still so small i could highly read it so that gives you a sort of picture of of the the amount of legislation that is out there that will potentially impact in this bill i'm going to now move on to our next theme which is develop a new agricultural support system and a question from Alasdair allan i'm getting my a's my a b's mixed up arian Burgess convener yes so as convener said um we're going to move into the theme of powers to provide support so part two of the bill is the part which gives Scottish Ministers the power to establish a new funding and support system for a Scottish agriculture so we've got a number of questions in this area and some of them we kind of actually started to touch on already under theme one so i might not rehearse that but um kind of very specifically because as convener keeps saying we're in the business end i'd be interested to hear if you believe the powers will enable the ministers to ensure there is a just transition and not just for farmers but for the wider rural communities and this is coming in the context of the cabinet secretary for net zero and just transition announcing the climate mitigation adaptation plan um recently so just wonder if you think the powers will um are going to be enough to get us not only for farmers but also for the rural communities to where we need to be going and we'll maybe kick off with seara because she's not catching my eye that's always a good choice of who to go to um could i have some think time please you certainly you certainly can steven yes it's required and the powers to maintain existing legislation and amend it and then introduce new legislation is what the framework is all about in order to make sure that come 2026 or whenever the the new piece of legislation come forward we don't just simply switch flick a switch so we need we need to be able to tear tear off of the existing system and ramp up the new system and if we don't have that power then you don't have a just transition and you don't enable people to make the changes that will be required to deliver against the new set of objectives whether or not you amend objectives is a different matter but um that that's an absolutely essential part of this and it's also essential if you think about it from a a government IT system was mentioned earlier on is we're going to have to somehow evolve the current system and doing that in an iterative approach where we're bringing in new measures new mechanisms and new support structures will require time to deliver on that as well okay grant i mean i think this is the support for everything i said there i think that the key better in this is that this was this word just transition or the words just transition what it actually means and and how you actually do that it's it's one of these things it's easy to say but actually how you how you do that is in the is the bit that's most difficult and i think one of the things it's about making sure that people are aware of the choices ahead of them as early as possible so that people can make informed decisions because what you're what you're wanting is for people to make informed decisions about what they want to do with their business what they want to do in terms of trying to make sure they support their farming business or a wider rural business and then i suppose from other point of view is how that integrates other land use as well and other choices that are being made in other in other bills and other things that are coming through parliament as well so i think this is this is a crucial bit which is what does that landscape look like post 2026 how can you make sure that you're making decisions now that work with whatever that looks like and how can we make sure we've got the right the right mechanisms in place to support people post 2026 because i think that's one of the key things for me is just the the actual detail on what those measures are how they what they look like and how they do contribute to that that wider just transition and those bigger things we're talking about in terms of climate and biodiversity restoration and all these other things as well because i think that that is the key bit but you know you need the powers to be able to do that i think that we've got to be able to look at that support but the sooner we can get some of that detail out the easier it will be for people to then understand where it's going and be able to make decisions. Jeremy yes i think what this bill does is it breaks out of the straight jacket of your 2020 act and it allows you to write new law not just simply very limited amendments of legacy law and i think that that that's critical to doing whatever whatever is wanted that's that's an absolutely critical assumption assumption of powers are needed and then i think it's worth spending just a little more time on stevens point about managing the phased transition we are in a country all the countries in the uk where we are deeply embedded in historic subsidy systems people have built businesses and debts and employment structures and and and so on around the structure of that and there are two that's one reason allowing values and business plans and structures and generational change within families and so on to accommodate and that can be done quite quickly but it can't be done overnight and so allowing a period for that to be phased but at the other end he's actually getting the schemes right on the ground and that's slightly more of an iterative process than possibly people initially imagine given everything that's got to be done and so a critical point i think in the rural support plan coming back to the earlier question but very much linked to this is having an outline of how people are phased from A to B so that the new schemes come in so that people can move at the point that suits them and clearly there are different models around as to how that is done and we will learn we will see how for example the Welsh one actually works and we're watching Northern Ireland's phasing as well as what's now effectively happened in England but that needs to be planned because that's actually how you handle the rather precious bars of people's businesses that where they're good businesses you want them to be there for the new world you were saying Grant really that i think at one strand of a good example will be its articulation again we quote again the good food nation bill i think we know that in terms of business models crofters and farmers will produce food more for a local market if it aligns with local procurement and so on and that will influence what they produce and the market the routes to market that they take as a result of that so i think the good food nation bill will give a mechanism just one strand that will help businesses plan and align with a different you know a more biodiverse way if you like of of the way they are operating and it will give them that framework and a market which can enable them to survive and i think just building on that as well i think we we are seeing a younger generation of both younger farmers and younger crofters who are wanting to return to the land and they're taking note of ways that their grandparents perhaps articulated by the likes of james rebanks and others on how the land was managed historically outdoor grazing you know all this kind of thing so they too will be looking for a more localized market for this kind of farming as they move to a different model and it's not easy so we are talking about a just transition with the emphasis on just it's not only about the climate but it's about if you're looking at it and in often an industry which is often inherited from previous generations then telling your father or your mother that they got it wrong because of what they were told historically but actually maybe their grandparents were more on track then that needs support it needs support from all of us to enable that just transition i think as well just mentioning the welsh model you were talking about a moment ago we know that the welsh model is taking provision for the welsh language and that cultural inheritance and within scotland we have that and not across the whole country but certainly in the crofting counties you have this notion of cultural inheritance of knowing that your land was managed by people before you and you are managing it going for those going ahead of you this whole thing around durchus this business around indigenous skills we know that 80 percent of the world's biodiversity you know this is looked after by six percent of the world's population who are indigenous peoples so there's something about those historic knowledge and skills of managing the land in a biodiverse and sustainable way that fed people that our forebears knew about and i think just recognising that as we move forward to support that just transition i think we should be mindful of thank you and john and then Douglas just touching on a point that Fiona made and Jeremy as well i think you know as much as we need to legislate and kind of be more clear about what we mean in terms of our farming practices i think in the future going forward the big thing is going to be people you know in my daily job at the moment as a trainee auctioneer i'm going around farms meeting people and there's two work rise one of them's a weather but i don't think there's a policy that you can put in that will change that and the other one also being the fact that they can't find people to work on farms you know the older generation of farm workers are either retired you know or about to retire and the younger generation you know some of them are away doing different occupations and other ones are coming in either didn't come from a family farm and need trained or you know that there's different kind of barriers to getting people in and i think that there needs to be an element of support in the in the plan that looks at how we actually structure the workforce going forward because i think it's going to be one of the biggest issues you know apart from the farming practices and how we actually farm the land i think who's actually going to be doing that work is possibly one of the biggest issues we're going to face going forward thank you Douglas yeah it was just to add to everything that's been said and make the point that um farm level just transition for me is all about the no no cliff edges as it has been quoted um but you'll have heard the committee said this before but the long-term production cycles particularly in livestock agriculture make that phrase mean something very different to different different farming types if you like and i'll also just emphasise the importance of a multi annual budget framework in achieving that managed transition it's absolutely fundamental to allow people that that ability to to look a bit further down the line and plan successfully thank you um steven i'm going to come back to the just transition element in that in the commission we we quite often talk about it is not just transition it's the justice element of the transition is the most important aspect and the the this ability to flex from existing systems into new systems is also going to have to be backed up with support for retraining for helping people better understand what they need to better deliver that might need more one-to-one support we need to start really considering how we're going to support the most needy in the system and i just acknowledge that there will be people that need to do that there'll be some people that call themselves food producers just now that won't be food producers in the future how are we going to support them in that transition and i suppose what the bill is doing and what government are trying to do is is a step change from what we've got a very path dependent agricultural system in that quite a lot of the systems of support we've currently got are based on stocking densities in 1990s you know we're 25 years out in terms of some of the mechanisms that we're delivering but we're and that's that continues to drive the path dependency that we've got and this step change ain't going to be easy and we need to we need people to better understand that and that's where that whole element of justice comes in and a phrase i've used a lot in the past is that the future is not what it used to be we need to be we need to support people to better understand that and thank you seara thank you convener in section five which is around the leader legacy programme and clld something that src's report touched on and has been an issue for a long time is around the need for capacity building and that this isn't it builds on stevia's point as well this isn't something that generates immediate return and is an investment otherwise what we've found over the years is that you have hotspots and not spots so you have hotspots of communities that know how to use the system and they succeed and they will continue to succeed they will draw down funds and they know how to and you will have those not spots where those communities don't have the capacity or don't know how to access the system and use the system and that will continue so there needs to be within this and within the plan definitive measures that will invest in capacity building and not just run with the successes that demonstrate the success of the bill and the success of the spend so it's not to use that word it's not a sexy spend but it's a necessary investment in a just transition I couldn't agree with you more Sarah because if you look at a family farming unit there are varying skills within that unit and not all the individuals are recognised as the primary producer or the actual farmer and so I think if we can recognise that there's a wider input into making a productive and efficient and profitable farming enterprise that we need to recognise that it's not just the farmer that we need to support but it's the wider community family members around or even neighbours you know in terms of that sort of peer-to-peer whole systems approach. In terms of the women in agriculture task force there was work around that you know in terms of the whole farm unit and building capacity of women in agriculture and there's even more need then for the monitoring and evaluation that you raised deputy convener around a baseline and knowing where we're moving from from here and being able to generate data around the just transition and knowing that progress has been made from 2025 onwards around these harder-to-grasp concepts and issues that are very real in rural Scotland. I've got a couple of more detailed questions and I'm going to direct them to folks and I'll just ask them both but I'll direct them to the folks so that you know it's coming your way so for Douglas and Theonia I've got a question around tenant farmers and crofters and it's so the bill creates powers to support the use of land for woodlands where that use is ancillary to the farming of the land for other agricultural purposes and I presume this could include support for croft woodlands that are being called for agroforestry park land and silver pasture and I'd be interested to hear what your thoughts are in terms of tenant farmers and crofters do you think that they they could benefit from that kind of support and if not what could we do to make sure that they do they do get that support so that's one question and then I'll ask the other one which I'm also going to direct to Theona and Stephen which is all which is around just transition but also I think both of you have touched on the piece which is support which hasn't really been happening for small-scale local fruit and veg producers and that's something that's coming up in conversation I'm having all across my region and I would be interested to understand if you have a sense that if that's important as a sector to rural communities food security and local economies and again is there enough provision in the bill enough enough hooks for us to actually ensure that that kind of support could come forward that's a Douglas to answer those questions first then Theona and Stephen. Okay in terms in terms of tenants legislation tenants are allowed to plant trees that are in ciliary to their farming operation the problems come around definition of when is a shelter belt in ciliary or when has it become a commercial woodland lots lots of issues around that even with that flexibility there are pretty few pretty few tenants would actually plant trees the the issue for them is really around what happens potentially at the end of the lease because that land has been taken out of agriculture agricultural production and potentially they could be stung for dilapidations at the end of their tendency because that land is now no longer fit for purpose for agriculture and in theory could they could be asked to either pay dilapidations or return it to previous agricultural condition that's assuming that that woodland doesn't have value at the end of the day when then the whole thing is reversed and that the farm would be tenant family will be looking for some sort of compensation that it has a value but there's some big questions about you know because we don't such a long-term thing will it will it have value at the end after 20 years or will it actually be be something that has reduced the agricultural potential of the of the holding so that is you know certainly probably wrapped into all this tenancy modernisation of tenancy we'd like to see some some better definition some more flexibility around that diversification into trees thank you the so um i agree what Douglas has just said and obviously if succession planning is a challenge then you run into all the things you've just spoken about I think succession in some regards is perhaps more protected in crofting but it doesn't mean to say there's someone there to take it on so you know that's another issue I think obviously living in a place where trees are a bit thin on the ground this notion of a silvo pasture and its contribution to biodiversity and to supplement and enhance the the crofting activity and livestock and stocking density all of that you know we can talk forever about that but I think it definitely if there is support around that I think crofters would definitely embrace that because they have done in the past for shelter belts and so on and then of course the livestock benefit from that shelter and then the the leaf fall you know gives different components to the soil which the cattle appreciate we're not in a room to discuss all of that but I think it's a good thing yeah um should you want me to come on to the small scale fruit and veg thing okay so I mean we know that 70% of the world is kind of fed from two acres of parcels of land that are two acres or less I know and I have evidence that you know if I go back a couple of generations what are islands that is the outer hebrides actually imported was very little and I can demonstrate that so it was sugar tea strawberry jam you know I jest but it's true I've got the the invoices to show you the cargo ships coming in from Glasgow so what does that mean that we were in that 70% where really we were producing most of what we need I was in Glencairns at the weekend at their food hub and I was putting lemons into a bag and I said well these are not growing locally and she said no no at these hungry months we buy from organic north and you know put in foods that we know the provenance of the food and where it's come from but the rest of the year we're using local produce so to come on to what you were saying Arianne I mean I think there needs to be more support because we see more local food producers serving communities research in our islands told us that we were vulnerable because we didn't have mainstream supermarkets well we are not because we are delivering local lamb beef salmon venison to our elderly people in our community supported by potatoes carrots onions rhubarb crumble you know as meals for the elderly in our community the health board should be on that project never mind everybody else when the crofters and the social enterprises delivering that are involved because that will impact people's lives and their health and well-being not only food security and shorter food miles environmental concerns and everything else but just an altogether local economy model that is resilient in a rural community so but you're right historically these small scale producers I was at the oxydrill fat sorry convener if I may I was at the oxydrill farming conference recently and I took four young crofters to speak on low intensive agricultural model that is crofting that is a mixed model that is biodiverse and actually can be a model for the future however looking at an audience of more than 100 people thinking we don't necessarily want them all to come up the A9 looking for crofts so it would be useful if they could consider a literacy of understanding of the food that can be and is being produced where they are and if they would share that information with us I came home with a list this long from the isles of silly to the isle of sky of local food producers who are serving communities which convener I will tell you do not appear on any supermarket share charts and yet they are feeding communities and we need to wake up to this because this will help us to address the just transition how we do like sorry just a very brief question on that do the communities that are getting that food are they looking for more exotic stuff no because the first thing that sprung to my mind there was this demand from society for everything exotic so the local community is comfortable with what you can actually grow and eat in your own area well as I said before you know even the place in glencans is doing putting in organic lemons so it's not like you're not getting your lemons so to speak but it's proportional so if 70 or 80 percent are making those figures up so don't quote me on that of your food is locally sourced if you like then we totally accept that if you want a banana or you want lemons then you would bring them in does that make sense to you but they also seem to value that local provenance we all know that a hungrum carrot tastes better than the shot bought one there's a lot in those statements by Doug and Fiona on Douglas I'll just add a little bit to what Douglas isn't going to answer the question specifically at me is that we're talking about public policy and we already know that the private sector market's changing dramatically in terms of scope three emissions whether that's on climate and or biodiversity net gain will come in the future so we know that food producers are going to have to start delivering better on that and one of the risks that we have both in private and public sector is the tenant and or rented sector where they have got less if they have less opportunity then how do they tick these green credentials and that is a big risk so that's where that's what the if there's market failure and there may well be market failure that's the role of government to intervene and that's why that's really important that we make sure that tenant and farmers and crofters have the ability to engage in all aspects of tier two including on tier three in terms of support and part of that will be the transformation part the capital that's required to in order to invest in order to put trees or hedges or whatever it is in coming on to the the second question which is a is a difficult one in that we currently are limited to you have to have minimum of three hectares i think a lot the producers you're talking about may have less than three hectares so it comes back to my play at the start which is the bill should potentially have definitions already embedded in it in terms of who are we supporting why are we supporting them and what for what purpose in terms of the the local food markets yes there are important local food networks and i am slightly nervous when people talk about food security because the true definition of food security is everybody has access to affordable food and the affordable food element is often forgotten about it for and we substitute the word local in and so i was in orcney recently and they produce a large amount of beef they have to put it all off the island for slaughter so there is no local beef provision now they're looking into those kind of things so we are losing not only value-added opportunities but the small producers and in the western isles you can get support for polycrubs in shetland and orcney you can't get support for polycrubs to do local food producing so there are opportunities that we're missing already whether you want to widen the suite of support measures on the current things we're thinking you have to ask yourself questions then about what type of support are they requiring an area-based support on a third of a hectare isn't going to give you much are you going to do a whole farm plan for you know all of the new entry level standards will have to be met if you're going to get that level of support so it's fine for us to say these people deserve more support it's how do you fit it in with what the government are thinking about in terms of the wider structures and it may mean that they need the support through clld to embed the capacity to provide the granted to start up and support them in that journey and actually providing food networks and a better ideas of how food networks should operate at local and regional scale and very briefly Fiona right thanks thanks I was just going to come back mainly to the points around trees possibly to a slight element of caution for reasons of timescale but particularly business motivation and older attitudes that trees do not necessarily fit very well as a larger scale operation within the context of a commercial farming business the investment is upfront and early the return is decades and decades down the line and while farmers do talker thinking long term they tend not really to mean that long term historically it was more of an estate function to to grow the timber I mean the 19th century a major source of estate income from then much less now but beginning to come back with the long term markets for commercial timber but that is of course something that's done at scale so the ancillary the shelter belts and so on or the shielding of a slurry store to get the planning permission or whatever that those entirely ancillary yes but to think that particularly for tenants but actually for many owner occupy farmers that the trees are part of their a necessary part of their future I think is to go down a false trail because it doesn't fit a business model there is no income in the near future for surrendering land to do that the point that may surface and it's a very important point that Steve made is the pressure from the supply chain when the supply chain is probably going to be at least as potent as anything we're talking about now as it looks to deal with its not to take control of its emissions but to ensure that it can account properly for what other people who are supplying it are doing and provided we can keep that line held that would be an important line to have held that we aren't alienating the carbon or the biodiversity to them but we're merely saying we comply that may drive some tree planting it may drive some other things but that's the price of having a business contract to sell the lamb or the beef or whatever it might be and that's something where again the landlord the tenant or or indeed it's straightforward and are occupied commercial farmer are going to have to look at that as an absolute business proposition does it stack up doesn't it to get that business contract to sell the produce that they're there to farm for i've got grant and then john and i'll bring the on anything yeah i mean i i'm just gonna say i i'm not sure i agree entirely with that and that in terms of one of the key things around this is trying to integrate different bits of land management together rather than what we've traditionally do is we have farming in this one we have woodland in this one we have the next bit of land using this one and then we pay different amounts and then we try and overcompensate to get one on top of the other and so i mean one of the whole things around this is trying to get more integrated land management across that and to actually see how you can integrate agricultural systems with woodland systems and such like rather than seeing them as two separate things so i don't think that's necessary where we need to get to and that there is some bits in the bill i mean if you look at i think it's in the one of i think it's part four of the schedule at the back is about integrated land management and assisting with integrated land management plans i suppose the question around that is what does that look like what would you do but it is about trying to bring these things all together to then look at that within a farm system what is it you could do to integrate all these different income streams potentially together to have a better whole than what we currently do which is we look at it through silos and you know that's a key thing for this bill to my mind is trying to get back to that wider integrated land management on on that and not looking at them as just i do woodland across there i do farming across here i do whatever it might be to actually look at how we can make these things all work together it's a place for trees in integrated land management and you know there's place for them i think there's a huge amount of concern at the moment within young people in industry about the amount of tree planting that's going on in some areas obviously huge corporations buying massive swaves of land just to plant them in trees in order to offset carbon obviously pushing land prices through the roof going back to a point I made earlier about young people getting into the industry you know it's really putting a pressure on them they don't have the kind of finances that that they can compete with those kind of corporations and then equally they can't get into the industry and you know that's a huge issue as well so i think there maybe needs to be a bit of a consideration put in in terms of you know the the amount of tree planting that's done and also where it's done and obviously you know about these corporations buying that amount of land and pushing obviously farmers that are wanting to produce food out of the market theona you're briefly just picking up on on steven's point there about food security and i'm not here to but bash the co-op i absolutely want to say that however work was done around there in every rural and island community and they redefined their stores in recent times and if the footfall was at a certain level they redefined them as convenience stores this work has been published defined as convenience stores which means they are not selling the full range of fruit and veg because the argument is if you're here and you have a convenience store and you want a wider range of food then you go and mile up the road if you're on the isle of barra or you're wherever you can't go and mile up the road the co-op is it and you're paying 28 percent more on average for the range of food and it's more convenience food more shelf space to alcohol etc etc so we even have to look at you know a take steven's point it's about affordable food but frankly the local supermarket if you like is not delivering on that per se and the rural and island people are being shortchanged if that's their only offer and their choice is minimal and it's more expensive so that's why local resilience is really important. I'm going to try and bring this back to the bill that's in front of us we have veered off into having a general discussion about food policy so if we try and restrict our comments to the bill that's in front of us and how it needs to be amended potentially to deliver so it's steven I think it was just coming back in on Grant's point and I mean the design of the framework is to enable exactly what you're saying is that the government will have ability to change the weightings associated with each of the conditional measures and if we're not got enough woodlands on farms you can increase the weighting to bring and make it incentivise it so it becomes more of a it becomes more worthwhile for the farmers to do that to get their tier 2 support so the whole idea of the design of this is to enable exactly what you're saying within that and I'll not go back on food security. I'm going to move on to a slightly different angle from Eroda Grant. And because this bill is a framework bill there's an awful lot of legislation that's coming from it and with regard to this there is regulations to change the schedule one so to change who can get support under the bill and those changes are made by a negative procedure and I'm wondering if people think that's right and for those who don't a negative procedure is basically lodged in the Parliament and if you want to move about against it you have to vote it down in its entirety you can't amend it you can't change it and you really have to move against it it's a kind of take it or leave it procedure so I'm wondering if people think that that is adequate and should we be looking to change that to provide greater scrutiny and maybe some consultation on any changes that's made. Any Jeremy? Yes just picking up on that I suspect that the need may be to be nimbler in reaction to altering the scope of schedule one as a first reaction to that there clearly are a number of oddities about schedule one again going back to an earlier theme a lack of focus on supporting business approaches and productivity but the number of products that are not sitting there in paragraph 3 3 pig meat poultry eggs venison herbs and so on that would need I would think quite rapid amendment at some point at the point to wish the government decided that those were worthy of possible objects alongside cane sugar and beet sugar which are of course grown enormously in certain parts of Scotland there are aspects of this that are I think might well need nimbler responses as we find what's going wrong so I while strongly and leaning towards the super affirmative role for the quasi bill of the rural support plan I suspect this is operational pragmatism Stephen I would tend to agree with Jeremy here is that I don't think there's going to be wholesale changes but given that we're encouraging farmers and crofters to be on wider land managers to be more environmentally aware there may be elements that we've not thought about that suddenly come into the mix that need to be rapidly put in because somebody said well what about what about my situation I'm excluded from being included because you've got you've not listed it in a schedule so I think the government need flexibility here and I don't think that they're talking about I don't think you can ever say that about governments but you would hope that they're not going to have wholesale changes within this once you've passed this bill I'm just just something to reflect on and I'm not going to read this quote out in full because there's some unparliamentary language but a former NFUS president suggests the bill gave the government power to do whatever they wanted when they wanted with whatever budget on policy priorities as yet undecided or at least unpublished is accurate I'm looking at Stephen again because you're smiling okay so you're looking at me on the face of it you could suggest that because there is no budget allocation within the tiers so there is no minimum spend so if you if you could think to the the EU legislative framework and I'm using that because that's what we're currently based our model on within the horizontal regulation that came out in 2014 there was a explained what the minimum spend for each of the schemes had to be and it would have been useful in this bill to have a minimum spend in each of the tiers and an explanation of what schemes types of schemes were to be supported and therefore maybe a minimum spend on those those and it doesn't have to be the the actual budget just a minimum spend because that then gives you it kind of binds binds the government to that spend profile and if they want to change that they would have to come to parliament so so on that on that front I dare say there's there's some truth in that on the enabling ministers to do what they like I have already commented that there is an awful lot of powers that rest with ministers that have got limited scrutiny or they may have opportunity for scrutiny I don't know how fast and how many pieces of secondary legislation will come but in the space of two or three years you couldn't have a lot and things may get missed that that's perhaps where that risk is coming from grant as we've just put the the alternative view which is that putting figures into primary legislation does really then leave you with very little flexibility and things change and I suppose if you look at how we used to do it there was most of the figures for the previous things were then put through the Scottish rule development programme which set out exactly which schemes were going to be in place and how much money was going to be against each of those and then money could be wired between those depending on changing priorities so I think putting figures into primary legislation I'm not sure that is a particularly good way to go I do think that I suppose we're going back to the rule support plan again which is that's the place where you want to set out what your schemes are and what money you want to put against each of those and that there should be an ability to change that as you go along because you know it's in three or four years time there will be something comes up that's not being thought of just now that you need to do that if you put it into this legislation you're sort of very much tied without going through a quite a big process to try and make any of those changes which might need quite quick flexibility so I think I have some sympathy with not being in the primary legislation but I think the rule support plan again is the is the key bit around that. Yes I would agree with that completely I think again in the spirit of keeping the bill a simple framework bill you don't tie yourself down that way but this really really does put stress on the rural support plan and dealing with it in in as rigorous a way short of it being a bill as you can and yes for platform rhetoric that that makes a point fairly as servically and hence the challenge discussion we have it. Before we move on I want your thoughts on opportunities of how to use these powers to provide support and areas with alignment with new EU camp and when it's decidable and when it's not does there need to be a some focus on on powers that would allow the bill to react to that any thoughts on that Jeremy? I think it needs powers to be able to react to any change in circumstances when you look at the shocks we've seen in global supply chains the movements in fertiliser prices the shifting grain prices geopolitical risk climate the climate changed abroad and here again the ability to be able to adapt and react within the framework seems seems critical rather with earlier answers I wouldn't be terribly specific about what I wanted to have the freedom to react to as somebody who drafts agreements periodically sod's law says that the event you never foresaw is the one that happens within months of signing off an agreement so I would be nonspecific it's flexibility for the world we're now in I think that we've exhausted that theme we're going to move on to the final theme for today which is looking at cpd continued professional development question from Karen Adam thank you convener um yeah i'd like to just really open up the conversation on this and ask if the guests here today feel there is anything missing in detail in the bill in regards to this or should there be any focus on any particular groups such as tenants and young farmers for example yes i mean coming back to a point I made earlier about training and in cpd I think at the moment there is grants for some things these are fairly limited it would be good to see these extended or more grants put forward I think you know there's a I'm not being sexist in any way there's a there's a women in agriculture grant for for young women to get training for agriculture but there's not the same grant for for men so I would like to see maybe a young persons agricultural grant put forward so that you know that training can be put out across the board I know there's grants for for all different things you know employers can apply for grants to put you know people through training but I think you know these are very limited there's a lot of red tape involved and I think going forward if if this could maybe be reviewed and see where more funding could be made available and maybe a wider range of training to to fit y