Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead will make the case for European Greening rules to meet Scottish needs on a visit to Brussels next week.

Greening is a new element of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), where a third of the direct farm payment budget is ring-fenced for environmental schemes.

Mr Lochhead is seeking a meeting with representatives from the European Commission which has requested extensive revisions to Scottish Government proposals for an alternative to the three-crop rule - rendering them virtually unworkable.

The Rural Affairs Secretary said: "The three-crop rule does not work for Scotland and in this case, the European Commission is proving a real obstacle to our efforts to find a reasonable and workable alternative.

"This meeting is our last chance to persuade the Commission to allow us to implement our proposals in 2016 - proposals which will help ease the bureaucratic burden for farmers whilst achieving the environmental benefits we are seeking."

Mr Lochhead went on: "Greening must meet Scottish needs and I have been listening closely to feedback from the industry. That is why we've made the very modest new requirement for a permanent grassland nutrient management plan as light touch as possible, after delaying it for a year to give farmers time to prepare."

NFU Scotland President Allan Bowie responded: "We note that the Scottish Government is now making "urgent" efforts at this late stage to find a workable solution to the three-crop rule that would benefit Scottish growers, but it smacks of too little, too late.

"How long have Scottish Government known that its equivalence scheme was not going to be a runner? And what has it been doing to convince Europe that what it is proposing is to the benefit of the environment?

"It is disappointing that the Cabinet Secretary has suggested that new requirements on grassland are being introduced under equivalence measures as this is completely misleading. This is quite simply further gold-plating being introduced by the Scottish Government."

Market round-up

Wallets Marts held their Christmas show and sale of prime lambs in Castle Douglas on Tuesday when the championship was awarded to the 1st prize pen of Blackfaces from Spango that scaled 45.7kg and went on to sell for £145. The reserve ticket went to the 1st prize AOB from Gelston Castle for a pen of Beltex weighing 43.8kg that fetched £105. Overall, the 2616 prime lambs to go under the auctioneer's hammer averaged 155.7p (-6.7p on the week).

The firm also had 501 cast sheep forward when ewes sold to £86 for Texels and £54 for Blackfaces.