Rural Priorities Part 2

Dumfries and Galloway Standard    Dec 2008 

Well it’s a great relief to finally come out.  I have had these feelings for many years now and for the best part I have managed to keep them hidden from my wife, children and fellow farmers.  But, now that it is finally out in the open I feel no shame in the fact there is a tree hugging side to my nature, although I would stop short of doing the act itself.

I have now contracted the majority of the land that I farm, here in the Luce Valley, to be farmed in a way that will maximise wildlife biodiversity and improve the natural habitats that exist here. At the same time, I will be improving access opportunities in order to let the public at large enjoy this environment if they wish.  Please don’t get the idea, dear reader, that if you come here you will find me in a park keeper’s uniform feeding lions and wildebeest. No, I will still look like a tramp with holes in my body warmer, where it went on fire while using the angle-grinder, accessorised with a woolly bunnet.  Also, the animals I am keeping will still be farm animals but there just won’t be so many of them!

The letter of approval for my application to the Rural Priorities scheme was a welcome sight as it is the culmination of a plan that I have had for my farming business ever since the 2003 CAP reform was announced.   

The 2003 CAP reform led to the sweeping away of the subsidies that were linked to the number of animals that I kept here on the farm and replaced it with a single farm payment (SFP).  This measure was designed to allow farmers, while being supported financially by the SFP, an opportunity to remodel their businesses so that they could supply the markets that their land and their particular skills are best suited to.  What had gone before that was a system that encouraged farmers to harvest subsidy by piling on more livestock than their farms could sustainably support.  This was very often at the expense of the environment and sometimes the welfare of the animals.

My farm, because of the poor soil that predominates, is not best placed to supply high volumes of produce farmed under intensive management - factory farming if you like.  It is however, quite capable of producing breeding stock when it is farmed in a way that is in harmony with the environment. The funding that I receive from the SFP, bolstered by this new funding from the Rural Priorities scheme will enable me to achieve the final transformation for my business which will deliver four very important things as far as Scotland, the UK and the European Community is concerned. 

Firstly, and most importantly, it will mean that my business will be profitable; fingers crossed!   

Secondly, it will mean that what I’m producing on my farm will be aimed at a market that will reward me sufficiently to justify me keeping livestock on the farm.

Thirdly, endangered species of wildlife will be given ample opportunity to flourish under the new regime that will ensue as a result of my new farming practices.

Finally, and by no means the least vital of the four outcomes, I will be producing public goods. 

This provision of public goods is vital to the concept and very important if we are to continue to receive public funding to keep us farming in the more remote and disadvantaged parts of Scotland.  

The fundamental difference with the new set-up at Airyolland is that, instead of simply being given money to keep me in business while I sell my produce at less than the cost of production I am now hopefully going to be providing desirable public goods in the form of an environmentally enhanced landscape with improved access.  

The concept of providing public goods is one that will take a bit of getting used to but it is something that many of us will have to get our heads round pretty soon if some parts of our industry are to survive.

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