Party consensus on farming hustings

The cross-party consensus seen in rural hustings continued yesterday with agreement that there is a need to end the current laissez-faire approach to the siting and trading in land for forestry.

With all of the major parties represented at yesterday’s event hosted by the East Central region of NFU Scotland there was an acceptance that afforestation and tree planting had an important role to play in addressing climate change.

However, challenged by Aberfeldy farmer, Roddy Kennedy over the effect which the grants available for tree planting, land banking and speculator investment in land with planting potential was having on the farming sector in some areas, all five candidates agreed that there was a need for a more strategic approach to such major land use changes in order to ensure the right areas were targeted with the right trees for the right reason.

The election hopefuls – which included Willie Rennie (Lib-Dem), Claire Baker (Lab), Mags Hall (Greens), Liz Smith ( Con) and Jim Fairlie (SNP) – agreed that there was a need for a proper balance to be struck between forestry and food production and for a meaningful strategy to be swiftly drawn together in the next parliaments to help ensure this was struck.

There was a similar agreement on the need for better integration of farming and land use into the education sector, with all agreeing that while some primary schools did an excellent job of laying a grounding in the subject, there was a need for courses in agriculture to be introduced at secondary school level.