Industry does not need any fancy scheme to encourage new blood

No doubt there is a forest of hands being raised. It is a popular and populist call, but I tend to differ and say that there is no real need for such a scheme. I do not know why Brian Pack is wringing his hands at an inability to come up with such a scheme in the reform of the CAP.

I notice that other trades and professions do not have a need to induce young people to come into their sectors.

Do we have a Young Painter and Decorator scheme or a Young Banker scheme? No. Almost universally, we just let market forces take their course.

One of the more interesting comments Pack let slip last week at the Perth meeting of his round Scotland tour was that there are quite a number of young people coming into the industry without the aid of Single Farm Payments and that they are making a success of it.

Now some of those might have the marginal support from the loan discount scheme for new entrants operated by the Scottish Government but the phrase was "they are making a success of it" without any help from the current subsidy regime.

I know the arguments. The average age of farmers in Scotland is 59 and we need new blood coming into the industry.

Also, land is more expensive than it has ever been and this prevents those with no foothold on the farming ladder ever getting into the industry.

Dealing with the age issue first. It may well be that the person in charge of the farm business is in his or her sixth decade but many of Scotland's farms are family units and the younger generation will actually be working on the farm even if they do not have their hands on the chequebook. So forget the fiction of the 59-year-old farmer.

Even if the figure of 59 was true, why is there a worry? Farming is not the physical grind it used to be. Bodies are not abused as they once were and brain cells do not float off like dandruff once you are over the half century mark. Medically speaking, new blood does not course round the body any faster than the blood in older veins.

Look around and you will see some very smart thinkers who are above the average age.

We are in an era where we have managed to dispose of most of the sexist attitudes to life that we inherited from out ancestors so why are we still clinging on to our ageist ones?

Let us also deal with the issue of the cost of entry. Farming is today far more flexible than it has ever been. Ownership of land may be preferable but it is not a pre-requisite of farming.

Those who want to establish themselves in the industry can find a dozen ways of doing so. For the mechanically-minded there are options on working as a self employed tractor driver. With Machinery Rings covering the country, the demand for skilled workers is there, although this option does include a seasonality problem.

For those with a preference for tending livestock, there are a large number of options from starting a poultry unit to renting ground for cattle or sheep. Contract farming opportunities are far more available than they ever used to be and this applies to both stock and crop.

I find it interesting that those sectors of farming where there has traditionally been no support there is generally a younger age profile than those where the subsidies have gone.

Thus a meeting of soft fruit growers looks at least a decade younger than a similar meeting of sheep farmers. Thankfully that is changing and we are getting a new generation coming into livestock production.

Another big reason why we should not set up a new entrants scheme is that whenever it is established, everyone will look at it and see how they can enter the system and get a bit of the financial action.

Most grant monies go not to the just or the needy but to those who can fill in the forms correctly and for that reason alone, we do not need a new entrants scheme.