Divided lobby weakens voice of the Scottish beef industry

THE Scottish farming trade press seldom seeks controversy. It normally ploughs a safe furrow through the livestock shows and sales without exposing any of the less seemly aspects of farming.

It seems to be a successful formula, seducing a readership into such loyalty that when, as legend has it, one magazine managed to announce the clock change date incorrectly, there followed a week of disarray with people turning up an hour late at meetings and even missing their selling slot at the market.

However, a couple of weeks ago, one weekly threw a rather large chuckie into these normally still waters, causing a fair degree of ripples, if not a tsunami.

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An editorial suggested Scotland had too many lobby organisations covering the same ground and that a little co-operation and amalgamation might be sensible.

As an example, it mentioned two organisations in the beef industry – the Scottish Beef Cattle Association (SBCA) and the National Beef Association (NBA) – and it is this that has caused what might be described as a stushie.

It appears the former suggested at least a year ago that they get together and pool their efforts in a new organisation. That was spurned.

The NBA response has been to say its door is open for SBCA members to join its organisation. This attitude reveals the unhealed scars from the original split several years ago, when some Scottish beef producers felt the NBA was not putting a specific Scottish angle on its UK-wide agenda. They set up the SBCA.

So it looks as if, for the foreseeable future, Scotland will continue to have two specialist organisations elbowing each other on beef issues. It also means an extra chair at the table whenever the Scottish Government holds a stakeholders' meetings.

The SBCA has just under 600 members. The NBA sticks to its national membership figure of 12,000, using its strength in the south-west of England and Northern Ireland to help cover areas where support is less. The SBCA suggests the NBA has only 300 members in Scotland, but even mentioning that figure and that source will aggravate things, so I will refrain from doing so. So we have two bodies with fewer than 1,000 members between them punching each other instead of punching for the industry.

I am reminded of the response given by a distinguished general when asked why Scottish soldiers had such a positive profile when it came to fighting

"When they have an enemy in front, there are none better," he said. "When there is no enemy, they fight among themselves."

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I also wonder what Jim McLaren, president of NFU Scotland, makes of all this? The union has always had a strong livestock committee and it is well resourced for dealing with the many issues hitting the sector.

He has been extremely successful in adding members to the union, and that is not an easy task when membership of any organisation means money going off the farm. Are the two bodies, or even a conjoined one, superfluous to the union effort?

No doubt, later this week, when the thoughts of inquiry chairman Brian Pack are revealed to the waiting farming industry, the NFUS, NBA and SBCA will all issue their reactions to his proposals for the next stage in the life of CAP.

I know it is not the done thing in the modern world to put your hands up and say "I got it wrong." However, in the article predicting the future for beef producers, I misunderstood a comment from Kev Bevan, beef expert with the Scottish Agricultural College.

My take on his words was that English producers would benefit from the latest changes to their single farm payments (SFP).

The actuality is that, as more and more of the English SFP is spread over more and more acres, the money previously targeted at producing cattle and sheep will be diluted across the country. So they will be worse off.

That is bad news for English farmers. It is also a warning of what may happen if Pack does not include as many safeguards as he can to ensure Scotland continues to keep numbers of cattle and sheep. That should be a common aim, regardless of how many lobby groups Scotland has.

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