SCOTTISH AGRICULTURE has come under fire of late, for their supposedly hefty contribution to climate change – gaining greater and often false media attention over much bigger offenders such as transport.

After the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was released on Thursday, August 8, it soon became clear by the initial poor reporting by many of the major media outlets that they were gunning for agriculture.

The report did make the point that adopting more plants in to our diets would serve as part of a wider effort to offset our carbon footprint, but they never once recommended that we should turn away from eating meat altogether – which ended up becoming the stand out news angle published by many of the major media outlets.

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The report clearly stated – ‘Balanced diets, featuring plant-based foods, such as those based on coarse grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and animal sourced food produced in resilient, sustainable and low-GHG emission systems, present major opportunities for adaption and mitigation while generating significant co-benefits in terms of human health.”

That very statement speaks to Scottish farming principles, with our mostly extensive grazing operations which support carbon capture and boost wildlife and biodiversity in many regions of the country. However, it would appear that identifying agriculture as a carbon sink isn’t sexy, it doesn’t sell newspapers, despite being the factual and take-home message which many members of the public need to hear. 

After listening and reading many of the poor journalism reports I approached BBC Scotland to attempt to set the record straight. Admittedly BBC Scotland coverage hasn’t vilified farmers in the same way as the wider network, but it became clear during the meeting that there is an ignorance to the struggles facing the industry in their news department.

There is an unfortunate tendency within the BBC and wider outlets when it comes to reporting on the topic of veganism to pit vegans against farmers – fuelling the divide further and causing irreparable harm to our industry. I stressed that this needs to stop, along with their glamorising of the vegan movement as a healthy modern choice whilst portraying farming as out of touch, archaic and staid.

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BBC Landward based out of Aberdeen was keen to discuss the recent reporting and give me the opportunity to call out the poor media reporting and explain some of the damage these reports could have on the future of Scottish agriculture.

Dougie Vipond and team came out to my home-farm in Ayr and I explained that part of the problem is that consumers have lost their connection with the land, with their food producers and that it is much easier for the media to zone in on encouraging a dietary switch than telling people not to jet off on holiday. I pointed out that our landscape is not suited to a move to plant-based production and that it would be complete hypocrisy to call farmers out for their environmental impact, whilst shipping in food from abroad, racking up air miles.

There is also a strong case to be made for the great stress the industry is already under with Brexit, poor weather, land abandonment, falling prices and deteriorating mental health – I urged that news editors have a moral and social obligation to think about the impact that their reports might have on an industry which they are clearly losing touch with.

This article originally appeared in The Scottish Farmer

You can catch the programme this Thursday, September 19, at 8pm on the BBC Scotland channel and on Friday, Sept 20, at 7.30pm on BBC 1 Scotland.