The Oxford Farming Conference held a debate involving young farmers at last week’s Highland Show with the motion that: “The house believes in paying farmers for more than food.”

Opposing the motion

Speaking against the motion was Colin Ferguson, a dairy farmer from the West of Scotland. “We should abolish payments completely,” according to Colin.

“Farmers are paid public money to keep the cost of food down. Why do primary producers bear the burden of retailers trying to beat each other for cheap food?”

“We need to reshape and re-imagine what our industry looks like. Rather than support an unprofitable industry we should be putting money into agricultural innovation,” Colin continued.

“After right to buy, subsidies are the biggest form of barriers for young farmers. CAP makes farmers think that this is the way it has always been and that it should stay that way.

“Businesses are built from output. If you don’t have the output, you don’t deserve to be making money.”

“We (farmers) have become lacklustre and lazy,” according to Colin. “Comfort is the enemy of progress and subsidies make us comfortable.”

What the public wants

Speaking in favour of the motion was Sarah Alison from the Soil Association Scotland and the National Council for Rural Advisors. She is also an organic farmer.

“We don’t get recognised for the goods and services that we give back,” Sarah explained. “The importance of the rural industry to our economy is huge, especially for rural tourism.

“The first thing we need to do is get a better understanding of what the public want from our farms. There is a large tranche of the public that is disconnected from farming.”

Sarah does believe that farmers have their part to play in the link between food producers and consumers. “We are as removed from our consumers as they are from us. We see our food go up the lorry and forget about it.”

Brand Scotland

Also speaking in favour of the motion was David Lawrie, national chair of SAYFC and he too believes that farmers can get involved. “We need to be embracing brand Scotland. The (food and drink) sector has flourished in Scotland but the farmers have not. We are not getting involved enough in the story of our food.

“I believe that we should be focusing support payments on making farmers more efficient as opposed to headage payments. We also need to embrace youth, so far farming has failed to tap into the young generation. Moving away from land-based payments should encourage succession,” according to David who sees a lot of farmers holding onto lands to keep receiving support payments.

“We are being given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape our industry,” David concluded.

“We can’t continue as we are,” according to Megan Rowland, Lantra Scotland Learner of the Year. “If we don’t get it right now, this will become an unwelcome story of the past.

“There needs to be more integration between farmers and communities. We need to see what communities want locally.” Megan also called for farmers to be paid for growing food.