Cash for sheds

If Scotland is to get an extra injection of cash from Westminster, the money needs to be used to allow us to farm closer to world market prices.

This means catching up with our continental cousins and farming siblings in England, and investing in infrastructure.

We need a scheme for farm sheds and production improvement like fencing, lime and drainage, to lessen the cost of rearing livestock and growing grain.

This could involve slatted courts to help farm a distance from arable fields.

Scottish Farming Minister Fergus Ewing, however, has boxed himself into a corner by basing his argument for the money on the low area payments in the Scottish hills.

Hill farmers will be able to read his speeches back to him if he doesn’t target the cash at the low payment per hectare areas.

This is also the understanding of the EU on where the money is heading.

But we need to be careful not to over-compensate.

The reason these farms got such low payments was because they had low levels of activity in the reference years when payments were production linked.

While the hill and upland areas clearly need support, paying big, extensive farms stocked at a quarter ewe per hectare a rate of €196/ha for all their land would be over-compensation.

An uplift for all BPS claimants across the country might be the easiest to administer and defend politically.

But this would be a missed opportunity to help farmers’ ability to produce closer to world market prices.