'While the farming sector is pretty much paralysed like rabbits in the headlights over which way to run on this one, big business has muscled in on the act and will no doubt soon be leading the sector by the nose along its chosen pathway'

Almost anyone in the agricultural world, outside the cabal of the ARIOB (and maybe for some within it) has found that trying to get any detail on the new agricultural policy – or indeed the scale of change which it is likely to precipitate – has been a bit like banging your head against a brick wall.

But one thing which has been made abundantly clear for quite some time, though, is the fact that the Scottish Government’s “vision” for farming is to transform how the country’s farmers are supported with the aim of seeing Scotland become “a global leader in sustainable and regenerative agriculture”.

Like ‘seeking a fairer society’, ‘levelling up’, or even ‘make America great again’, such a sentiment would be a difficult one with which to argue. But, however laudable these aspirations might be, they deliver absolutely no indication of how they can actually be achieved.

For, as far as “sustainable and regenerative agriculture” is concerned, there’s no real settled agreement or definition of what these terms actually mean.

On a simplistic level, sustainable production could be defined as a system that can be practiced without causing any harm to whichever parameters you decide to set, in this case, most likely to be approaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions and curbing any loss of biodiversity, while regenerative carries with it the implication of reversing or correcting some undesirable element of what has been done in the past.

And it would probably be safe to chuck in improving soil health and enhancing animal welfare as a couple of tasty-sounding side-orders to accompany these main dishes.

So, when I had the opportunity to speak to rural secretary, Mairi Gougeon a couple of weeks ago when she was announcing the publication of the Agriculture Bill, it seemed an ideal opportunity to try to get some sort of definition of what the Scottish Government actually meant by these terms.

But it would appear that there isn’t going to be any official definition coming from ScotGov – and an actual designation is being side-stepped and, instead, a code or practice is to be drawn together.

“I think those terms mean different things to different people and I think that rather than having a strict definition, a code of practice can be really helpful,” said the cab sec.

But what would be in it?

“While we’re still to work through the detail - and that’s where a code or practice has a benefit over setting out a definition in legislation because we know through academic research and the science that is being undertaken now that the science can be subject to change over time – so a code of practice gives us flexibility in allowing us to change things as more evidence becomes available in the future.”

She said that while a code of practice wouldn’t be as restrictive or as dictatorial as a prescriptive or defining list that specified what had to be done, it would still outline the sort of principles that producers would be expected to meet.

So, when will the code be published?

“Again we’ll be working through the detail of that as the Bill progresses through the scrutiny process in Parliament,” was the reply.

In short, then, it’s still very much a work in progress - and there’s no detail here either.

However, the issue raises the bigger question of do we actually want to tie down the definition of sustainable or regenerative agriculture.

A simplistic answer would be an immediate “yes” – as such a move would surely help to counter some of the greenwash that is being used by many of the big multi-national conglomerates and businesses working in the food sector.

Going down such a route would be fraught with dangers though – chief amongst which would be who exactly would draw up that definition?

You only need to look at the fuss which has been kicked up by Red Tractors’ decision to include the Greener Farm module in its assessments to realise that going down such a road might be a bit of a thankless task for whoever undertook it.

But while the loose term regenerative farming might conjure up a return to a more olde-worlde, caring, sympathetic sort of approach to farming, it’s a fact that many of the big shareholder profit-driven organisations have already stolen a fair old march on anyone else thinking about defining the approach.

The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) which was set up twenty years ago by Danone, Unilever, and Nestle now has a whole host of additional multinational companies, such as Cargill, Bayer, Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Mars, Synegnta, Diageo and Yara amongst their signatory organisations.

Claiming to be “the single most powerful global organisation dedicated to sustainable agriculture”, they already have a “Farm Sustainability Assessment” programme up and running to benchmark farm production methods, so it looks pretty clear as to who will be calling the shots. This will allow them to make sure they meet their ESG - that’s the environmental, social, and governance standards that corporations and companies need to meet to show that they are “woke” and taking their environmental responsibilities seriously.

And, so, while the farming sector is pretty much paralysed like rabbits in the headlights over which way to run on this one, big business has muscled in on the act and will no doubt soon be leading the sector by the nose along its chosen pathway.

Now I’ve railed in the past about one of the country’s big malting companies trying to capture the environmental credentials of their farmers without offering anything in return - so when, in a separate initiative, one of the biggest end-users of our products announced its own programme to encourage growers to take a regenerative approach, I was interested to see if its attitude was any different.

Last week Diageo announced that it was to set up a pilot project in Scotland aimed at reducing the carbon emissions of farming the barley and wheat which is used to make their whisky “while driving additional benefits for their farmers”.

According to the announcement made by the company, the programme hopes to “drive positive outcomes of enhanced biodiversity, improved water stewardship, carbon reduction, and better soil health management” by looking at “locally adapted practices such as cover crops, reduced cultivations, and crop rotations”.

The company says that the initiative expands the regenerative approach beyond the current Guinness programme which was launched in Ireland last year, and involved 44 farms with the aim of achieving a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of spring barley.

And while I’m hoping to get some more details of the Scottish scheme, the Irish one involved baselining farms using a methodology that converts crop management data into production emissions, with the results being reported on a “per-hectare” and a per-tonne” basis to monitor changes in absolute and relative carbon emissions.

This data was combined with very detailed soil sampling to assess soil health, soil organic carbon, and the soil nutrient status – and the data was then integrated to define opportunities for reducing emissions and removing carbon from the atmosphere – effectively, they claimed, defining a de-carbonising pathway for each farm.

“Part of the process is to understand which farming activities generate the most carbon emissions, and what practical measures farmers can take to reduce or remove them, without compromising crop yield or grain quality.”

And so, while the programme certainly sounds more inclusive than some other initiatives, perhaps the key to the whole undertaking will be the manner in which farmers are encouraged and rewarded for complying with the additional undertakings for delivering the desired outcomes.

At the end of the day, though, wherever the impetus for us to change to “sustainable” or “regenerative” agriculture comes from – be it government policy or the demands of our buyers – farming must get its share of the rewards rather than being subjected to a green heist.