Comment: Our venerable industry’s roots face being torn out of land

Later this week, politicians will gather in Brussels to try and make progress with what have been called the “greening” proposals of the next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

After months of nothing but talk, there now seems to be some unanimity in that everyone seems to support the view that the taxpayer should see some benefit from the cash paid to farmers and landowners.

And there also seems to be a fair amount of agreement that most member states are opposed to the original suggestions put forward by agricultural commissioner Dacian Ciolos. Their views being generally of the “we do not want that” variety.

So, on the long and winding road that is called CAP reform, it may be seen that some steps have been taken but we need to move from a position of not wanting something to getting what we do want on the table.

Interestingly, the one idea that is catching support is that member states should have more autonomy in deciding what “greening” measures would suit them.

This eminently sensible idea achieves a number of objectives. It allows each country to reflect its own priorities and fit them in with its topography.

Also, it surely reduces the bureau-cratic centralisation which seems to come with any EU policy.

Scottish Government rural affairs minister Richard Lochhead, who will be out for the meeting, has already rejected the original “greening” suggestions and now, hopefully, will add his voice to allowing more decision making on environmental priorities to be made in Scotland.

His officials will have heard at first hand the economic damage that the original proposals could inflict on both the arable sector and on hill livestock units; both providing greatly for the economic output of food and drink from this country.

So, if we were to have more say in deciding how and where we would implement our green policies, where would we like to end up? My own thoughts are a continuation of the flexibility that might come from Brussels.

Environment schemes should be on an “opt in” basis to reflect that even within a parish there are major differences in soil grades and landscape and forcing every farm to conform to a set system is perverse.

Thus an intensive cropping farm could continue while a neighbour with more than his fair share of rocky outcrops or steep slopes would be more involved in any environmental scheme.

There are different issues in the hills, as instanced last week when the National Sheep Association went on a charm offensive, listing a long catalogue of the benefits of keeping sheep on the hills.

If I recall correctly, the press conference started with the production of lamb and the role that hill flocks play in the stratification of the Scottish sheep industry.

Then the talk moved quickly to issues such as abandonment and overgrown vegetation where the sheep have left the hills.

That inveterate train driver and erstwhile big sheep farmer, John Cameron, recalled on his last trip on the line north of Fort William seeing no sheep, only a landscape overgrown with bracken.

In another press conference last week, Finlay Clark of land agency Bidwells showed a slide taken in Glencoe, where bracken now dominated the landscape apart from splashes of yellow where ragwort had broken through.

He remembered before the National Trust for Scotland had bought the property that it had been as he described it a “hard hill farm” where sheep had once grazed the slopes.

He then stated that half the island of Mull was now infested with bracken and asked how could these landscapes ever be brought back to what they once had been when farming the land meant looking after it.

It is sad but accurate to say that Scotland’s hills and glens have become more neglected in the past decade than at any time in living memory.

I am sure that no-one, be they tax-payer, tourist or environmentalist wants to see landscapes full of bracken and ragwort and so control of these as part of a managed landscape would be another of my greening measures.

Even die-hard environmentalists now recognise the role that agriculture can play in keeping some aggressive flora and fauna in check although that view is sadly not universal.

The problem is that so far everyone has seen greening as a penalty and not as an opportunity to do something about how to improve our scenery.

Let us think creatively as to how Scotland can deliver a progressive environmental policy without damaging food production or leaving the legacy of an overgrown and neglected countryside.