After 25 years in existence the Scottish Less Favoured Areas Support Scheme (LFASS) needs to be ripped up and replaced according to a top panel of influential farming experts and lobbyists.

Speaking at SRUC’s policy debate on Thursday at the Royal Highland Show the SRUC academic Steven Thomson explained: “The scheme has run its course.” Before calling for a new scheme to replace the hill farming support which would rebalance payments.

Initially set up in 1999 in a bid to reduce headage payments, the scheme pays out £61m annually based on claimant’s land type, geographic area and stock numbers. Over the years the 2.86m hectare scheme has been altered and tweaked which has increased the complexity of the rules but retained popular with established farmers.

Competing visions for upland and hill farming from different lobbying organisations has previously prevented an overhaul despite EU nationals being forced to scrap similar schemes years ago.

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Now representatives from NFUS, the crofting community and RSPB believe it is no longer tenable to modify the scheme and that a full replacement is needed.

Former chair of the Scottish Crofting Federation Donald McKinnon believed that the system needed to be replaced by a scheme which gave greater recognition of how peripheral businesses were to main markets and recognise the additional costs. Mr McKinnon pointed out that crofters typically receive the smallest permitted amount of cash. He said: “It is questionable that the scheme delivers the right level of support for businesses to achieve what we want them to do. Lots of Cabinet Secretaries have committed to reform the scheme in the past but all were abandoned. We need to underpin food production, people, language and biodiversity.”

Meanwhile head of policy at RSPB Vicky Swales argued for LFASS to be replaced with a scheme focused on High Nature Values (HNV). This would see farmers and crofters rewarded for fitting stocking densities inline with biodiversity needs, producing more feed on farm and rearing certain breeds. She said: “We want to see farming and crofting in Scotland to get more money. LFASS is really complicated and struggles to make sense. 44% of Scotland is HNV but very little agricultural support goes to this area. We need to flip this on its head. We must fundamentally change how we support farming and crofting. LFASS puts money into the wrong place, arguably.”

NFU Scotland’s Jonnie Hall said: “As a scheme, LFASS may have run its course - at 25 years old, it’s both very historic and very complicated. However, the powers provided by the new Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill ensure we have clear scope to provide additional support to less favoured areas as part of Tier 1 Base payments to help ensure the continuity of multiple public benefits that are only derived from active farming and crofting in our less favoured areas.

“Given the profile of Scottish agriculture, the need for such support remains critical. The socio-economic and environmental value of active farming and crofting on poorer land or in remoter locations, or both, cannot be overstated. Ongoing support for our livestock grazing systems in such areas must be integral to our future support framework. This must sit as a distinct component within Tier 1 Base support to explicitly underpin active livestock farming and crofting.

“While LFASS continues to provide stability over the next few years, we have a clear opportunity to develop a new approach to enable active livestock systems to continue to deliver a unique array of economic, social and environmental outcomes.”

A full replacement of LFASS is likely to take years to roll out and will need to fit with the detail of the future rural support plans which are yet to emerge. Due to inflation the buying power of the multi-million-pound budget has been halved since the scheme was originally set up.