It was an impassioned Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead who opened the AgriScot event at Ingliston yesterday.
Mr Lochhead is clearly very annoyed about the allocation of EU convergence funds within the UK. Referring to UK farming minister Owen Paterson’s handling of the distribution of £192million of extra funding, Mr Lochhead spoke of “pure deceit” and “sheer hypocrisy.” For good measure he witheringly said he had “expected more” from new Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael.
Mr Lochhead’s argument is that all of the cash should have come to Scotland because the money only came to the UK because of the need to increase the very low per hectare support payments in Scotland.
Mr Lochhead said he would be “pulling out all the stops” to make sure the rewards went to productive farming. He would “in a matter of days” be launching the consultation on implementation of the new Cap. The Scottish Government will almost inevitably want to move some funds from Pillar 1 (direct support) to Pillar 2 (rural development) and there is scope to move up to 15% of the budget in this direction.
Mr Lochhead may choose a smaller percentage but in any event he was keen yesterday to point out that much of the Pillar 2 money – at least twice the 15% that could come from Pillar 1 – would be used to support farming through the Less Favoured Area Support Scheme and other schemes.
Turning to the beef position, Mr Lochhead revealed he has asked Quality Meat Scotland chairman Jim McLaren to lead a short-term review to look at beef quality and quantity and to report back to him by the time of the Royal Highland Show. Mr McLaren said: “This beef industry group will bring together representatives of our industry’s key stakeholders and customers, as well as Scottish Government officials and specialists, to address the biggest challenges faced by the beef production chain in Scotland.”
Andrew Moir, chairman of the organising committee, reckoned that a record 11,500 visitors attended AgriScot yesterday.
Scottish farmers are set to receive more subsidy support in 2013 than originally anticipated following an EU decision to scale-back proposed cost-cutting measures.
The European Commission had originally proposed a 4% cut to direct support payments in a bid to keep Common Agricultural Policy (Cap) support in line with the commission budget – this is known as financial discipline.
Policymakers have this week agreed to reduce financial discipline measures to 2.45% meaning more money on farm subsidy cheques in December.