Lambing’s done and silage hasn’t quite started. May is the deadline each year for farmers and crofters in Scotland to submit their application for farm support, and this year it’s just a little bit different. Alongside the main scheme (which is staying put for now) the Government’s
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The Scottish Government is currently on consultation overdrive, but 4 key consultations fit so closely together that it’s almost impossible to respond to one without referring to the others. In the words of Scottish Government: ‘Agricultural Transition in Scotland’ asks us to consider a successor to the
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…and we need to work together to get it where it needs to be. Blink and you’ve missed it: the long-awaited Good Food Nation Bill was published by the Government just over a week ago. The Bill has come a long way, and over the past 5
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It’s hard not to be impressed by this year’s Programme for Government. There’s a definite green tinge and a renewed focus on getting stuff done as hopefully we emerge from the pandemic. When it comes to food, it’s a jigsaw puzzle with bits and pieces scattered across
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Much of last week’s report from the IPCC– and the corresponding media headlines – talked about the truly apocalyptic consequences of not taking action on climate. The report spelled out just how bad things are already, but also used specially developed future scenarios (the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways,
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The debate about farming and climate change has been more than a little contentious. When an issue is this complex, it can become dominated by sound bites: cows are bad, sheep destroy the landscape, and we should put most of Scotland to trees to save the planet.
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Since we started ploughing we’ve moved over 130 billion tonnes of soil carbon into the atmosphere as CO2. That’s a lot less than fossil fuels, but it’s still equivalent to about half the excess carbon now in the atmosphere compared to pre-industrial levels. So getting some of
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The UK Government is planning to reduce regulation around gene-edited livestock and crops in England, arguing that this technology is essentially no different from natural breeding and should not be regulated the same way as older methods of genetic modification. While this does not immediately affect the
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The return of the Westminster Agriculture Bill to the Commons in the next few days is a pivotal moment – for Brexit, for Scotland and in many ways for democracy. The latest Which? Poll out today shows 94% of people want to maintain high food standards and 77%
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It’s natural to put ‘food’ into the search box and see what this 135 page document says. But that would miss some of the most important messages. First, of course, the incorporation into Scots law of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This has
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