The release of the Scottish Government’s consultation on the implementation of the new Common Agricultural Policy in many ways marks a significant step forward.
Rural Affairs Minister Richard Lochhead has now set out his proposals for distributing support to active farmers, and the industry has until the end of March to comment.
For those who attended any of the NFU Scotland CAP roadshows in recent days there will not be too many surprises with the framework already becoming familiar. There are, however, some significant points in the document, chiefly the clear intention to split the farmed area of Scotland into two designations rather than three.
There had been an expectation farmers would make their claims on a field by field basis, with land classified as rough grazing, permanent grass or temporary grass/arable.
Now it seems that there will only be two designations.
The first will cover rough grazing essentially hill and moorland and the second will cover everything else, including permanent grass, temporary grass and arable.
The reason, according to sources close to Government, is administrative simplicity.
There has always been a fear that if the delivery mechanism for what will be known as the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) was too complex there would be risk of delays in payment.
The consultation paper also makes it possible for the first time for farmers to work out approximately what their individual support package will be worth.
The proposal is that the Scottish Pillar 1 (direct support) budget be split, with 85% of the funds going to the better land and 15% to the rough grazing sector.
On arable and grazing land (Region 1) this would translate into a BPS, including the compulsory greening element, of 224.62 euro per hectare. This is made up of a basic payment of 148.22 euro and a greening element of 76.40.
Rough grazing (Region 2) would, it is suggested, attract a payment of 25.23 euro per hectare, made up of 16.65 euro of basic payment and 8.58 of greening.
Farmers producing beef calves from suckler cows should add in a Voluntary Coupled Support (VCS) payment of 172.5 euro per head for the first 10 calves, 115 euro for the next 40 and 57.5 euro for additional calves.
As an aid for farmers to calculate their own payments a ready reckoner is now live on the Scottish Government website.
There is a caution, however, because the calculation will only show the payments after the conversion from the historic payment to the new area payment is complete.
The rules would allow this to happen in one step in 2015, but the consultation suggests this will be done in steps from 2015 to 2019.
This will undoubtedly relieve the pain for those whose direct payments will drop, but the fear has always been that calculating stepped payments for every farm in the country would be an administrative nightmare.
According to officials yesterday this would not be the case, and construction of suitable computer systems is already under way. There was also confirmation that a national reserve of entitlements would be created to give new entrants and other special cases access to support. This reserve will be topped up on annual basis as required.
Commenting on the release of the consultation, NFU Scotland communications director Bob Carruth said: “The biggest piece of Scotland’s CAP reform consultation jigsaw is now in place.
“The Scottish Government consultation contains few surprises but will, with the inclusion of an online ready reckoner, allow farm businesses to start mapping out what impact the move to an area-based scheme in the future will have on support payment levels.
“NFU Scotland’s own response will be informed by the hugely successful roadshows that have been touring the country and will conclude in Orkney tomorrow, by which time we will have met with almost 1,000 of our members in the past 10 days.
“The many hundreds of questionnaires completed by members will give us a clear direction of how to respond to Scottish Government’s proposals. It is already apparent that both two-region and three-region models feature in our members’ thinking, and the key issue for many is how activity is recognised.
“That will create most difficulties in our hill areas where a simple area rate for rough grazing will not accommodate the wide differences in stocking rates and activity found in these parts. We’ve had a resounding message from our members that every effort must be made to prevent empty hillsides from bleeding scarce funding from the genuinely active.”