NFU Scotland is confident that its robust response to the Scottish Government’s consultation on the upcoming Agricultural Bill will deliver for farming and the nation – if it's listened to.

Key to its demands is welding farm support to ‘agricultural activity’, which they accept would see millions of pounds redistributed between businesses. Author of the response, director of policy, Jonnie Hall, said: “To be honest, we are not wedded to the notion of minimising winners and losers. We want to support our outcomes via active agriculture. If you split the direct support budget, you are going to shift money around.”

At the last reform before Brexit, NFUS was criticised for demanding additional measures, such as the ewe hogg payment, three payment regions and continued LFASS support. These changes were, in part, blamed by the Scottish Government for the IT fiasco which prompted Scottish Beef Association chair at the time, Scott Henderson, to say 'in spite of its £185m price tag, the purpose-built computer programme was proving to be an utter failure.'

This time is different, according to NFUS president, Martin Kennedy, who said: “We know the exiting IT system has to be adapted and they are not going to invest another £80m into another system. Our conversations with the RPID side of Scottish Government have been along the lines what we are proposing fits their structure. It can be adapted to the existing IT system.

"There is even scope for simplicity and cost saving on how we implement, monitor and validate the public funding. We are in a good place. We are no longer constrained by Europe and we have a real opportunity, but we have to be pragmatic. Simplicity is absolutely the case – if we make it too complicated, then it's something we can't deliver.”

In terms of regions, the union has long called for a single region with money paid on actively farmed hectares. To do this, claimants would need to declare any crop grown, or livestock reared, to receive a corresponding payment.

Under this, some extensive farms would not have enough livestock to trigger payment on all their land but each one would be of the same value across the country. This fits the EU’s desire to move payment to a flat rate across the continent and fits with the government’s desire to align rules with Brussels.

But hinging payments to livestock units runs the risk of upsetting the World Trade Organisations, which only permits a proportion of support to be coupled to production. However, Mr Kennedy pointed out: “We are of the view we are under the ceiling for those payments and we are WTO compliant.”

The four-tiered system within the Agricultural Bill consultation is being backed by the union. Mr Hall pointed out: “We welcome and support the intended shift to a new four-tier structure of future support, a structure initiated by the union in the publication of our ‘Steps to Change’ document in March, 2018.

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"However, the Scottish Government must be clearer as to how and to what degree ‘conditionality’ will be attached to the direct support elements of Tiers 1 and 2, and what shares of total funding will be allocated to these direct payments Tiers.

"Equally, questions remain over the scope, function and content of the indirect support of Tiers 3 and 4 – including their shares overall funding and their means to target support to best effect.”

The union also wanted to see front load, or re-distributive payments to reward smaller farmers, which is in line with demands from crofters and small farmers. On the other end of the scale, it did not want to see capping of payments because many big businesses deliver a lot of the desired outcomes such as food, environment, community and climate change.

The next step, is to press for more detailed modelling on the different approaches and how ‘active farmed hectares’ could be approached. Mr Hall added: “We are continuing to press the government to come clean on some of this.

"This is the direction we want to go and we need to start getting some serous analysis. I sit in the margins of ARIOB and I think ARIOB had not had the opportunity to look at different options, as some options had not been put in front of it.”