£3m government cash to repair snow-damaged farm buildings

It as been estimated that more than 500 farms, mostly in the North-east and the Borders, lost barns and sheds during the spell of severe weather.

Yesterday, Cabinet secretary Richard Lochhead said up to 3 million would be made available to those whose property had been wrecked.

Speaking at the NFU Scotland annual meeting at St Andrews, Lochhead said the cash would be used to help defray any costs incurred in renting other accommodation.

He accepted that the basic onus of replacing a building was an insurance matter, but he insisted there were issues where it was right for a government to be involved. The provision of alternative accommodation that is uninsurable was one such issue, and for those who have had to undertake this option, a one-off payment of up to 6,000 per farm will be paid.

The recommendation for paying this cash emerged from the working group established quickly in the wake of the big freeze.

The routine of the minister in charge of agriculture appearing at the Union AGM goes back over the past 70 years. The tradition is that the politician gives a wide-ranging speech picking up on the issues of the day.

During his spell at the podium, Lochhead also announced that his government would be issuing a consultation document in the near future on the eradication of bovine viral diarrhoea from the Scottish cattle herd.

"BVD is bad for animal welfare and it is bad for your profits," he told the 100 delegates at the meeting, adding that getting rid of this wasting disease could increase the profitability of the industry by between 50-80 million.

He also defended the Scottish livestock industry over attacks on the contribution they make to greenhouse gas emissions, saying there was a responsibility to produce food to feed the world and "the only way we can do this is by grazing livestock".

Before Lochhead's address, the NFU Scotland Ambassador Award for outstanding contribution to the farming industry went posthumously to Dan Buglass, former rural affairs editor of The Scotsman.

In making the award, union chief executive James Withers said Dan knew the industry inside out and could therefore debate the complex and often thorny issues of the day with farming leaders before translating them into words that farmers and the wider public could grasp.

The award was collected by Dan's son, Andrew.