SCOTLAND-ONLY agricultural greening rules have placed its crop producers at a competitive disadvantage to growers south of the Border – but it is within the power of Scottish farms minister Fergus Ewing to fix that.

In a bid to persuade Mr Ewing to strip out this 'gold-plating' – much of it introduced under the tenure of his predecessor Richard Lochhead – the National Farmers Union Scotland this week took him onto a Perthshire farm to see the practical effects of farming above and beyond the standards required by the European Union.

The visit was held on Townhead Farm, Balbeggie, hosted by the union's combinable crops committee chairman, Ian Sands, who said afterwards: “It was good to have our new cabinet secretary here on farm to explain to him in detail the impact and competitive disadvantage that existing greening measures are having on Scottish farmers.

“The Brexit vote may change support arrangements in the future but, until we are officially out of Europe and no longer benefiting from the CAP, we must continue to operate as before – and that means seeking significant changes to our greening requirements to remove the gold-plating introduced at a Scottish level."

The union believes that areas where gold-plating can be stripped out of Scottish rules include the growing of Nitrogen Fixing Crops to meet greening requirements; the use of conversion factors when calculating Ecological Focus Areas; grazing on buffer strips; management of fallow land and a greater choice of EFA options, including forestry and hedges.

The union also believes that the requirement for livestock farmers to have a record of intended nitrogen and lime applications to all their fields of permanent grassland is no more than another "compliance trip wire", with no positive environmental outcome.

“On using NFCs to meet EFA requirements, Scotland-only management rules on harvesting and field margins put Scottish growers at a competitive disadvantage with respect to growers in England," explained Mr Sands. "For 2016, a third management prescription was added for Scotland, requiring farmers growing NFC as an EFA option to grow at least two such crops. The area of the largest crop must not account for 75 per cent or more of the NFC EFA crop area.

“For many growers, that makes this option impractical and on farms with a relatively small EFA obligation, the smaller of the crops would be too small to be economically produced, stored, transported and marketed."

Regarding the EFA conversion factors made available by Europe as an option to simplify the burden of measuring EFA land on both farmers and officials, Mr Sands noted that unlike the rest of the British Isles and Eire, the Scottish Government had decided not to take advantage of this simplification. As a result, farmers found themselves jumping through "ridiculous hoops" to record the actual width of buffer strips and field margins measured along their entire length, and inspected to those measurements.

“This is a nonsense for Scotland where watercourses or field boundaries are rarely in a straight line," he said. "As buffer strips and field margins help to produce wildlife corridors, we believe that the use of the Conversion Factors would encourage uptake and so be environmentally beneficial, as well as simplifying administration.

“These examples of gold-plating also need to be viewed alongside the complete nonsense introduced in Scotland this year, requiring nutrient management plans on permanent grassland,” he added. “That is something we have also written to the cabinet secretary about.

“Given the uncertainty that lies ahead, Scotland’s growers deserve to get the best deal from greening measures and we hope that this visit will encourage the cabinet secretary to make the most of this opportunity to strip out Scottish Government’s own gold-plating. That would make the years ahead where we continue to operate within the CAP more manageable and efficient for our farmers while still delivering meaningful environmental benefits.”