Scotland’s farming and countryside sectors are leading the way in tackling the climate crisis, a new report has said.
The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) Scotland found farmers and rural groups are innovating to meet environmental challenges and improve livestock standards.
It follows a countrywide research project by the organisation’s UK arm looking at how the food and farming industries can work towards meeting climate change targets and inspiring change across the sector.
Examples cited by the commission include East of Scotland Growers – a vegetable marketing co-op and one of the largest producers of broccoli in the UK, which has helped create a broccoli crisp snack from waste produce.
Scottish Pig Producers, a co-operative owned by 110 pig farmers in Scotland and Northern Ireland, was also hailed for increasing value for members, improving pig health and welfare, and creating an emergency response facility for any potential disease outbreak.
“As a nation with a large and highly developed agriculture sector that is also working under ambitious and visionary climate change mitigation targets, Scotland provides an exemplar of the challenges climate change poses to our food systems and how these challenges can be addressed,” said Professor Lorna Dawson, the RSA food, farming and countryside Scotland inquiry lead.
“Farmers are helping in many ways, as exemplified in the report, by increasing carbon sequestration, halting the loss of vital biodiversity, promoting wildlife habitats, restoring soils and planting trees – responding in a positive way with many innovative solutions to the climate emergency and biodiversity loss. Farmers and farming groups are very much part of the solution to the issues of climate change and biodiversity loss.”
