Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you. I appreciate your keeping your introductions brief. I will kick off with the first questions, which are on future agricultural and rural policy and the impact of EU exit on thoat. Broadly speaking, what are your key requirements for the new agricultural and rural policy that will be brought to this Parliament before 2023? What impact will EU exit have on future policy? I ask Stephen Young to start, please.

Welcome back, everybody. On our second panel, we have Stephen Young, the head of policy at Scottish Land & Estates; Christopher Nicholson, the chair of the Scottish Tenant Farmers Association; Pete Ritchie, the chair of Scottish Environment LINK food and farming group; Donald MacKinnon, the chair of the Scottish Crofting Federation; and Miranda Geelhoed, the policy and campaigns co-ordinator for the Landworkers Alliance.

I ask witnesses to make a brief opening statement. It would be helpful if you could keep your comments to about two minutes. I invite Stephen Young to begin, to be followed by Christopher Nicholson, Pete Ritchie, Donald MacKinnon and Miranda Geelhoed.

Jenni Minto and Mercedes Villalba will ask some questions on agricultural tenancies.

I have a final brief supplementary on that from Jim Fairlie.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, cabinet secretary. I am delighted that the first piece of legislation that the committee is dealing with is about kittens. As you say, though, it may be minor but it is nonetheless important for animal welfare. Do members have any questions?

At item 2, the committee will take evidence on the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2021. The regulations are subject to the affirmative procedure and I refer members to paper 2. I welcome Mairi Gougeon, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands, and her officials, John Nicolson, policy manager for the animal welfare team, and Grant McLarty, solicitor. I invite the cabinet secretary to make an opening statement.

Good morning, and welcome to the fifth meeting in session 6 of the Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee. Before we begin, I remind members and those contributing to switch electronic devices to silent, please.

Our first item of business is an introductory session on farming and crofting. I welcome the first of our virtual or remote panels of industry stakeholders. We have Beatrice Morrice, political affairs manager with the National Farmers Union Scotland; Professor Davy McCracken, head of the integrated land management department at Scotland’s Rural College; Mike Robinson, co-chair of the farming for 1.5° inquiry; and Professor Sally Shortall, a member of the women in agriculture task force. Thank you for the briefings that you provided. Before we move to questions, I ask the panellists to make some brief opening remarks, which you should keep to no more than two minutes.

I have a quick supplementary question. We are not self-sufficient in red meat, so we import quite a percentage. If our land-based industries are going to struggle to get to net zero, is there a risk in reducing agricultural production, particularly in the red meat industry, to hit our targets in the UK? An unintended consequence could be that we offshore beef and lamb production to places where the carbon footprint is bigger, which could ultimately result in a slower global transition to net zero. Has that risk been calculated in the plans for rural support and, in particular, agricultural production?

You touched on regional land use partnerships. I am a bit confused about them, and it appears that you, too, are not quite certain what the outcomes of the partnerships should be. What will be the measures of success or otherwise of the pilots? You touched on whether policies need to apply to a particular farmer, a particular sector or a farming system. You mentioned the south of Scotland, where we already have a lot of trees, but the milk fields of Scotland are in the south-west, where the cow sector is very important; we also have world-important peatlands and so on. What would be your measure of success for the regional land use partnerships? What are the expected outcomes, and how will the work of the partnerships feed into future agriculture policy and rural policy? I put that question to Davy McCracken, but I will also bring in Mike Robinson to address Jenni Minto’s questions.