Clif chart. Welcome to the 32nd meeting of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee in 2023. Before we begin, I remind anyone using an electronic device to please switch it to silent. We begin today with a round table on the Agriculture and Rural Communities Scotland Bill, and today's session will focus on one of the key objectives of the bill, which is the adoption and use of sustainable, regenerative agricultural practices. Felly, rymdwg ymddiwch yn ymddiwch yn cymdeithasol o'r cyd-fyrdd o'r bydd. Rwy'n cyhoeddwch yn ymddiwch yn cyd-fyrdd iawn, ac mae'n rhaid i'w gael i'r rymddiwch. Yr ysbytyd Llyfrin Mlleca, y director o'r Lansodd Scotland, mae'r wirfrannu Nigel Miller, y co-chair o'r Ffarming for 1.5. Professor Cathy Dwyer, the chair of the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission and Professor of Animal Inventory Sciences at SRUC, and Dave Mackay, the head of policy from the Soil Association in Scotland. Dr Lorna Cole, a senior consultant from SRUC. We have Rose Payton, who is the chair of the Scottish Organic Stakeholders Group. Dr Tara Wright, the policy and campaigns co-ordinator for the Land Workers Alliance for Scotland, and Dr Eva Vera from SRUC. We also have Kirstie Jenkins, the policy officer for one kind, and Donald McKinnon, the chair of the Scottish Crofters Federation, joining us remotely. As per tradition, I'm going to kick off with a general question. What are your views on the adoption of the use of sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices? What are the objectives? Who would like to kick off with your views on that? I'm an agricultural ecologist and I've been working in this field for about 30 years, understanding the interactions between agriculture and our natural resources, and how those two aspects are inherently linked, how they work together and how they need to work together. Yet our natural resources have been depleted. I've been advocating what I would call agroecology, but I know that the terminologies change and regenerative agriculture is right. I think that we need to make this work for all farmers. If you are a farmer with a high-nature value system, you may feel excluded because you aren't required to regenerate anything. Your land is healthy, your ecosystems are supporting agriculture. If you are an arable farmer and things are too prescriptive, you're not allowed to tell, for example, then you may feel excluded. I think that we need to ensure that the terminologies are properly explained. It's not defined in the way that agroecology is. It's used in many different ways, so it needs a proper definition, and that definition needs to include all of our farming community. How are we going to do that in the face of the bill? Sustainable and genitive means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. How on earth in a piece of legislation are we going to narrow the definitions down so that it's useful for farmers to shape the way that they farm in the future? That's where your accompanying code needs to be properly written. It needs to involve a wide range of stakeholders. If that code is sound, and it's linked to the bill, that's an appropriate way. I think that the bill as drafted requires ministers to produce the code, but we would question what the legal basis of that might be and how it might be applied. As Dr Cole has said, there are many definitions of regenerative agriculture. In our submission to the committee, we picked up the groundswell definition, which is essentially five principles around minimising soil disturbance, keeping the soil surface covered, maintaining living roots in the soil, growing a diverse range of crops, and bringing grazing animals back to land. Those are quite broad principles and not particularly prescriptive. At the minute, it's fair to say that there's a real energy and momentum around regenerative agriculture movement, not just here in Scotland but across the world, and I think that's a very good thing. It means that farmers are thinking about their systems, about soil health and fertility. I think that there are many parallels with the regenerative movement and the agroecological and organic approaches to farming, which are also based on old farm systems, soils, recycling nutrients, etc. It's going to be important for the Scottish Government to define what it thinks that sustainable and regenerative means. I would agree with you that it would be quite difficult to do that in the face of the bill, but our understanding of the code is that that will be the conduit for government to explain the methods and approaches that it considers to represent sustainable and regenerative agriculture, and for those to be supported through the four-tier system. On your opinion, you seem to be suggesting that there's not actually definition, but it's a route or it shows ways to get to a desired goal. It's more or less defining what the desired goal is rather than the practices and practice, if you like. If you look at what's been published already in terms of the proposed approaches that might be supported through tier 2 of the new structure, there's plenty in there, some of which farmers many farmers will already be doing. That might be reducing tillage, it might be direct drilling, it might be having wildflower margins and arable systems, it might be wood pasture for livestock systems. I think that those are all examples of what we would consider an approach and a shift towards the sustainable farming approaches that the Government said it wants to deliver through the vision for agriculture, but I suppose the question is what is this code of practice going to be for? Is it going to have a legal basis? Are these principles going to form, for example, the basic requirements under tier 1? If everybody is shifting in that direction, so if the majority of farmers are adopting those approaches, that's a step in the right direction, and then beyond that baseline, if you like, for those who want to go further, there's organic certification and there's other models out there as well. I really like the first two contributions, I would totally agree with them, but I guess that I have a real bit of an issue about this being part of a vision, because it's actually about your management practices that actually deliver something beyond that, and it's what agriculture is trying to deliver beyond that that should be the vision, which is presumably low-carbon production, which is sustainable, but also if you look at the climate change report, we've actually got to produce 22 per cent more for 20 per cent more food, if we're going to continue to produce the same amount of food per capita with population growth, and that's often forgotten, and we've got really pretty extreme or challenging emission targets to meet as well. Regenerative farming is a really key component of actually creating the platform for that sort of farming, but it's not an end point, and it's different on every farm that what you're going to apply and what you're going to do and what is actually going to give value is going to be different on every farm, and really the one common part or outcome of regenerative farming probably is maintaining soil biodiversity and soil carbons and actually managing your soils within the recommended bracket for that soil type and that sort of production system, and that's something that is meaningful and you can aim at as a farmer, and it actually sets some direction for your actual enterprise and your management actually coming up with some sort of vision that regenerative and sustainable farming is what we're aiming for in practical terms, and everyday farms is almost meaningless, because a lot of people are already doing these things, and the other thing about regenerative farming is on most systems, including organic, you have regenerative phases and you have exploitative phases, that's the reality, so you go up and down as far as the actual key parameters are concerned, and again the regenerative seems to suggest that we're going to be regenerating all the time, we're not, we're going to be exploiting at times as well, so I think the term is actually quite difficult, and I think for farmers you want something prayed black and white and to me managing your soil carbons within recommending brackets looks like a target that you could actually aim for and be comfortable that you could manage and go for. Can I appreciate a little bit more on that, so how can progress to becoming more regenerative and sustainable actually be measured, monitored and evaluated, are we looking at the legislation, you know, we're at the business end of the bill now, where we're looking at amendments or whatever potentially coming forward, how can the bill ensure that those objectives are met? To me, the one objective measure that you can make is actually, you know, monitoring soil health and soil carbons and it's not, you know, subjective, it's actually an objective indicator and with the information from or the backup of the scientists and I suppose particularly Hutton and SRUC, you know, they can actually define, you know, carbon levels for certain soil types and certain systems that you should aim at, and that gives you something solid to work with. Thank you. I've got Dr Tara Wright and then there, Ross Payton. Yeah, I think I agree with a lot of what's been said already. I think when it comes to defining sustainable and regenerative agriculture, there is already a lot out there, as David said, the groundswell definition, which involves the five principles, is pretty comprehensive and it's also really widely accepted across different parts of the farming movement, the more conventional and the more organic agroecological farming movement. So I think that this is one of the areas where the kind of more sustainable end of the farming movement is really ahead of policy, you know, this stuff is happening on farms, we have really good evidence for what practices are helping to regenerate nature or sort of carbon, you know, so I think taking a lead from what's going on in the regenerative farming movement already is important. I think there's definitely, it should be some space for, to some extent, it is a process and a set of objectives that those need to be quite clearly defined because there are lots of different ways to achieve that and it's important that farmers have some kind of autonomy over that. It will look different in different systems. We kind of need a diverse approach to make sure that, you know, we don't want to make a mistake, tell everyone to do something now and it turns out not to be the best thing in this Scottish context or in some of the context. So I think, yeah, some flexibility with really clearly defined sort of parameters and outcomes. I also think that it is worth, I think, yeah, the regenerative farming movement has gained a lot of momentum and it's a really useful term to be using. I think there's some things from the idea of agroecology that are missing from the regenerative concept that it would be worth trying to include. So agroecology looks a little more broadly than just at the farming practices but more how they tie into the whole system. So I do think we need to be thinking about the food system, not just the practices on farm, you know, how, what are we making help, that healthy sustainable food that ties in with good food nation and that that should be really central in this bill as well and how are we producing that food in a way that is good for nature and good for the climate. So I think tying into the food system but also into a more kind of justice angle as well, how is that food system working for the people in Scotland, how is the regenerative farming system working for the farmers and the people producing the food, is it fair to them or is the payment system allowing people to transition in a way that is just. And I think that it's, if there's a way to include some of that kind of broader picture in a definition of regenerative and sustainable rather than just this practice stores more carbon, I think that that's quite important when looking at a broader picture of transforming that agricultural system. Okay, I'm going to bring in Ross, but could you also consider in your contribution again what we're looking at legislation now, I suppose, where we're the business end of the work we're doing, where we're actually looking at words and legislations and rules and laws and whatever. How do we make sure this bill, whether it on the face of the bill or setting the legislation delivers this vision, Ross? Well you pointed out when you came to the farm visit that an awful lot of the environmental schemes of the past, they weren't really, the outcomes weren't measured, you ticked a box and you did it and you got your money and that was the end of it and I think that you need to measure outcomes of these things a bit more accurately. One of them is the soils, I mean, we got creative funding and my other role is the chair of the Scottish organic milk producers, we got creative funding and we're doing soil carbon analysis as part of that, so we've got a base that we can measure against, so I think your point when you're at the farm is quite good when a lot of stuff done, hedge rows planted, and anecdotally of course there's a lot more bud life, but we need to measure that, you need to be able to see actual progress and actual things happen and I think one of the aims that I would like to see is getting a much more circular economy on farms, whether it's, yes there's an exploitative stage but like an organic system you're supposed to be trying to keep as much as possible in that particular holding and not having too much export or not enough regeneration. So how do we actually do that, how do we legislate for it because I say we've done all the talking, we know the direction of travel. We have to say well you're starting this, you must measure it at the end of it because otherwise you'll get a lot of greenwashing and what's going on calling themselves regenerative, if you don't measure it you have to have an legislation that after, I mean three years, I mean I did the climate change thing west RUC and there was a three-year scheme and that's nothing like long enough, I think it's a 10-year time span you're looking at and the legislation has to say there has to be progress than 10 years, I mean looking at the climate it's really getting quite serious and biodiversity loss is getting more and more serious, you have to see a reversal of that in real terms. Thank you, Professor Cathy Dyer. Thank you chair and I really appreciated all the contributions from others and there's nothing I disagree with but I wanted to pick up and really expand on what Dr Wright said about making this broader because I think we've talked a lot about soils and systems and most of these systems also have animals involved in them and we haven't and there's very little in the bill actually about animals and animal welfare in particular which obviously you'd expect me to want to talk about but I think it is really important there's some high level statements about animal welfare but if you drill down into the bill none of the objectives really explicitly talk about animals very much at all and it's often assumed to be part of sustainability or high quality foods but I think unless we have something very concrete that explains that animals how animals live their lives how they interact with the environment how they interact with people actually often there's very close contact between good animal welfare and good livelihoods and worker wellbeing then I think we miss some opportunities and I think there's always a worry that animal welfare sort of disappears with some of these other higher level concerns so I would like to see more thought around animal welfare how we can sustain and improve animal welfare within these the context of sustainability but also when you say more thought would you like to see something on the face of the bill which directly I would yes yeah I think I would like to well personally I would like to see an objective that talks about at least maintaining but ideally improving animal welfare we think there's a lot more research that's coming along that could integrate into opportunities to improve animal lives which will actually improve sustainability there's very good evidence now of a relationship between the two okay thank you on the same topic with Kirsty Jenkins thank you convener and hello to everybody in the room and I'm sorry I can't be with you in person I would definitely echo everything that Kathy Dwyer has just said we I think given that there are millions of animals in our food system it was quite a startling omission that animal welfare was not listed as one of the key objectives on the bill and I think it is and should be treated as a standalone priority and it's also very much linked to the wellbeing of humans and the natural world it's something that the public care about in the recently published our food report by Food Stunner Scotland and the Food Stunnerd Agency animal welfare was the second most reported concern related to food to a 81% of the respondents so we would like to see it as a standalone objective in the bill and I think it definitely should be part of the definition of regenerative agriculture we were glad to see that it was an improving animal welfare was listed as one of the goals of regenerative agriculture in the root map and that should be carried over into code of practice I think that a lot of people practising what might be called regenerative agriculture do very much recognise that animal welfare is integrated into that pasture for life association for example but very clearly state on their website the benefits that they see to animals and living in their systems and that includes the lack of behavioural restriction and production diseases that are problems in some of the more intensive systems equally it's not guaranteed and it can be assumed that animal welfare is going to be better in any given system and so it's important that it is very much built into the definition in the code of practice thank you Rachel Hamilton Kirsty Jenkins what areas of animal welfare you are concerned about because obviously the farming sector is highly regulated in terms of farm assurance schemes and you said that consumers are concerned particularly around animal welfare when it comes to food production what specific areas are you thinking of well we we are there obviously concerns for all animals in all systems what I mentioned we're relating to the more intensive systems so for as I said there are production diseases and these are health conditions that are linked to the ways that animals are bred and the environments they're raised in so to give an example chickens raised for meat who are commonly called broilers they've been selectively bred for for decades now for fast growth and improved feed conversion and what that means is that they do grow very fast their cardiovascular systems struggle to keep pace with that fast growth so what we see is that these birds near the end of their lives they have a lot of cardiovascular diseases and there are problems with their mobility there are leg disorders there's a lot of pain associated with that and then linked to the environment they're living in because they have mobility problems they'll spend a lot more time sitting or lying and so they can get breast blisters or hawk burns from the ammonia in the litter so that's just one example there are similar concerns for laying hens pigs and dairy cows all linked to the way that animals are selectively bred and raised for food so like I say the concerns are wide ranging and as I said some of those will possibly be mitigated in outdoor extensive and regenerative systems but that needs to be explicitly looked at and considered someone mentioned measurements and assessments and I think animal welfare outcome assessments should be very much a part of agricultural policy okay um professor cathi dire there are farm assurance systems that or schemes that try to improve welfare and they do but often they're voluntary um and there are it's still very evident if you look at farms that there are huge variation in animal welfare so kersti's described the situation for broilers but we know that there is 30% lameness for example in dairy cows and lameness cause is about pain so we've got large numbers of animals that are potentially in pain we still allow surgical procedures to be carried out on animals young animals without anesthesia and analgesia things that we would never allow with our companion animals so there's still issues that happen across our farming systems that the most consumers would be concerned about from a welfare perspective from the animals experiences the animals suffering we still have systems that constrict animals confined animals into colony cages or in faring crates and these are areas that there's increasing concern globally so more and more countries are moving away from the use of these systems particularly in the global north and if we sort of sit back and think we have great animal welfare we're going to be left behind by some of these countries Dr Tara White yeah i wanted to come in just a little bit on the we've been talking a bit about the objectives of the bill but i which is obviously slightly separate than the definition of regenerative and sustainable but i think they they tie together because that code of practice will obviously be developed in the context of this framework which sets out the objectives and i think from our perspective the objectives are good we really agree with all of them but they're very as a very restrictive list especially in comparison to when you look at the most recent cap legislation which has 10 really quite thorough objectives that cover a much wider range of things and i think that nature and climate crisis such that they probably deserve their own objective to count as objectives individually rather than kind of lump together and a whole lot of issues around just like farmers wages supporting generational renewal all those kind of things are not included in the objectives which i do think are really important so i do i think that if there's a way that this committee can have another look at those objectives and how we can make that more comprehensive that would be that's really important and that ties in a lot with with this kind of definition for generative and sustainable and how that um yeah how that code of practice will will play apart the other thing i just wanted to say was i think we've talked a bit about how the kind of broad difficulty is to define regenerative because it's such so broad and you know potentially assess principles and looking at at soil health and biodiversity and these kind of things i do think it's worth noting that there are practices we know are not regenerative and there's currently nothing really in the bill about how you know sort of targets to phase out practices that we know are bad for nature and the climate for example there's no doubt there's nothing around reducing high like pesticide use for example and i think that that could be an approach to take would be looking at some of these things that we specifically know are bad for nature and climate um and yeah that would be a useful approach yes just very quickly on that point about the the eu cap objectives so Scottish Government has a policy to remain aligned as closely as practicable with changes to EU policy and legislation and in the policy memorandum there was reference to moving away from the current cap schemes but staying aligned on outcomes so i think on that basis i would agree with what Tara is saying and specifically within those 10 cap objectives there's one on animal health and welfare which has already been covered by other witnesses and i think that's very important there's also one around efficient natural resource management so thinking about how we manage soils and water and the third and this is one that was flagged in the evidence submission by SAOS and we've backed their call for inclusion of strengthening the position of farmers in the value chain as an objective of the legislation i think it's very clear that enormous cost pressures on farmers is extreme weather and there's imbalances in the markets so i think if that could be an objective of the legislation then that might help for future policy to help in that regard thank you um donal mckinnon thank you convener and uh apology that i can't be with you in person today but thanks for inviting me to to join um just going back to the the definitions of the um regenerative and sustainable agriculture i think one of the one of the dangers around going into the the definitions of these in these areas is that things get left out things that we think should be included um and areas that that we think should be supported going forward and SAF has has used a slightly different term in the past to describe the kind of practices that that we want to see supported going forward and that we think are important and that's high nature value farming and i'm saying that i'm not suggesting that we introduce a new term to to this objective but i think it's just important to recognise that that once we go into and some of the discussion that that we've heard this morning and some people have described the the regenerative definitions as being quite broad but actually at times they can be quite narrow and um i worry sometimes that we could be getting to a point where we exclude some of the the really important practices that that go on particularly in in some of the areas that that we represent in the crofting counties and i'm thinking of some of the the practices in the um the cropping and the maffers in in in uist and also extensive grazing of livestock i'm just making sure that these are these are recognised as for the the importance that they do around biodiversity and delivering on what i think the objectives here are trying to outline but just making sure that those don't get lost and just while while i'm speaking to talk about the the objectives of the bill in in the round and where there may be some areas missing so like tala said i think the the objectives are quite tight and narrow and we don't that there probably is some room for a few more to be added in there and we think that there could be something specific about promoting small-scale agriculture and making it very clear that the agricultural policy does have a role in supporting that and also what something else that tara sara said about fair income as well that there should be a commitment to ensuring fair income for farmers and crofters and that that should be a key outcome of the bill as well thank you thank you donal just just to wrap up this this first question so it's all very well having codes of conduct codes of practice good practice and so on but how do we actually get that adopted in the ground by farmers how do they pick it up so links to cpd um how do we initiate that so i'm probably going to look to my right here with cpd donald mckinnon very briefly it's just what you were saying that i just wondered how you could achieve that that what you've just talked about through the lens of the bill or would you be looking at something through secondary legislation i think in relation to my first point about things that could be excluded or or additions to the to the objectives such as fair work such as supporting small holdings supporting crofters and the things that you just talked about well i think it's i think it's a it could be a combination of the two i think there there could be a role for for making that one of the objectives of the awful bill so that it's front and centre and and that ultimately this committee and the parliament are able to hold the government to account on delivering on that and i think the actual implementation of it will will will have to be through policy and through secondary legislation but i think i think it is important that it's um that that it's given the the focus that it needs um that making sure that um that these key areas of of the agricultural sector are supported and that and that all that the policy is is trying to aim for all farmers and crofters to to be able to to be rewarded adequately for the work that they're doing and delivering and i quality food production but also all the other outcomes that the agricultural policy is looking for and that that they're supported effectively. Thank you yeah back to looking at cpd and just how documents that potentially sit on the shelf how that we get farmers to dot them i'm going to ask a dr liss basant myt jaker eric begir pardon to come in on that from lanter. Thank you um i don't think there's any complicated problem that the skills system can't make more complicated um so in this situation you've got um if i've used the analogy of of changing a plug it would be you'd have different wiring in different areas of scotland and different plugs for different outputs and the consumer knowing that there's lots of different plugs but not what works in which situation um and equally all the plugs and the wiring could change very rapidly so the cpd the courses the training that you have to offer is not going to be one size fits all there isn't going to be one course one cpd programme that every farmer individual can do so that makes things a little bit more complicated um there are a very wide variety of different cpd opportunities out there we've been gathering them together on the skills hub skills hub dot scot um so you can see that there's different training there in terms of the uptake it tends to be new entrants that are looking for the training in the short courses there's not so much from people who are already established in the system so i do think that the the bill's recommendation of of being able to make cpd mandatory is a very good idea um but you need both the kind of carrot and stick approach i think in order to support people to take it up equally when you're offering the cpd there's the cpd itself it's content you've got the way that it's delivered how you find it how you fund it how you facilitate that cpd then there's the accreditation the accreditation of the person who's delivering it but also the content of the cpd and how you ensure monitor the uptake as well so i say it does make things more complicated but i think that there are some really good examples of practice out there you're not having to start from scratch but making sure that it's flexible enough that farmers who are already established and doing things really well can look at next steps and next approaches for their own business but equally there's support for the ones that are beginning on that journey of change okay rich or how you talked about a carrot and stick so would there be aspects of cpd that lanter believed should be both compulsory and voluntary i think there's stages involved you can see that with many of the other courses that we've developed where they start out as being voluntary and then they become compulsory so they start out being voluntary for example for some courses mureburn training is recently being developed in partnership with the fire and rescue service it's got a good uptake at some point that will probably be a legislative requirement it might be useful for that to be mandatory at some point in the future but it depends upon the outcomes and i think a lot with the cpd it's going to be linked to what are you measuring which comes back to the objectives so why would somebody do that course if they do it because it's going to improve their outcomes there's an incentive for doing it there if it's about health and safety then that's a different thing and i think maybe that we'll be looking more at the mandatory route for those thanks okay thank you uh custard Jenkins thanks convener i actually had a request to speak on a previous point but i will pick up on cpd as well i just wanted to build a little bit on what myself and Kathy were saying earlier about animal welfare because i think it's important to make sure we know what we mean when we're talking about animal welfare we were quite we've been quite worried about the the sort of way animal welfare has been discussed in the lead-up to this bill and especially in the Scottish Government consultation documents it seemed to be that they'd taken quite a narrow definition of welfare which was more relating to health and biological functioning and especially as that relates to other outcomes like commission reduction and productivity and so on when we speak of animal welfare and i think the consensus i'm what's animal welfare scientists now is that mental state and the animals experience of the world is the key component and Kathy did touch on that a little bit but i just wanted to really say that quite clearly that what we mean when we say animal welfare is important as well and i think that that more holistic modern definition of animal welfare is what we should be working towards and that does relate to what you were saying about cpd because i think that again that modern modern holistic sort of definition and the way of thinking of animal welfare needs to be built into cpd and i think there are already things happening that are really beneficial for animal welfare for example i know that a lot of people who practice what would come under the umbrella of regenerative use low stress handling techniques and i think that's obviously something that should be built on and built into cpd from what i've heard the monitor farms are really valuable so for example as i understand that a lot of pig farmers are now becoming much more positive about the idea of potentially moving away from farrowing crates as long as that transition is properly managed and that's partly because you know as as some farmers do it and they can see their friends and neighbours sort of see the systems in practice and working that that really sort of builds confidence that it is possible just for clarity before i begin i don't know if other members have much chance to speak yet some have but i was wanting in so i'll make that point if i can ask about the point that's been made and others have touched on it i realise but the definition of sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices i mean we've talked during this in the context of other legislation as well there is this balancing act to be done about what goes on the face of the bill in terms of definitions and then what's flexible enough to avoid either emission exemption or exclusion by emission in a list or to avoid a situation where the government has to continually come back to parliament to change legislation every time there's the demand for it to do something new so how do you get that balance right when defining in the bill the definition of sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices? I'm bound to say as a representative of the organic sector that the organic movement provides you with a legally binding set of standards that take a large number of boxes and we get a bit frustrated that the government seems to treat organics as a bit of a kind of byline and we don't get the recognition we deserve for doing a lot of these things already and one of the things we'd like to see is as the previous support schemes did to give you a buy to tier 2 and 3 if you're an organic farmer automatically because you're deemed to be doing those things but soil association, SOPA and the other certification bodies are doing the job for you you know they're certifying us for you for us and it's legally binding it's there and how you define all the other things I don't know it's very very difficult you have to have certification of some description although the outcomes based thing would be certainly when we're looking at it but you know that the organic standards provide you with a basis in which a lot of these things you're looking for are already being done. I wouldn't want to dismiss the organic sector but I think it is very prescriptive because of the actions they're not allowed to do and for that reason I like regenerative more. I think that Tara's absolutely right there's many different definitions a lot of these definitions focus beyond the five principles of soil health so I think we need to recognise the wider ecosystem services that are provided. Out and farm I'm always amazed at the pockets of habitats and the species habitat support so our farmland is connecting nature reserves it's creating corridors throughout our countryside if we focus on the key elements of soil health they're very prescriptive and they're very arable focused if we take it to back to the basics living routes minimum tillage covering the soil integrating livestock these are all things livestock farmers are doing so from that they're excluded I'd say wider definitions I would take a holistic view it's maintaining the ecosystem services enhancing them it's taking it beyond the farm gate it's looking at local food chains it's getting every person to recognise where the food come from if there is a loss in yield how do we support that how do we help people transition how do we get people to pay for those goods they're not buying a steak they're buying a steak that capture not steak and capture carbon but they're buying the system they're buying the butterflies that are in that medal they're buying the carbon that's locked up in the hedgerow it's recognising that the food they are paying for isn't just something they eat and also diets food waste etc okay thanks we've got dr white dr ory and nigel miller i was going to come in back on the cpd point is that okay or shall i do we want to stick to this well actually what we'll do we'll we'll stick to to that point we're on at the moment we can come back at the end of the question okay dr ory thank you governor thank you for all the previous points what this discussion is really revealing as we know that it's a very diverse sector um and in my opinion with such a framework bill what we can probably do usefully is to stick to the high level objectives of biodiversity would pollution a pollution climate change and probably linking it with land use land demand and what it means globally and in the uk and scotland because prescribing actions on the farm might be counterproductive so it's a it's a fine balance it's a little bit like if we prescribed everyone to have electric cars just from tomorrow instead we prescribe it at the uk level on national level however what i would like to also point out is that um the farm level required changes might be better to be result based outcome based um as we heard before and we also have to think about the coverage of the bill because right now it seems that it's going to cover those people farmers landowners managers who decide to be in the subsidy system not anyone else and depending on the money flows and so on more and more farmers might decide to get out of the system do we have any leverage on what they do do we want to tell them somehow to go this direction on that direction so that's an important point and it links a lot with land use and land use change the climate climate change committee recently said in a report that by 2050 in the uk we need to change agricultural land use so that agricultural land use need to be reduced by 21% and by 2030 by 9% if that's going to change then again that area will that be included in the bill or in other legislation how we deal with those and how we deal with those farmers and landowners and managers who decide to go into other land use so these are really important and especially important to reaching net zero targets i'm going to come to you Nigel Miller and back to Alison Allan thanks very much i think quite a few of the points that i were concerned about fear is actually touched on but i think that you know if we look at definitions they've got to be for everybody you know that's the reality and i think that if you're looking at definitions or looking at nice to have initiatives you've actually got to still remember what we've got to deliver in the long term one is more food and that's quite difficult given that our land area is actually falling one the other one i suppose immediately is if you look at what we've signed up to as a country is is a mission reduction and one of those is obviously methane reduction but also general reduction of emissions which is quite challenging 30 30 commitments to wildlife which is actually going to take land out of production in agricultural area 70 percent of our land is under agricultural tenure if you have 30 percent under biodiversity management then your production potential is going to fall this is almost a revolution this is a bigger revolution than we've faced ever it's bigger than what we faced in the 1940s agriculture is going to change really significantly now i've got no problem at all with having a a vibrant organic sector which is well supported it's a you know a really you know positive concept but the reality is if we're looking at sustainability and regenerative farming it's got to be accessible to everybody and we're going to have to have some farms which are actually very productive in food terms and we're going to have to have some farms which actually do deliver on sequestration and on biodiversity there's going to be two strands you're going to have there and these basic definitions have actually got to apply to them all and if you're looking at regenerative farming we need to have we micro-managing is going to be impossible if we're going to make these changes there's got to be flexibility there for farmers to innovate and also adopt new techniques but also i suppose fit systems to their actual geographic and climatic and i suppose soil conditions and you can't micro-manage that so really if you're looking at definitions that soil carbon one is critical if you're looking at regenerative practice you've really got to go really basic looking at having rotations on on cropping systems and looking at you know legumes or diverse wards and making those a baseline requirement don't go any further than that otherwise you'll destroy the industry and i think you'll also soak away that already the industry is disillusioned finds this process difficult feels powerless and in many ways is declining this bill as well as being enabling as far as legislation has actually got to be a signpost that there is a future and there's something positive ahead there's real challenges but you need farmers to actually you accept those challenges and give you the solutions not micro-manage them into submission and i think there's a real danger of that in this process and it's already started and that's you know spills over onto cpd the 1.5 group did write a lot about training and cpd in different methodologies and trying to reach people that don't normally have the time or the ability to get to training but i think there's a starting point a lot of farmers are most farmers are very professional if this is a profession the profession itself should be deciding what cpd is available and giving people choices of what to do it shouldn't be imposed uh top down from anybody saying well you guys need a bit of training then you'll change the reason farmers haven't changed is there's no bloody route map to change to and we don't know what's going to be acceptable even on things like emissions and mitigation measures we don't know whether that should be in the inventory so people are adopting some of these spending money and they're not counting the bloody inventory now you know government's got an obligation here to actually be upfront about what the targets are but also facilitate change by actually you know having you know some sort of pointers but also that that underpinning of information which allows people to take decisions always mitigation and regenerative techniques actually cost money if you put have a legume uh uh based uh rotation which is probably something you want to have if you look at it in financial terms what it gains you it's negative it's a cost so we're looking at higher costs if you look at sales and and uh uh s a c s sorry it's not just about nitrogen use and you know it's also about you know total output from that farm and the actual crop values you get and that that's what in the end matters uh and the reality is that you know inflation has already eroded 30 percent uh from the support system so we're a less supported sector so it's a this is a crisis time or a real challenge i don't really like using that wording but it's extraordinary challenge that we're facing uh and trying to micromanage the industry isn't it helpful okay i'm gonna i'm gonna give you the right to reply very briefly very briefly all what i asked Nigel you said we need to produce more food where's the evidence for that that is a trophy here all the time we need to produce higher quality food producing more food for whom to oversupply already oversupply the community market or we're not feeding a third world here you won't feed the world with suckler cows that's for one thing i think you know that that that comes simply from the land use change report from the UK climate change committee and they came up with a very basic calculation which was if we're actually going to produce the same amount of food per capita in the UK we need to increase our production by 20 percent now there's quite a lot on that that report that i white dispute but that's just a your finger a finger crunching exercise and the reality is if you look at food supply and look at what we use just now we use a lot of vegetables and fruit from from spain those areas now have eroded their groundwater they can't grow those two three crops a year they can't supply the UK likewise if you look at California it's in the same place look at parts of Australia and New Zealand where your extreme climate events gives you fluctuations of production and look at the level of starvation or food deprivation in all sorts of developing countries it's irresponsible to actually suggest that we don't need to produce more food thank you we're drifting a bit off the of the bill i'm going to pull it back in i'm going to ask allister for his supplementary thing and move on thank you thank you it was mentioned by Donald and by Vera there as well i think as well talking about brought in what well i'm going to put words in their mouths but i think that we're talking about low intensity agriculture and the value of it in terms of legislation that defines sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices i wonder maybe this one's aimed at Donald but i wonder if you can just explain to us where crofting fits into that picture of low intensity agriculture and what crofters are already doing to achieve some of these aims around regenerative agriculture thanks thanks allister yeah as i said earlier on i think it's just important that we recognize some of these existing practices that are that are happening on the ground so so the example i used there was of cropping on the maffers in in us now that's quite a unique system that's an integration of both arable production but very closely linked with beef cattle and the two wouldn't the one wouldn't happen without the other but the the impact of that that system which i would argue is a very sustainable one it makes use of seaweed that's washed up on the shore to provide the nutrients that grow the crops that are then fed to the cattle that system does a huge amount for the biodiversity in that area providing habitat for some of rare species such as the corn cake and and lots of lots of other red list species that inhabit that area and if that part of the industry becomes if the if any element of that system becomes unsupported or or unable to continue then that that process falls apart and the important thing to to think about there as well is the cultural significance of that the the importance of that to to that community and to to the Gallic language as well in that area too so we have to be incredibly careful that that we take those those really really fragile systems with us this policy is developed and as the system is developed that's just one example and there's there's plenty others throughout the crofting counties of other other quite quite unique approaches and some not so unique that would translate into into other types of upland agriculture and hill farming across the across the rest of the country but that extensive livestock system and the integration between that and people communities culture but also biodiversity and how reliant some of our our most threatened species are and just clinging on really in some of these areas where these traditional agricultural practices are are continuing so we can't we can't become blinkered by just looking at emissions and carbon it's very very important you know that dealing with the climate crisis is it has to be top of the agenda but but we need to make sure that we're taking a holistic approach to this and looking at all these other things that are important and and we can't lose sight of so thanks. Thank you. Doctor White. I'm going to move on to my point in CPD in just a second I just wanted to come back a little bit on what Nigel was saying and just to say that from the land workers alliance perspective we take a very different view on this kind of idea of two strands approach and I do think it's important for that that when we're thinking about the bill that that there are these two kind of schools of thought that actually we don't need to have intense production on some farms and biodiversity on others that we can have both you know both those things can coexist at the moment our most productive farms in terms of land use are small-scale horticulture so fruit and vegetable production market gardens they're sequester lots of carbon they're great for biodiversity and you can feed 100 families on one hectare so I think that we don't need we should need to move away from this dichotomy between production and nature and we really need to start seeing those things together in terms of the the cpd so this is we've actually got a question a little bit further on on cpd that we'll probably come back to that and discuss it more widely I'm going to move to a question from Ariane Burgess thanks convener and my question is around the code which we've kind of touched on already a little bit so we heard from David you talked about what's the code for what's the legal basis and Lornau you were talking about that it should be prepared with stakeholders but I think we would be interested to hear what your thoughts are on what should be in the code in a way we've been talking around that in for example we heard from both Kirsty and Kathy Dwyer Professor Kathy Dwyer around the need for animal welfare considerations in the objectives but do we need that in the code and Ross you know you mentioned guidance on organics so just be interested to hear what you think should be in the code and also section seven on guidance has a part about guidance being created including the code and how ministers should be using that so just anyone's thoughts about that I suppose my vision of the code is that it's more like a manual and I think I suppose Veer has probably been involved in assessing various techniques and evaluating them and I think that you know some of our work is I suppose quite pivotal to how we actually you know progress agriculture in a sustainable low carbon methodology but you know to me we we don't want to micromanage what we want to do is to get information to to farmers to actually list the interventions or taking techniques you can use you know define their value and impact on the environment and biodiversity in the soil and also to me you need to define whether they have any direct or indirect impact on the climate change inventory and that then gives people a very you know a really powerful manual as to some of the techniques that they make think of drawing down or they may already be using on their holding and to me you know you know we don't want to micromanage but I think there are fundamental principles although you know it's been seen to cost money by some analysis and economists I think that probably it should be pretty well mandatory that if you're cropping you do have a rotation and there's some a nutrient building phase within that rotation and I think that if you're putting down swords unless you get some sort of derogation you should be putting clovers and having a mixed sword you know those two I think you know we've just got to take and it's a cost and you know presumably the actual clovers won't be a cost if you manage them right there will be a and if you look at the data there's a positive to that so it's a manual but it's got to have those actual outcomes in it so that people can assess their value in implementing them. I've got Kathy, Kirsty and then Dave. Thank you to come back on the animal welfare point and I agree with what Nigel said you don't it's not about micromanaging it's about giving guidance and I think we do already have codes for the welfare of the farm species so we recommend linking to those but I think I just wanted to comment that there are also other animals on farm that aren't the production animals there's the wildlife the other animals that exist on the farm as well and I think and they also have a welfare state they're not protected in the same ways but nonetheless from a I think Kirsty already mentioned a sort of more progressive view of animal welfare would consider that the wildlife on it still have value we've talked about biodiversity and nature value so I think something that recognises the welfare state of those animals that they as well as the production animals so I think having something that's sort of I guess in a manual that providing that sort of underpinning understanding that these animals have a value in their own right and that most citizens no not just the consumers citizens have an interest in the the protection of those animals as well can I just ask is not just covered in another no sorry sorry Rachel I've got about six six people with a hands up what I'm going to do I'm going to take Kirsty and Dave then I'm going to bring in Jim Fairland I can bring in after that Rachel Kirsty yes I just wanted to respond directly to the question from Ariane Burgess yes we do believe that animal welfare should be explicitly stated as a key outcome objective of the bill and it should also be explicitly in the code of practice for sustainable and regenerative agriculture I also just wanted to I was reflecting on some of the other recent contributions and I feel like too often animal welfare is or improving animal welfare is seen as coming at a cost to somebody so it's a cost to farmers for example or a cost to people struggling with the cost of living crisis and I think we need to try and move away from that zero some type of thinking and we need to where that where there seems to be that that perhaps conflict it points to me to need for more transformational change in our farming and food systems I think this bill should there should be much more explicit interaction between this bill and the good food nation act and the national food plan and that that where that transformation will changes needed that the two bills really need to work together a lot more where we're saying that you know there need to be improvements in animal welfare absolutely that needs to be a just transition that's not something that should be seen as putting additional pressure or barriers for farmers it's something that the system needs to change in order to bring forward benefits for the animals and farmers and communities and that's why I think that the interactions with good food nation are really important because a lot of the discussion around good food nation were for example around reshortered supply chains more localised foods and that would mean that for example farmers moving to higher welfare systems could have be given a reliable market via public procurement or local food hubs so that that takes away what might be a perceived risk to making those improvements for animal welfare and I think the you know the the links between the the welfare of humans and other animals and the natural world are very well recognised now the one health and one welfare or conceptual frameworks are recognised at UN level and I think we need to be thinking much more in that way about animal welfare and it should be seen as an investment not a cost thank you I'm David Mackay yes just to respond to arianne burge's question around the code I think the answer is it depends what you're going to use it for so our view is that you know farmers are already subject to gate and smr requirements for basic payments we think that the code would be most effective if it was essentially an extension of that baseline so if Scottish Government can set out what it thinks a kind of universal requirement should be for sustainable and regenerative farming and that should be at that tier one level and that can be phased in if need be over time to bring everybody up to that level and I think that by doing that you can take more money out of that tier one payment and really be focusing resource on tier two and the more kind of support focus tiers three and four and we haven't talked about money too much yet but there is a finite budget and you know there's reports in the press for the past week that that budget is shrinking and we don't know what's going to happen after the general election next year in terms of future support for the devolved nations on agriculture so we're asking this budget to do an awful lot of things and I think over time we need to be pushing more of that towards as I say that tier two which is really focused on those practices that can reduce emissions and increase biodiversity but also the really important elements in tier three and four so what the future iteration of agri-environment schemes might look like but also things like knowledge exchange I mean we're involved with projects with organisations including land workers alliance at the moment on peer-to-peer knowledge exchange and we have found over the years that it's a very effective way of farmers learning from one another on best practice so there needs to be an increase in funding for that type of thing as well. Thank you. Jim Fairlie. The range of the discussion that we've had already shows the complexity of what it is that we're actually trying to do here. We started off talking about the objectives and planning overall but overarching objectives of the agricultural policy for the purposes of the act, adoption of the use of sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices. What's the definition of that? In the route map that the Scottish Government produced earlier on, part one of that is improving animal welfare, increasing climate resilience for production, carbon, captioned carbon in soils and vegetation, enhancing water quality and supply in the landscape, supporting thriving biodiversity and ecosystems but we also have to make sure that we're producing high quality food. Nigel just talked about what does the code of practice look like. It has to be a manual that farmers can work to but how do you do that across the whole country when you've got such a diverse country and there's diversity on individual farms? I think probably the point I'm trying to push is the fact that this is a framework bill but there's no way that we can have on-size fits all going throughout this bill. It's going to have to be almost regional in its approach but what the Government has done has set out that route map to allow us to get to the point where we are just now that the framework bill is quite literally the only way that we can develop this to achieve all of the aims of and this is just one round table. There's going to be other round tables where there's going to be even more demands put on this bill so are we in the right place with terms of a framework bill and is it going to have to be done on a regional basis? I just add another complexity in that at the moment we're completely excluding fish and if we're thinking about animal welfare we're also thinking about good food production and with the increase in clothes loop systems as well I think that fish are going to have to come into this as well. I'm going to push you on that. How does the agricultural and rural communities reform bill include fish? Donald was talking earlier about the use of seaweed as well as we're using that in certain types of farming so you've got also the increase in systems now which are going to be used more on land. It's a form of high quality protein that's being produced it's going to overlap into the... I'm sorry to be rude I don't think this is actually within the scope of the bill it's in front of us I think we need to be really conscious that today is about looking at the bill it's in front of us and what's in it what's not in it what should be in it and what should come after it. I don't think aquaculture at the moment is going to form part of that I know we've got rural communities but I don't think we're at the stage of looking at that just now. That's fine that's actually it. Thank you. On Jim's question Nigel. When I suggested you that it should be a manual I was suggesting that there would only be two mandatory requirements one on arable production or crop production and one on establishing grassland and the rest of the manual will give you information and you could draw down on a menu what you thought was appropriate for your farm to actually allow different regions of different systems to actually tailor the regenerative approach to their actual situation. So can I just add into that as a question? So we've already got these monitor farms where farmers are going and working together collectively in one area. Do you see that as a vital tool going forward in order to achieve the collective aims that the bills try to establish? I think it could spotlight what is effective and trial new approaches and foster innovation I think that would be quite helpful yes. I think it's worth saying when we're talking about a bit about the other question but also the kind of just what should be in the code generally that I think we shouldn't forget that we do have examples across all sectors and all regions of Scotland of really amazing regenerative sustainable farming where people are sequestering carbon, they are improving biodiversity, it's actively working for nature and they're producing local food. So these examples exist and that the farmers who are already doing that who are way ahead of the curve have a very good sense of the practices that they're using and what counts as regenerative and sustainable. They will look different in different areas, they'll look different in farms in the same area that are doing different approaches and I think that any kind of practice, any kind of manual does really need to be co-designed with the farmers who are already doing those things. I think the monitor farm programme is amazing, I think it's great but I think that that doesn't represent the farmers who are the most ahead of the curve in terms of innovation on sustainable and regenerative farming and so convening the farmers who really are the furthest ahead with that I think is very important for developing what exactly should be in the code of practice. I agree, I think it needs to be quite a bit of a manual and fairly broad, I think that we would expand on some of the specifics of what could be in it, for example I think something like reducing pesticide use or reducing inputs generally does seem kind of crucial to regenerative and sustainable farming and it's still fairly broad in terms of how you would go about doing that but I think there are more specifics that we can include but yeah it should be co-designed with the people who are already doing that. I think that Ross and then Vera. I'll just add a quick one on a more general point, I mean one of the key things, I mean all these things are linked to climate change by diversity, animal welfare, a reduction of antibiotic use but also the knowledge transfer side of it's really important you know we need to do that and the KTF funding is hugely welcome in that respect. I completely agree that the code should be very flexible manual with some prescribed things but because of the flexibility and the complexity we have to improve the monitoring aspect which Ross mentioned quite early on at the farm level for the outcomes we want to achieve at the national level because we have very little time to achieve our targets and if we just try to go into that direction but we are not monitoring on the farms and then eventually don't tie the payments for the outcomes and the results on the farm then we are going to miss our targets. Okay thank you and then we have to question from Kate Forbes. Thanks very much, well we've spent quite a lot of time on one of the objectives in terms of regenerative agriculture and sort of straight into some of the others and I have a series of questions which I'll keep quite short because I might not get back in so my question first of all is that in today's evidence and also in the evidence that many of you provided in advance there was a temptation and I've heard it already to try and get more objectives than we can count in the bill because all of these things are laudable and important but it defeats the whole point of a targeted bill so we've got four objectives in front of us. Do you think that four is the right number or would you be happy with 10, 15, 20 so this is a question about numbers not a question about additional objectives and then secondly specifically on the fourth objective which actually reflects the title of the bill around enabling communities to thrive, rural communities to thrive sorry. What does that look like to you and is that sufficiently prescriptive and do you see it being in tension with any of the other objectives? Now having just said don't put too many objectives in, I've just asked you too many questions. Donald? I think on the number I think it is a difficult question this because I think I don't think we should be saying we can only have four if there's another one that could come in that makes sense. I think that there is some logic in making it focused and trying not to get too carried away but as I said in my earlier contribution I do think that there is room for some more specific objectives there around small scale and like I said about about about protecting incomes but I appreciate that everybody will want to chip in with other outcomes to add to that other objectives to add to that too and that you could end up with that sort of ramblin list of lots of different things that it perhaps doesn't quite deliver. I think on the second part of the question on rural communities I don't necessarily see it in tension with the other other objectives but I see agricultural support and everything that this policy is trying to deliver us being absolutely key to the success and viability of many of our rural communities and I think sometimes that connection can be overlooked so I'm actually really pleased to see that as one of the objectives on the face of the bill and making that link between agricultural support and how our rural communities thrive and function but I think we also need to be considerate, we've talked a bit about about where this sits in relation to the common agricultural policy and I think we do need to reflect on and be aware of where this bill sits now in relation to things that the cap did in the past and so particularly things like community-led local development which seem to be being developed in other areas of policy now but making sure that these important things that drove rural development in much of our areas and that these are still being catered for and that but maintaining that link with agriculture as well that these things are connected then they don't happen in isolation. Can I push Donald on that just really briefly? You said that you don't see the attention there. Is there not a concern from a crofting perspective that there might be a tension between a rural crofting community thriving and what might be required with the other objectives? I mean you have already said you don't see a tension and I just wanted to ensure that that is really what you... I think depending on the direction that some of the direction that the policy heads in on the back of some of these objectives then there is the chance for that to emerge and it's one of the things that I think we've been we've been very strong in calling for cognisance of what crofting needs I think to be able to continue to thrive and one of those which I haven't touched on yet which I'm bringing in here is around is actually around payment system and around redistribution of payments which is another thing which I think is very important for for how those businesses actually continue to be supported. It's also a link back to alignment with the EU is something that's being brought in with the latest version of the cap and I think moving money around is one of these areas where I think tensions do develop and can develop and that we need to make sure that the storage area for the whole is able to thrive and function but in doing so we need to acknowledge that some areas have probably been undersupported or have definitely been undersupported and moving that support actually to some of these undersupported areas which I would argue would be crofting and our marginal areas who have not benefited as much from the current three-region system so I think there is there is to rephrase what I said there is definitely there is definitely some areas where there could be conflict emerging there but I hope that in recognising the importance of what crofting can deliver here that if we're able to introduce other objectives that relate specifically to those small producers then we can mitigate against that. On the first point about the number of objectives I do think I think we need more than four. I do think it's important that it's targeted and direct kind of objectives but the rest of the bill leaves so much room for you know it's giving powers to ministers to make decisions and what those decisions look like and where they go it basically is completely under not directed at all by anything in the bill other than these objectives and so having just four that leave out quite a lot of really what seemed to me very crucial areas like the fact that it doesn't talk about farmers and their well-being and their livelihoods at all in the objectives. To me these things are essential that they are in the objectives so that ministers have to take that into account when they make the decisions later on so I think a more thorough list of objectives is really crucial in a framework bill. I don't think that there should be 15 but I think 10 wouldn't be unreasonable. In terms of what Donald has been saying about an objective around small-scale and crofting and how have it something like that can really make sure that decisions made under other aspects of the legislation don't negatively impact on those communities that we do need that in place like very clearly in the framework. In terms of the thriving rural communities objective I think it's really important that that's there and I think it's it's worth noting that the bill is the agriculture and rural communities bill but very much a lot of most of the legislation discusses agricultural payments with less looking at the rural community side of it and I think that that's something to consider as to how you know a broader idea of what thriving rural communities looks like could come under this framework legislation but I think there's some some of the objectives that are necessary for the the rural communities things like looking at fair farmers incomes improving the position of farmers in supply chains those things are crucial for thriving rural communities and it's less that the rural communities objective is in is intention with the other objectives and more that it feels very intention with the actual proposed plan of the payment system so the proposed plan of the payment system is that the majority of the money will be an area-based payment currently with no mandatory redistribution so the most money will go to the biggest businesses the biggest landowners at the moment that's a really huge proportion of the budget is going to pretty big businesses basically while sort of medium scale and family farms are really squeezed small scale receives almost nothing crofting receives almost nothing and that is not supporting thriving rural communities so I think any kind of sense that that's the main system that we're going to continue forward move forward with is really intention with that objective and we that really needs to be so I think it's a crucial objective from that perspective and I would really echo what Donald was saying about the importance of introducing a redistributive payment system a mandatory redistributive payment system in the primary legislation which is now under the primary legislation of the cap so it's in place across all of Europe and has been shown to be beneficial in supporting a wider rate like you know more farmers diversity farmers and that that redistributive payment would really help to meet that thriving rural communities objective okay I've got up everybody wants to come in in the back of this so I've got Nigel, Kathy and then David and then we'll we'll reassess I think it's fairly clear that you'll more than four is would be helpful and there's been comments about what they should be I suspect that the early on the cap was held up as a reasonable model and to me the clarity of those objectives and the number of objectives looks fairly helpful and it may be to me would be more helpful than the four we have as far as the actual legislation is concerned it's enabling and I think those you know people have talked about the scope of how you actually spend the budget and how you should redistribute it if you want to maintain rural communities and I think that is you know there for the you know for the next process for to do that as as best but I think you want to remember about all rural communities and the fact that you know Dumfries and Galloway has more than 10 or 11% to the economy as a partially based on agriculture and the borders where I come from is about 8% and Orkney's 11 or something is at or 12 so it's the most extreme so don't forget about these areas when you think about redistputing money I suppose I spent my early life working in the crofting communities in Sutherland and Caithness and so I have quite a passion for it but you know and I think it is absolutely fundamental the crofting framework is actually maintained and supported in such a way that that it actually I suppose creates a baseline of activity within these areas around a community that actually works and you know there's obviously infrastructural problems there that you need investment but I think that also you know we've talked about biodiversity and sequestration how that might fit in and you know I was it was taken that I talked about two strands there may be one type that won't do one another in reality everybody's going to have to do something and everybody's probably going to have to have 10% of land contributed to biodiversity or sequestration but there should be in tier two options to look at you know wider maybe commitments to sequestration by diversity and the crofting areas would be you know could maintain their production and their activity but also get funding to actually contribute to those goals they've got the land types and the ecosystems and the habitats which actually could fit into that type of farming and get additional payments and that actually moves us towards our national goals and all of these visionaries of requirements which we're mapping out here have to be seen in the context we've got to reduce emissions before to increase this sequestration and biodiversity on our farmland and also produce food and that that shouldn't be forgotten when we look at all the detail of the nice to have options that we require. Thank you. Kathy and then David. Thank you I guess I'm reiterating how I'll keep it short reiterating the point that four probably is too few they're too I mean they are overarching so maybe having some sub-objectives is underneath it but at the moment there's a there's a lack of clarity I suppose for people to understand exactly what falls underneath this and what how this is going to progress in the future and again I guess I would just come back and say I think improving animal health and welfare is in the cap as has been mentioned already it's something that's supported by the British veterinary association and a number of other other areas as well that this is something that's not a nice to have I think this is fundamental to having high quality food sustainable agriculture having thriving rural community does sit underneath all of these but I think it needs that addition of being a specific objective to ensure that there is actual progress in this area. David, then Liz and Kirsty. I won't reiterate what's already been said about the numbers but I agree with what the previous contributions have made I just want to make a point on enabling rural communities to thrive I think that the bill as it's drafted is quite strong on agricultural support but arguably less so on wider rural development I think that in the first instance it's absolutely imperative that we can have profitable and resilient rural businesses and that I think that should not be in conflict with a switch to nature friendly farming in fact there's reports from nature friendly farming network that have pointed out the cost savings to be made from moving to these approaches so that's the first thing but we shouldn't forget about the wider rural development and in some of the other evidence responses that I looked at for coming today one example that was flagged there's leader funding so there's lots of things that were previously happening that we have to make sure that the the bill which I think possibly could be strengthened in this area is also delivering on that wider rural development piece. Thank you. Just to reassure you I've got everybody's name down so I've got Liz, Kirsty, Vera, Ross and Lorna in that order so go to Liz next. Thank you. Yes I think maybe not enough but also there's a gap perhaps between the production of the high quality food and then where that's going because obviously the networks and how that then gets out to the consumer is what's going to help the rural communities to thrive so I do think there's potentially a gap there and also I know there's tension between bringing about change now and what that's going to look like in the future particularly with the very long timelines that we work on in agriculture but those crops are going to change and I think there has to be some flexibility around what's being produced as well sometimes the priority will be food other times in another area it might be feed stocks with plastic alternative cellulose etc so that was also just something to consider. Thank you. Kirsty and then Vera. Thanks I'll try and be brief just to respond to the two different parts of Kate Forbes question I agree I don't think there's a problem with having more than four objectives and I do think that animal welfare is important and it should be a standalone objective if for some reason the Scottish Government and Parliament were not minded to do that I think it should be made much more explicit that animal welfare continuous improvement in animal welfare should be seen as a core component of both high quality food production and sustainable and regenerative agriculture. The second part of the question is about are there any tensions with thriving rural communities and I guess I just wanted to build on what I've already said no there shouldn't be I mean the well-being of humans and other animals is inextricably linked and I've heard reports from farmers who have made improvements for their animal welfare and it has subsequently made their own job satisfaction you know higher because they care about their animals of course. I want to go back earlier I was talking about the welfare concerns for broilers and just to say that you know those intensive chicken farms also cause a lot of environmental damage I think we're seeing a lot of reports in the media recently down south about the river why and the pollution from chicken farms and there have also been situations in Scottish communities where the communities have really pushed back against those kind of intensive units in their community so that's just an example about the well-being of people and communities and animals being linked. I am using a poultry example purposefully because I know that that's outside of the current subsidy scheme and I'm going back to what I was saying previously about the fact that the agriculture policies and the good food nation policies should be working together more to drive up standards and bring food system changes across the boards so we want to make sure that the welfare of all animals is considered and not only those who currently receive subsidies and that that's a good example of that. Thank you Kirsty and then Ross. Thank you I feel that regarding rural communities the bill can do many things but I still feel it is quite restrictive in its current form because it's so much linked to food production and not so much to buy their ecosystem service generation which will have to happen in large scale very soon so farmers might decide to provide more sequestration on the services or not to grow any crops anymore and then will therefore out of under the bill or what will be their support and what is the support for the communities where larger scale sequestration people and restoration and other things will happen so the bill I don't feel the bill really covers all of the land use and it should and it should link with all these objectives also regarding changes in farm we can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 10 15 percent by the changes of the systems we can do probably another 10 percent by reducing food waste what brings us really to our target minus 30 percent or 40 percent is reducing the consumption of high land use high greenhouse gas products which is mostly livestock red meat ruminants now that ties with land use change and that's it's not really clear the pathway for those farmers what will be what will happen to them how they can change how they can transform in a just way and what it also links with is what Kirsty was saying the link with Good Food Nation the Good Food Nation is in my opinion very weak in terms of supporting this transition in our food consumption and diets and because it's so that needs to change and also the links between this bill in reducing the production of high greenhouse gas intensity food products needs to link with the reducing the consumption of high greenhouse gas intensity food products. I'm going to go to Ross and then Lorna. I'm just one thing to say that nobody's spoken about in that land reform land needs to be made available more readily available if you want to enable communities to thrive and one of the things we discussed when the meetings were going round the country talking about this, somebody said that we've made law that any farm for sale comes onto the open market for a limited period of time so that people can see it and get a chance to bid for it rather than large farms getting sold around the kitchen table by agreement between two farmers that never even sees the market because the concentration of land ownership it has to get any better in Scotland really in a way and especially in our area where a lot of the big dairy farms are getting bigger and bigger and when the farm comes in the market it gets gobbled up with so much of a chance people are only looking for a giveaway they're looking for a chance just to bid for it or a group of people to bid for it and as Tara says a lot of these people could do a hell of a lot with a very small area of land so thank you. Lorna. It's more a picky comment but it's about the production of high quality food and that terminology is hazy what is high quality food is it the nutritional value of the food is it the wider public goods that have accompanied production and I also think and this goes back to Nigel's point we should also mention in some way food quantity and we I fully believe we need to safeguard Scotland's food production we need to make Scotland as self-sufficient as possible so I think there'll be a squeeze as climate change impacts and as areas of production are impact the price of food will go up firstly but also if we reduce production that production will be met elsewhere and that could result in well it will result in us simply offshoring emissions and biodiversity loss and that could happen in countries that don't have the same environmental regulation as we do so personally I don't feel it's right to remove the quantity of food as well from the bill. A few people have touched on the difficulties that the farmers have in transforming what they do for want of information about support they might receive or the adequacy thereof. I just wonder if the people also have a view about the the other bit of that which is that beyond 2025 scottish government has or scottish farmers more importantly have no idea what the funding envelope is from the UK and how that impacts on farmers thinking and decision-making. Nigel? I think you know clearly it does I mean I think you know that that sort of black hole which seems to be sort of growing in budgets you know throughout the UK and the attitude of the Westminster Government towards agriculture and certainly domestic food production does actually erode confidence and is part of the reason why a lot of producers probably feel powerless and are not optimistic about the future and you know if that can be resolved it'd be really helpful and I think it is worth you know remembering A that inflation is eroded 30% of the the budgets value as it is and if you look at what we want to achieve which you know some of it is you know fairly specific on things like you animal welfare and the soil qualities and that but it's all about sustainable systems and you know I guess biodiversity right from the soil to the apex predators actually building that these actually add further management challenges and further costs to production systems and therefore if you want you know these diverse outputs and public goods the actual budget should be rising not falling so you know that I think that's the other message that I think it should be loud and clear. I'm going to suspend the meeting until 10.50 for a comfort break. Okay, we'll get started again. We're going to move on with a question from Karen Adam. Thank you, convener. I'd like to see what the views are of our roundtable today on the rural support plan. A note that from some written statements and evidence that some have commented about the detail that might be in here but also what they may think that ministers should have a regard to, I know Ross you mentioned perhaps land reform for example so I'd just like to kick that off, convener, if I may. Nigel. On a technical point really I suppose adding to what Ross said is that you know probably you know this bill or the Secretary of Legislation has got to redefine what agriculture is in the reality is that the moment it's quite restrictive and that impacts on tenants and your tenants have also got to be or you've got to classify your woodland management or habitat management or sequestration as agricultural activities so that tenants actually don't fall foul of their landlord by taking part in these initiatives so I think that's quite important but I think the other thing which is probably quite important which is very techie is ineligible land. The EU's defined what ineligible land is and some of it is roads and yards and that's fair enough but it also includes woodlands and scrub and winds and scree wetlands ponds hedges all ineligible that's got to that definition has got to change so those are brought into the system and are actually recognised for their biodiversity and their sequestration value and that requires you a change of definition of eligible land but it also requires mapping and you know the mapping we have is all ineligible land and even hedges that have been paid for by the Scottish Government they aren't bloody mapped on the Scottish system a lot of them so you know there's real gaps in our mapping system we don't really know or government doesn't have good mapping of where biodiversity is on farmland so there's some major sort of rather techie sort of changes that this enabling act has got to facilitate change on. I'd actually like to come in on the land reform point to bring that back up again. I do think it's really important that our rural support plan and agricultural payment system has regard for for land reform because one of the key the key objectives of the land reform legislation is reducing concentration of land ownership and yet the proposed rural support plan actively incentivises through an area-based payment that basically the hoarding of land so those pieces of legislation feel in direct opposition to each other so I think it is very important that that overall aim of the land reform legislation is taken into regard when developing a rural support plan and also I think it's also crucial just because you were looking at a really sort of aging population of farmers it's very difficult for new entrants it's very difficult for new for young farmers to properly get get into the farming sector certainly we have loads of members who are well trained really keen just want to farm and can't access land so I do think we need to start taking seriously that issue of new entrants and that tying in with land reform is a is a crucial way to do that in the rural support plan. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, yes. Firstly just to agree with what Nigel said around definitions and ineligible land I would strongly agree with that. The point I wanted to make from our point of view we think the rural support plan essentially should be a mechanism for government to set out how it is going to use public money to deliver on the objectives stated in the legislation and I think in order to do that there needs to be a mechanism within that plan for monitoring and evaluation I think that's something that's currently missing from the bill as as drafted I think that should be both in terms of the the objectives I've set out in the bill but also to make sure we're getting value for my public money and I think there's an opportunity for for this committee actually to to push a little bit on this and suggest to the government that the first iteration of that rural support plan should be brought forward at the earliest opportunity and I think before the secondary legislation starts to come in essentially because we can't be making decisions on secondary legislation if we don't know what's going to be in this in this five-year plan and just very quickly in terms of what else it might align to the Scottish Government as a commitment to produce an organic action plan work is about to start on that next year I think that part of that rural support plan should include or be at least linked to what the organic action plan is trying to do in terms of developing that sector Dave I'm absolutely delighted that you suggested the committee take that role because that's something that was discussed last week whether the the rural plan given its importance whether this parliament you'd have a role in scrutinising that and ensuring that the detail that was adequate to deliver what the vision to the government was so thank you for that because that was then my next next question anybody else want to come in on that the importance of being able to plan for a bit longer there are a lot of bodies a lot of organisations who are doing work in this area whose funding is year to year if that and you end up losing a lot of skills because of that so the ability to be able to plan longer and to be able to support groups who are working within that sector over a longer time period would be really useful come back on that could you give like a specific time frame how long do you think is long enough for that planning with the forestry background the Quinnquenia your five-year block of time is is i think useful for the kind of projects that we're talking about the the actual aims objectives have to be much further obviously much longer term but yeah the five-year block would be very useful so on that basis are you suggesting we should have a rural support plan a short term and a medium terminal on term should form basis of that okay thanks Rachel Hamilton well let's just carry on on the rural support plan i know that the scotchcrofting federation had in their submission talked about some of the related matters that should be be included in the rsp i just wondered if others would like to put on record what they believe should be in the plan in terms of those related matters that cross reference other bills or acts anyone want to come in on that laun i appreciate your your your time's limited would you like to come in just now i'm sorry on interactions with other policy areas i think you know looking at the biodiversity strategy a lot of these policy areas are separate and that they should be better integrated also i think we need to consider what a good firm looks like and what we want that vision to be and as Jim said that depends on location it depends on the system but also we need to look at what's happened in the past in the past farmers were tasked with producing food they delivered this it came at an expense and now many farmers feel blamed for this so you have this unrest perhaps and if we look at future and current policy farmers are going to have to navigate a huge number of challenges and i would say i don't know any as a small business it has to remain economically viable whilst dealing with pests diseases protecting the environment feeding the nation local and global market fluctuations changes and regulations and policy and to do this under increasingly difficult weather conditions and i think we need to recognise this pressure and the high incident of mental health concerns in the farming community i would say all farmers see themselves as stewards of the land farmers do want to leave their land in a better place and i think farmers are ready for the change they need the support mechanisms to allow them to make change whilst being economically viable i've got Donald Tarran then Kirsty thank you convener Rachael Hamilton mentioned our submission there and just wanted to come in on the point that we were trying to make and i think it's important that the rural or there's an opportunity i think in the rural support plan to make sure that we are looking at the crossovers between different policy areas here i think we've all identified and it's been mentioned in the discussion about the problems that could emerge from thinking in silence in different policy areas that will be impacted by agricultural policy and will impact agricultural policy themselves so we were talking about specifically about a crofting law reform as well that it's important that you acknowledge what's happening there and make sure that that these things are compatible and so for us that's things like looking at looking at common grazing and how they interact so there's no point having an agricultural policy that doesn't acknowledge how how crofting works in a regulatory context and also important to look at the part that's going on around the good food nation act and what's also been mentioned already about about land reform bill and that we're acknowledging the impact that this bill will have on on those other policy areas so thanks thank you i just wanted to come in specifically on the good food nation act and the national food plans and i suppose the regional food plans as well i feel like this is an area which really needs to be linked closely with the rural support plan because the rural support plan is obviously crucial for how we deliver on some of the things that we're going to see in the in the national food plan in terms of local food developing local food systems reducing our imports eating more yeah being more self-sufficient all of those kind of things will need to be delivered through the rural support plan so i think that they need to be much closer connection between the legislation on food and the legislation on agriculture they can't really be separated in the way that they currently are and they need to take each other into account quite significantly just looking at climate and nature when planning a rural support plan could risks yeah really deviating from the kind of objectives of the national food the national food plans convener before you bring the next witness in one of the areas that it would be under consideration i've noticed that actually some individuals have connected working with organic farming and actually gene editing and i wondered if a specific gene editing bill as well would benefit some of the climate change mitigations that we're trying to enact and if anyone had an opinion on that as well if they so wished it may just be out with the scope what we can do here but does anybody got any comments on potential interactions between the bill and future bills relating to gene editing Nigel I think that this is a really controversial subject which is going to you know maybe cause a car crash and just stop anything happening but i mean the reality is if you look at gene editing logically it's actually achieving what you could achieve by selective breeding but actually doing it in a very fast and precise way and we've also used selective breeding well i think with short short societies at 220 years old or something you know for a long time and we've selectively bred and probably inbred two degree in some of these breeds you know to me it is actually a solution to you know some you know disease pressures and if we want to get rid of you know reduce pesticide use that makes perfect sense in crops and if we look back in history it's you know that that's sort of iconic sort of you know spring barley for malting golden promise it was actually a product of a radiating seed so we haven't actually always had a very clean biological way of creating our varieties so to me it looks like an important tool and if you look at this in mitigation measures there are you know genetic improvement and also the ability to use nitrogen more efficiently in plants is really key to actually reducing inputs but also reducing emissions so that these are quite important areas that we should be looking at thank you and Kirsty thanks i think it's very important that the rural support drives animal welfare standards across the board i was asked earlier in the the session about you know concerns and i spoke about broiler chickens but i just wanted to reiterate that there are quite serious animal welfare concerns across species and we have laying hens who have calcium constantly depleted from their bones so there's some you know there's a high level of fractures we have pigs and farrowing crates for five weeks at a time so they can't turn around so i think although our animal welfare standards are some of the highest in the world they're not high enough and we we need to see continuous improvement and that requires system change and so to be more specific for example rural support could support pig farmers with infrastructure changes to move away from farrowing crates it could support the provision of small local abattoirs and i would agree with Tara that there there does need to be much more interaction with good food nation and as i mentioned earlier that could involve public procurement as a way of providing a reliable market for farmers who move to ant higher welfare systems i also wanted to recognise what laura said about farmers mental health and the pressures on them and just reiterate that we're talking about systems change here Kate Rowell from quality meet Scotland gave evidence to this committee months ago now and she spoke really passionately about her family farm and the farmers desires to do the right thing and she pointed out that and i'll quote here she said all they've been doing over the generations is following policy signals and i think that's the point is that we need to change the policy signals to allow animal welfare to to be improved and allow the system change that is required for that thank you allister allen thank you you can be there is mentioned there about the benefits in terms of sending policy signals around some of these are phrases that we've used in the last contribution around some of these issues whether five-year funding for for agriculture appreciate community may not appreciate you may not like me making this point but obviously the scotch parliament doesn't know from month to month essentially what its income will be next year and never mind in five years not only in agriculture but on anything else so i just wonder convener you know given some of what we've heard today would it be worth another try getting a uk agriculture minister to come and explain some of this given that the last one told us he was unavailable indefinitely thank you thank you allister um we have written i don't think this is particularly the time to raise that because we're opening up by well we should maybe have the cabinet secretary for agriculture coming in here and explaining why 10 percent of the agriculture budget which was ring fence was removed but we're not going to go there but we have written to the the UK minister as you're well aware um i'll move on to questions from rona grant thank you convener um and could i turn people's attention to schedule one which kind of lays out enough lot of the the detail of this and i wonder whether people believe it provides the support and the purposes that is required for the replacement to cap and indeed a new agricultural policy for us and whether it meets people's aspirations for the new policy who like to kick off no one going to have a go i'm not asking everyone to reach schedule one but it basically highlights all the things that could have support through the bill so sorry via i've read it through quite detailed level and why i feel it's it tries to cover many things being prescriptive will always risk missing a few things and i would come back to to this point about aquaculture aquaculture is also food production and that's one thing but there are quite a few other things which are not listed and still related to food production and ecosystem services so i think it needs to be a little bit reiterated. Nigel and then Tara yeah i suppose these are fairly you know technical issues but you know it wasn't clear looking at schedule one whether you know some of these issues were going to be covered and i've talked about you know the classification ineligible land and the upgrading of mapping but i think there's also obligations for under the the you know the next uh uh a cultural bill to have some sort of oversight of carbon calculators and their standards to ensure that they actually reflect science and they actually fit with the inventory and ensure that people use only approved calculators and in reality these are going to be important management tools but they may also be you audit tools in the future as well and at the moment we don't have that and we also have commercial pressures from retailers and processors who want to actually show green credentials asking producers their producer group to do particular things and sometimes be audited by a different type of calculator which doesn't actually reflect some of the standards that i've talked about so i think that's quite urgent and i think you know to actually back that up you know there needs to be you know manuals not just for regenerative farming techniques but also for mitigation measures and there's also got to be an obligation from a government to actually to producers to actually validate mitigation measures and quantify them and if necessary try and through international means get them inserted into the inventory because at the moment we've got all sorts of tools out there with some of them feed out of some genetic techniques which are going to be quite important which you know farmers are taking up they're told they're going to actually deliver them certain emission benefits and they're not accepted or they don't go in the inventory so it makes no difference and it's costing them money that is you know in a responsible position to be in which only government can actually handle. The other area which if we look at emissions from agriculture is that you know the methane which is obviously quite high profile and nitrous oxide and you know maybe there needs to be clarification on what methane targets are going to hit because we've got international obligation to reduce it by 30% by 2030 40% of 47% of Scotland's methane is from agriculture there's another chunk from landfill landfill has actually reduced its emissions by 70% in the last 10 years what has Scotland got it what has Scottish agriculture got to do by 2030 because we're running out of time so that clarity is important but I think the other area is calm dioxide which is really there's some calm dioxide leakage when you cultivate land but it's quite small 90% probably the calm dioxide emissions are from energy use and kit on farms there's got to be a transformation of that kit there needs to be some form of support to actually change that infrastructure that capital required is not going to be generated by the profitable agriculture on small farms or large and you know if it's not direct you know some sort of grant for upgrading there should be you know a low interest or 0% of loans that that is an easy low low hanging fruit if you spend the money you'll get 10% reduction in emissions and the agriculture is the third biggest emission in the scotland so it makes a difference spend the money you'll get that 10% benefit there's nothing in the bill to actually suggest that's going to happen and maybe the budgets aren't there for that to happen so that's something that you've you know we've really got to to address thank you Tara Donald Ross and then Liz yeah just on on what's included in schedule one and you know it's yeah there's a sort of a few lists under schedule one of things that can be supported and yeah I think it is they're pretty comprehensive lists in general and we welcome that you know in quite a strong inclusion of fruit and vegetables and nut production things like that there's some notable things that are kind of left off the list like pegs and poultry like pork and chicken and eggs are left off the list of products that you know support can be offered for and I understand why that's been the case in the past but we're talking about some of the sectors that need to transition you know kind of need the most work to transition in the scotland context so we don't want to be funding unsustainable practice you know industrial factory farming of chickens perhaps but we do need the support to be in place to help our egg industry pork industry transition to more sustainable practice and there are very good examples of of what sustainable practice looks like you know we have members who keep pegs in woodland which is amazing for woodland management and produces local food and we have members who are engaged in pasture poultry systems which is really supporting biodiversity regeneration there are examples of very transformational practices with pegs and poultry and there's nothing under the schedule one at the moment that allows this bill to shape the direction of those sectors and leaving those sectors out reduces removes any pressure on them to change thank you I mentioned earlier on about the our suggestion of the introduction of another objective around small producers and particularly crofting and if that wasn't added as another objective on the face of the bill I think another place where it could be suitably integrated into the bill would be in schedule one I think it's it's not it could be more explicit or it could be a lot more explicit that that that's something that's that that could be supported that specific support for for smaller producers and for crofters could fit in here quite well and I think the reason I mentioned that again is in relation to the question mentioned around how this is a replacement for the cap and I think we need to look at what's happening in the EU and what's happening in the cap at the moment and particularly around this this area and redistribution which I mentioned already and so what the regulation there has explicitly made reference to smaller producers and they need to support smaller producers and that is now that is now driving driving the policy there and the outcome of that has been the the amandasity redistribution of 10 percent of the direct support budget to two smaller producers so I think schedule one strikes me as another area of the of the bill where we could be we could have a more firm commitment to two smaller producers and to crofting and and and actually have its amandasity that this is looked at and this is implemented I think I think it's it's fair to say that the bill doesn't would allow for for this to happen but we much prefer if it went further than that and actually included a commitment to look at redistribution and for all the reasons that we've outlined in our submission and the the disproportionate costs that are associated with the smaller businesses face but also the benefits that those businesses deliver which I won't go into now but we would continue to provide further information on that in the future thank you thank you thank you Ross and then Liz just a quick one one of the things that's been exercising us in the organic group is equivalence across Europe and indeed the UK because I think David was on a meeting with deffer they're trying to thrash out equivalence because it's going to be a real mess if we've moved too far away from european standards or the UK moves away from european standards to a great extent Scotland as I've said so far the government I said it wants to maintain adherence to european standards but then in effect it starts to become a real problem especially when you're trading across the border which is quite common so that's something I'd like to be in in the mind of the committee too and I'm sure some of you have thought about it he thanks Liz thank you I was really pleased to see in schedule one around the ancillary that's hard to say activities including preparing packaging but distributing food as well I thought that was really good to see it was good to see that also included within forestry another product derived from forestry activity so that's useful to be included as well it was a little bit concerning though the mention around picking wild plants for food I wasn't sure that that necessarily came into the the the aims of what we were looking at within this however the training and education what I was particularly pleased to see was that learning and sharing information were included together we have a real challenge within our sector in that knowledge transfer and training have been seen as very separate and had to be kept separate and were funded separately if we can bring those two together I think that that's going to be really impactful for our sector rhoda I may be asked an even more technical question sorry and there are powers obviously contained in this part of the bill and I'm wondering if we need more detail on how those powers are used but also should we have greater scrutiny on how those powers are used in the new policy so for instance capping tapping off payments those are new powers and do we need more detail of how that's used and how it's scrutinised very my comment is back to schedule one about the flexibility emphasizing that also to do with coming climate change and potential changing crop cropping patterns if we are listing the current crops we are missing those which might come in like miss canthus is not there and also by not expanding the aims and not aligning of divided goals for example fibre production right now it's a technical issue but right now grass production is only included as forage grass production can be used in biobased economies in other ways than feed so I'm really strongly proposing to make it more flexible on that one yes what do you mean by grass can be used in other other areas other than forage are you talking about biomass yes biomass in as in energy aid so anaerobic digestion one way of using grass another way is to extract the protein and use it as feed or even later on as food so there are various ways to utilise grass if we want to have and want to consume as much livestock we can still keep grass production and utilise grass in other ways is that sown grass that has to be from sown grass not permanent pasture either I guess if you have it as sown grass the quality is more regulated or more constant so probably better for protein production or other extraction methodologies and on some permanent grass might be still good for AD definitely for anaerobic digestion okay my slight concern with that is we've had these things happen in the past particular in my own constituency where what that's actually done is take a huge amount of forage out of the marketplace which has then just pushed up the price for forage for livestock producers that are living in the same area so there's an opportunity cost for everything that we do isn't there yes this is why I emphasised that it has to happen together with consumption changes livestock consumption diet changes reduced then you have the forage prices reducing but you can utilise grass areas to produce other things than meat and dairy okay thank you Tara yeah this is about the point about the powers and whether there should be some kind of you know more direction on how those powers are used I think it was one of the kind of things we emphasised in our submission was was that yes there should there should be more the powers granted under this piece of legislation do kind of offer ministers the the power to do to all the all the thing the kind of great things we've been talking about but there's no kind of obligation to do it or even direction in what way to use those powers and I think that that would really strengthen the bill would be some of that particularly when we're looking at the the points around capping and redistribution as we as we've talked about there's a power to introduce capping but there's no obligation to do that there's no direction on on how to do that I think it's really important that something like that does come into the primary legislation as yeah as we have do see in in countries in Europe the kind of giving unlimited public money to people mostly based on area of land is really a misuse of public money and that should be in the primary legislation that should be regulated against basically so I think some guidance around how to how to bring in capping but also to reiterate about the redistributive payments the legislation talks quite clearly about capping it doesn't really talk about this we're saying redistribution I know that front loading is also a term used I think the NFUS tend to use front loading we talk about redistribution it's the same thing so that's giving more money for the first few hectares of land and then that either stops you know the amount goes down above a certain threshold or it tapers off it really supports medium scale farming small scale farming the people that are you know most pushed and under the economically at the moment in our farming sector and that we need some guidance on how to introduce that for for ministers so that should be really laid out in the primary legislation for example as in cap 10 to 30 percent of the direct payments budget has to be redistributed to small scale and new entrant farmers in the EU something like that that gives clear guidance and a similar guidance around capping is really important in the primary legislation thank you um Dave and then it's very quickly just on that point on I'm capping I'm absolutely agree with with Tara and Donald that capping will allow for that redistribution or front loading whichever term you want to use to happen but I think the language around that in the bill needs to be tightened up slightly that we think that capping should only be applicable to direct payments rather than some of the indirect payments for example through agri environment schemes habitat restoration etc i think i'd be counterproductive in terms of some of the environmental objectives okay thank you Nigel yeah I mean you know just to comment on specifically on capping I mean I suppose my view would or would be similar to what's just been articulated as far as you know not not restricting it to areas with core support but I think there are you know significant dangers in applying it to core support given the structure of agriculture and the level of employment on some of these larger units in that what you're actually doing is actually removing the capability to actually pay decent wages and actually create employment which you know is important in many areas so I think that there are pros and cons for capping that should be looked at but you know to address road as point I mean I think that all these issues should be uh have clear objective criteria about how they're actually uh operated so that it's clear to the public and to farmers you know when when certain regulations click in and that that isn't open to to a controversy or challenge and I think that's why probably if you look at the more complex areas like you know what's regenerative farming you've actually got to keep the definitions you know black and white and very simple and that's why you know maintaining your soils with a certain carbon bracket having a rotation with which has a regenerative component in it and also ensuring that you you put clovers into your grass seed mixes or other herbs is black and white and you can prove it you've done it or you haven't done it and that's really important but there's real stress on farmers for on audit and complying you've got to make it clear what you've got to do and you've ticked the box so I think that's quite important in the last cap reform there was an option to have an official advisory service which wasn't taken up and I hesitate you'll bring it up now you know and that this is another cost which the budget maybe can't stand but the concept is good if you have the competent authority also delivering an official advisory service when people are going into system change and totally different approaches to agriculture you have somebody who is aware of all the criteria they've actually got to deliver on giving them hands-on advice through that that process and I think that you'll given that we're probably facing you know as big a revolution as we ever have seed in agriculture you know that would be perfect sense and it would actually ensure compliance is built into change rather waiting for change to happen and then having compliance issues afterwards nobody actually mentioned the scrutiny in this bill was an enabling bill a lot of the powers of where actually the money's going to come from and maybe folk would reflect on whether the scrutiny in the bill is enough and maybe right into the committee because it's maybe not at the forefront of everybody's mind but if we've got adequate scrutiny within the bill over those powers that really shape the policy going forward just very finely small question we're obviously looking at alignment with EU cap and people are broadly supportive of that is what i'm picking up but is there any area that that wouldn't be desirable no Ross you commented on EU alignment is there given the powers that this bill has to create brand new policies yeah i think for organic standards i think it's very important we try and maintain EU alignment trouble is that the UK government deviates from that in any great way it's going to cause all sorts of problems as far as the rest of the caps concern i don't think i know enough about it to comment really okay vera just a short comment that there has been quite a debate in europe about the cap especially regarding climate change it is not going to deliver the greenhouse gas mitigation which is needed in europe so while i quite pro alignment we need to do a lot more on greenhouse gas reduction yeah i would add to that that yeah i think while alignment with cap the cap is is important and there's some good stuff in that especially in the newer version of cap i know that our legislation is all based on the previous version that hasn't been used for several years now and there's a lot of updates in the newer cap legislation that we should be taking into account so i do think that alignment is is important but i think that yeah we need to be more ambitious we need to be trying to you know we talk a lot about being world leading in scotland we need to be ahead of the EU and at the moment we're behind we need to be pushing pushing forward and one of the opportunities of writing legislation that's not under cap is that we can take that as a basis and and expand on it do something better i think you're very touched on you know the climate change issues that relate to cap but i think it's also by diversity has been you know from the original proposal has been watered down through a negotiation so i think both those areas you know probably we have to be more ambitious than that or we do if we're going to hit our targets anyway but you know at least it's a starting point if you're aligned with cap and you know and maybe you can actually build on that through your five-year plan to get to the sort of place which would ensure that we will have some chance of hitting targets at the moment we were handicapped because we're probably starting two or three years too late okay thank you i've supplementary this from rachel Hamilton it's really just about the practicalities of some of the the purposes of support in schedule one particularly regarding the agri supply chain if i start with donald it was really around obviously a lot of people have mentioned the good food nation bill today but it seems or so the budget that would be associated to what what the good food nation act intends to do will be encompassed into this part of the schedule and i was wondering from a practical or behavioural point of view if crofters will take advantage for example of of getting together and creating a new abattoir or looking at the animal haulage service part that they or the farmers market part that they mention in this and the same would go to the organic movement as well it's just how will this bill you know drive those changes is it practical i think i think the point that the point that i was making and the point that we were making our submission is is around alignment with these things that we're making sure that we're in that the bill is at least aware of what's going on in these other in these other areas of policy i think you're making an important point that how closely linked the good food nation act and this bill are are ultimately going to be and i think it's important that the support is made available within the framework for for for the exactly the kind of initiatives that you mentioned there things like things like abattoirs and crofters getting together to set up ways of ways of allowing people to have better access to food which i think is is a really important part of it's certainly a very important part of what the good nation act was about and this should be a very important part about what the agriculture bill is about as well so but but making sure that that investment is quite targeted but acknowledging that you know this is we're dealing with we're going to be dealing with tight budgets here and making sure that that support is directed in the correct way is going to be absolutely absolutely critical but i think it is important that we do see some things in tier probably fit into your tier four of the of the policy to to be able to support these sorts of initiatives and certainly something that we would be calling for thanks okay any other comments on that nope up Nigel begir pardon briefly just coming on abattoirs because it's something that you know has been an issue for you know 20 years or more and certainly i was spent a lot of time on it including you know abattoirs in the islands and the reality is you know there's a capital cost in abattoir certainly even small abattoirs but there's also the on-going costs of skilled labour and the reality of some of the small abattoirs is that if slaughtermen and those that actually can dress and cut carcs is are only getting one day or two days work a week that makes it quite difficult and there was actually you know looking at rotations about how people could actually move around the islands and around the islands and islands and do one day here and one day there that that you know initially looked as if it had some legs but the actual lifestyle required for these people was just a nightmare so if you're going to actually seriously look at you know local small abattoirs you've not only got to look at capital support you've got to look on on-going revenue to actually support employment of skilled people within these areas on a part-time basis without that it's not going to go anywhere and if you look at abattoir it's generally they're not a sexy sector nobody loves them but they're absolutely vital but if you look at the the map of abattoirs in Scotland you know even in the major livestock areas there's an inadequate capacity and that is only going to get worse because our livestock population's falling quite significantly and we've seen a consolidation of ownership as well so and we've obviously you know so one of the major abattoirs may well fall out in the next two or three years so you know there's the real issues there on transport maybe this more one can do and you know somebody who sort of buys livestock on the highlands and islands getting sheep down from leog or thurzo or from the outer aisles is a nightmare because people don't have the number of trucks to actually shift them and so if we're not going to magic up more trucks we're not going to magic up the skills that are required to actually operate them they're big money to actually have this these bits of kit so if you're going to actually facilitate those sort of movements wh