Action to Protect Rural Scotland supports the Farm for Scotland’s Future campaign. In this blog director Kat Jones explains why we need a new approach to farm policy and a better set of incentives for farmers.
Scotland’s best known landscapes may be its mountains, moorlands and forests, but for those living in our towns and cities, our agricultural landscapes will be far more familiar. It is a landscape important for food production and to the people who live and work there, as well as those who visit for walks and time in nature. But it is also incredibly important for wildlife. Hedgerows and wooded burns or rivers offer wildlife corridors, field margins contain a diversity of flora.
However our agricultural landscapes are not as rich in wildlife as they were. Farmland birds have had one of the sharpest declines of all habitats – The RSPB farmland bird indicator shows a 48% decline since 1970. Farming is the second biggest source of climate emissions in Scotland and a source of nitrogen pollution to our rivers and lochs.
We need to help farmers restore our wildlife-rich agricultural landscapes and to do this, we need to get our incentives right. At present the Scottish Government spends more than half a billion pounds on farm funding every year. These payments should be designed to reduce the impacts of farming on the environment, wildlife and the climate.
This year, with the introduction of new Scottish agriculture legislation, we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to create a better system.
LINK and its member organisations (including APRS) are calling on the Scottish Government to give nature a chance and put in place measures to ensure that we can restore nature in our countryside.
A more biodiverse landscape is a more beautiful landscape, with more hedges and small woodlands, a diversity of native flora on the verges and in field margins. We support LINK’s campaign because we believe that we can have a future for Scotland’s farmers that also benefits wildlife and the people that enjoy our countryside.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this blog are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of all the organisations backing the Farm for Scotland’s Future campaign.
This autumn, the Scottish government is due to introduce a new Agriculture Bill, giving us a once in a lifetime opportunity to make farming work for nature, climate and people.
MSPs will be scrutinising the bill as it passes through parliament, and will have the opportunity to propose and vote on amendments. It’s vital that MSPs hear their constituents calling for a bill that helps farmers and crofters produce food in ways that restore nature, tackle climate change and revitalise our rural areas.
Could you arrange a meeting with your MSP to let them know that the future of farming is important to you?
You can also watch the video of our webinar, held on 11 September, with three great speakers discussing why the Agriculture Bill matters and how people can help influence the bill by talking or writing to their MSPs.
In the webinar David McKay, head of policy at Soil Association Scotland, spoke about the opportunity for farming to become part of the solution to the climate and nature crises.
Nora Casey, parliamentary officer at RSPB Scotland, outlined how a bill passes through parliament and how speaking to our MSPs can make a difference.
Paul Wheelhouse, former MSP and Scottish government minister, reflected on his time in parliament and gave us some really useful insights into how best to lobby our MSPs.
If you do speak (or write) to your MSP about the Agriculture Bill, our campaign coordinator Miriam Ross would love to hear how it goes and what response you get. Send her an email.
Dr Elspeth Stirling from Scottish Badgers discusses the unique role farmers can play in integrating badger populations into the sustainable farming of the future so they can contribute to nutrient cycling, habitat creation and biodiversity recovery; and why the Agriculture Bill is the opportunity for a fairer system that will reward farming using nature-enhancing approaches, that many farmers already practice.
Does anyone find change easy? Probably not. However, farming has always adapted to the challenges and opportunities that the earth throws at it. Now is no different. Historically farmers have never been fulsomely rewarded for the care of nature they have undertaken. And now we are in a nature collapse, born of the impact of all human activities on earth’s resources. And farming is being asked again to take on a crucial role to help lead the way out of trouble.
It’s a big ask, so how should farming view this huge responsibility? Most would agree that farmers as individuals generally want to care for the land as part of their work; though with the present system it’s unlikely many farmers receive mainstream acknowledgement for any nature goals they achieve. The Agriculture Bill brings the potential to properly finance nature friendly farming as mainstream.
Not so long ago, farms looked different to what we’ve become used to today – more nature was integrated within the farming landscape and more soft boundaries existed between farmed and natural habitats. Let’s remember, it was the food industry and global food supply chains that drove the changes in farming since the 1960s rather than farmers’ choice.
If we want food, we depend on having functioning ecosystems in nature. Yet Scotland is one of the most biodiversity depleted countries on earth. We can’t get way with protecting what we’ve got – we’ve got to go the extra mile. So, how do we ‘grow back’ living webs of natural processes?
It means making space at sufficient scale for communities of living organisms, from microbes to mammals, to exist in a self-sufficient way without a helping hand. It means integrating biodiversity across the farmed landscape in mosaics and corridors so that farmed land benefits directly as well as biodiversity regaining the ‘glue’ that holds it together.
Where do larger mammals come into the picture? Many farmers already farm to restore nature and see badgers and other larger wild mammals as part of the solution. So, what roles do badgers fulfil in relation to the soil, water, and wider ecosystems of living organisms?
Badgers are an important part of woodland/grassland boundary ecology. It’s worth bearing in mind that badger populations were suppressed historically by persecution which resulted in local extinction across swathes of land in the north of Britain by 1929. Recovery has been patchy and 80% per cent of land in Scotland remains without any badger sett or badger signs.
As a consequence, the land has been deprived of the essential ecosystem functions these effective terrestrial engineers until recently provided.
What roles do badgers fulfil particularly relating to farming and healthy ecosystems? Badgers are excellent ecosystem engineers. As they interact with the soil badgers contribute to the breakdown and cycling of plant materials (important for soil health); help seed dispersal (important for habitat heterogeneity); create habitats to be colonised by a variety of plants, fungi, invertebrates and insects (that we need to grow crops and hedgehogs and birds need to feed on); create soil conditions that retain moisture (that help to combat soil degradation which is a major and costly problem for agriculture and inhibits fire); create a stable thermal environment in the sett (providing a crucial contribution to a range of species in buffering environmental conditions and especially to provide an insulated environment for raising young); and contribute to species abundance on a landscape level (that we need to restore biodiversity).
Larger wild mammals generally function as the glue that holds everything else in nature together, important for farming and breathing life into vital processes that keep the people of Scotland fed and the land habitable.
We support the Farm for Scotland’s Future campaign because Scotland needs nature friendly agriculture to be properly mainstream funded and expertly supported.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this blog are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of all the organisations backing the Farm for Scotland’s Future campaign.
Members of Scottish Environment LINK’s Food and Farming group have set out in a briefing for MSPs what the Scottish government’s Agriculture Bill, expected this autumn, must contain in order to help make farming work for nature, climate and people.
The coalition of environmental charities is calling on the Scottish government to transform the farm funding system so that at least three quarters of public spending on farming supports methods that restore nature and tackle climate change, and to support all farmers and crofters in the transition to sustainable farming.
The coalition launched the Farm for Scotland’s Future campaign, backed by 41 environmental, farming and food organisations.
The briefing includes calls for the Agriculture Bill to:
Make clear that its purpose is to drive transformational change in our farming and food production system to address the climate and nature emergencies and support required land use change.
Set targets for how farming will help restore nature and tackle climate change, for example by increasing organic farming or reducing the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilisers.
Include a redistributive mechanism that would benefit small farms and crofts.
Introduce an upper limit on direct payments to farm businesses, so that large amounts of public money are no longer given with few conditions attached to some of the wealthiest landowners and largest businesses, as happens in the current system.
The briefing also calls for the total farm support budget for Scotland to be at least maintained and potentially increased, due to the central contribution agriculture and land use must make to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and to nature restoration.
RSPB is the largest wildlife conservation charity in Europe with over a million members across the UK. RSPB Scotland Campaigns and Communications Officer, Lottie van Grieken, talks about why we must put nature at the heart of Scotland’s upcoming Agriculture Bill.
Farmers and crofters manage three quarters of Scotland’s land, and the Scottish Government spends over half a billion pounds per year on farm funding. Yet less than 10% of current public funding is spent on farm schemes which encourage nature and climate friendly farming methods. The opportunity to change this is why RSPB Scotland supports the Farm for Scotland’s Future campaign.
The current farming system is built from outdated policy which focused primarily on food production, originating from a need for greater production after WWII. This focus changed the way we used our land – hedgerows were removed, wetlands were drained, and pesticide use increased. We’ve seen a huge loss of farmland habitats, and pollinating insects, farmland birds and other species declining as a result. In fact, curlew, lapwing and kestrel populations decreased by at least 60% between 1995 and 2020, and pollinating insect populations have plummeted. The overall picture of farmland nature is one of gradual, consistent decline.
We needed to increase food production after WWII, and we continue to need to produce food now. Doing so at the expense of our environment though, is the wrong approach. This has far-reaching consequences, not least in undermining farming and food production itself which ultimately depend on nature and a stable climate. Nature is essential to food security.
Scotland, where our cultural heritage is intertwined with amazing landscapes and unique wildlife, is 28th from the bottom on the Biodiversity Intactness Index, reflecting the historic loss of nature and meaning we are one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. As the majority of Scotland’s land is farmed, agriculture has a significant impact on wildlife and the habitats that it relies upon. Farming is also the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Scotland, contributing to almost 19% of all Scottish emissions.
Despite this, nature loss and harmful emissions are not the fault of farmers and crofters, but rather the result of an outdated subsidy system which has side-lined the environment. The decisions farmers and crofters make on their land are influenced by farming policy and funding systems. Many farmers and crofters are already demonstrating the success of nature friendly farming, but we want to see this become the norm and for farmers and crofters to reap the rewards of nature’s recovery, increased rural jobs and more sustainable food security.
This Autumn, we expect to see a new Agriculture Bill move through the Scottish Parliament. This Bill is a rare and vital, once in a generation, opportunity to change the system to put nature at the heart of our farming practices.
RSPB’s core mission is to protect and restore nature. We work actively with hundreds of farmers, crofters and landowners across Scotland through advisory work and conservation projects. There is no doubt that there is no farming without nature – farming depends on it. We are calling for the approximately £600 million annual spend on agricultural subsidies to be redirected to better support nature friendly farming.
Farmers and crofters are a critical part of the solutions to tackle climate change, and to protect and restore nature. Many are already taking vital steps to farm in nature friendly ways. Changing the way that the farming funding system operates, and putting nature at its heart, will help to save nature and climate. That’s why we are part of the Farm for Scotland’s Future campaign, joining with other environmental, food and farming organisations. With your help we can ensure MSPs know that people across Scotland care about nature friendly farming.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this blog are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of all the organisations backing the Farm for Scotland’s Future campaign.
Kieran Thomas from Butterfly Conservation tells us about the crucial role farmers can play in helping Scotland’s moths and butterflies to thrive, and why the Agriculture Bill is an opportunity not to be missed.
Butterflies and moths are vital components of our ecosystems, benefitting us and the wider environment in a number of ways. Butterfly pollination is a well-known and celebrated ecosystem service, and moth pollination is beginning to receive more attention and appreciation. Many species of butterfly and moth are vital food chain links, such as the many nocturnal moth species that support bat populations. Butterflies and moths also give us clues about what’s happening across ecosystems – their short life cycles, species-specific reliance on a small range of foodplants, limited dispersal capabilities, and sensitivity to weather and climate make them key indicators of the health of the wider environment.
Butterfly Conservation has been collecting data on Scottish lepidoptera for 50 years. There are about 1,300 species of moth and 35 species of butterfly occurring in Scotland. Moth abundance has almost halved (46% decline) over the last 25 years. Butterflies show more mixed results, with some species seeing population increases and range expansions as a result of climate change, whereas others are suffering losses due to habitat degradation.
With 80% of Scotland’s land being farmland, the agriculture sector is absolutely crucial in protecting and enhancing the country’s biodiversity. Appropriate farming practices can ensure that grasslands, woodlands and other habitats are managed in a way that supports their unique assemblages of butterflies and moths, providing shelter and food throughout the lifecycle.
Species rich grasslands are a key habitat for both butterflies and moths. With grasslands accounting for almost 20% of Scotland’s farmed land, achieving positive management on this habitat could have a major impact on reversing declines in species. Furthermore, grasslands have huge potential as carbon stores, a benefit that many are unaware of or overlook. Positive management for wildlife will generally result in increased carbon storage, a win-win. We are therefore delighted to see grasslands receiving a lot of attention in the recent Farm for Scotland’s Futurereport, especially the highlighting of their carbon storage capabilities.
Farming can play a vital role in managing these species-rich sites for butterflies and moths. The right level of grazing provides room for important foodplants to flourish and creates a balance between sheltered and open areas that is so important for many butterfly and moth species across their life cycles. Light grazing can also maintain the carbon storage potential of these sites by avoiding over-exploitation of the soil and keeping carbon stored in plants.
Many of Butterfly Conservation’s priority species in Scotland, such as the Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary (Boloria selene), Chequered Skipper (Carterocephalus palaemon), Northern Brown Argus (Aricia artaxerxes) and Marsh Fritillary (Euphydryas aurinia), which are all Scottish Biodiversity List and UK BAP priority species as well, benefit from light grazing and targeted clearing. However, overgrazing and intensive management are catastrophic, destroying these and other species’ habitats, and reducing the carbon storage potential of grasslands.
Away from grasslands, the role of woodlands, trees and hedgerows in farming is also gaining more attention. These habitat features are home to many butterflies and moths, including priority species such as the Pearl-bordered Fritillary (Boloria euphrosyne), as well as acting as habitat corridors for many more. Butterfly-friendly management of hedges, planting individual trees and shrubs, or leaving unmanaged, shrubby edges to woodland can all have positive impacts on butterflies and moths.
However, indiscriminate afforestation is a concern; it is to the detriment of existing high value habitats, the species that use them, and the ecosystem services that we gain from them. Afforestation with little consideration for wildlife risks destroying valuable existing habitats and replacing them with woodlands that have little benefit to biodiversity, woodlands lacking in the tree species richness and structural variety to support diverse assemblages within. Woodland butterfly species in particular require open spaces and a range of young and old growth in order to survive in woodlands.
We therefore welcome the calls from the Farm for Scotland’s Future campaign to integrate trees into farming in a more considered way, one which ensures woodlands are created and managed for wildlife, maintains a variety of habitats in the landscape, and provides the widest possible benefits to the greatest diversity of species, including Scotland’s butterflies and moths.
Farming is uniquely placed as sector that has the potential to carry out conservation and biodiversity enhancement on a truly national scale, whilst providing immediate goods and services to society at the same time. It is the sector that is best placed to demonstrate that humanity is part of the wider ecosystem and, consequently, working with nature, not against it, is the only way to deliver a sustainable future for the environment.
Nature-friendly farming can ensure land is managed with the right actions at the appropriate intensity to allow a huge diversity of butterflies and moths to thrive across Scotland. Integrating various habitats within these management plans can create a landscape that allows species to find resources more easily across their entire life cycle and for generations beyond, using wildlife-friendly spaces as corridors to move from habitat to habitat.
For these reasons and more, support is urgently needed to ensure nature is at the heart of Scottish agriculture. An Agriculture Bill that delivers for biodiversity is an opportunity to shatter the illusion of the dichotomy between nature conservation and productive farming, creating a genuinely sustainable and just system that works for our entire environment. It is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this blog are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of all the organisations backing the Farm for Scotland’s Future campaign.
Kathy Wormald tells us what amphibian and reptile conservation charity Froglife hopes for from Scotland’s new farm funding system:
Over recent decades the UK’s common reptile and amphibian species have undergone massive declines. Currently 59% of amphibians and 42% of reptiles in Europe are in population decline, with 40% of amphibians and 32% of reptiles threatened or near threatened with extinction.
These declines are being witnessed in Scotland, with populations of adders described as ‘discontinuous’ and ‘patchy’ and the Great Crested newt as ‘uncommon’. These declines are largely attributed to the way in which land is managed in Scotland.
Habitat degradation, fragmentation and loss is having a huge negative impact on species abundance. Amphibians and reptiles, due to their ecological make-up, cannot move great distances, and hence they are disproportionately impacted by poorly managed habitats.
To address these declines, we need all land to be managed sympathetically for the benefit of reptiles and amphibians, including farmland. With approximately 80% of Scotland’s land area being agricultural land, which is roughly 6.2 million hectares, it is crucial that the management of farmland is sensitive to the needs of wildlife.
Good quality ponds, especially warm ones, are vital breeding habitats for amphibians in the spring, when spawn and tadpoles will be using them to develop into adults. Often farm ponds suffer from agricultural run-off. There are several practical measures that can be taken by farmers to address this, such as managing the surrounding terrestrial habitat by allowing buffer zones to capture the runoff (allowing grass to grow long and keeping it uncut), using rock, stone, or gravel as a natural filtration system, and building a ditch as an inceptor with an overflow directing runoff away from the pond.
Outside of the breeding season amphibians need wooded areas, scrub, or hedgerows for hibernation, feeding and shelter. Hence providing these habitats near ponds on farmland will provide suitable all year-round habitats for amphibians.
Reptiles require bare ground to bask in and heat up their body temperature and vegetated areas such as scrub, for foraging and shelter. Leaving buffer zones around the edges of farmland, with both bare ground and vegetated areas, is important.
Froglife is a national wildlife conservation organisation with a remit to conserve the UK’s native reptiles and amphibians (snakes, lizards, slow worms, frogs, toads, and newts). As part of Scottish Environment LINK, we are supporting the Farm for Scotland’s Future campaign, and have joined other members in calling for a new farm funding system that works for nature, climate and people. We want to see the new system provide farmers with the support they need to manage their farmlands for amphibians and reptiles and a wide range of other wildlife.
Kathy Wormald is CEO of Froglife.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this blog are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of all the organisations backing the Farm for Scotland’s Future campaign.
Steve McMinn tell us why the Rare Breeds Survival Trust supports the Farm for Scotland’s Future campaign, and why it wants to see government policy reflect the role of native breeds in supporting biodiversity:
‘The Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) is delighted to join others in calling for a new farm funding system that works for nature, climate, and people. We believe that grazing with native breeds can play an important role in the development and maintenance of natural habitats which will in turn support an increase in biodiversity.
‘The use of the right breed, in the right place, at the right density can help us to address future challenges of disease resistance and susceptibility, climate adaptation, food security and resilience.
‘RBST feels that native breeds should be seen as being crucial in bringing greater sustainability to modern farming and land management practices and that government policy and funding should reflect this.’
Steve McMinn is a trustee of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust and chair of the RBST Scotland Support Group.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this blog are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of all the organisations backing the Farm for Scotland’s Future campaign.
Helen O’Keefe from the Highland Good Food Partnership tells us why the Highlands need a transformational farm support system that engages with all farmers and crofters:
‘In the Highlands, most agricultural produce is exported, and most food consumed is imported, via long supply chains. Most farmers and crofters are managing high nature value areas yet are woefully undersupported through the current agricultural funding model.
‘We are facing depopulation and loss of traditional knowledge and culture because traditional farming and crofting is not economically viable. Our food system is highly vulnerable to national and global supply chain shocks, and we are seeing health problems from an over-reliance on heavily processed and low nutrition commercial food.
‘A thriving agricultural sector, embracing a diversity of scales and types of farming and crofting across the whole Highlands, is vital to achieve the Good Food Future that we envisage for the Highlands. We need a new, transformational support system that engages with ALL farmers and crofters, that rewards those who are already managing well for nature, as well as helping others to transition to more nature-friendly methods.
‘We need a system that supports small scale producers and shorter supply chains, helping us to build a more resilient food system, with lower food miles and better food availability for our widespread population. We need the government to be bold and determined, to not shy away from change, and to create a system that rewards those who are working to make things better.
‘We hope that, by being a part of the Farm For Scotland’s Future campaign, we can help to create a system that works for everybody, to create the best Food Future, not just for the Highlands, but for all of Scotland.’
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this blog are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of all the organisations backing the Farm for Scotland’s Future campaign.
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