Scottish farmers, get ready for the 2025 'Whole Farm Review'...

[PSQ]

Oh joy, bureaucrats ScotGov have finally come up with their the new hoops:

Whole Farm Plan quick guide

A quick guide introduction to what you need to know about the Whole Farm Plan for 2025.

www.ruralpayments.org

 

[DrDunc]

Oh joy, bureaucrats ScotGov have finally come up with their the new hoops:

Whole Farm Plan quick guide

A quick guide introduction to what you need to know about the Whole Farm Plan for 2025.

www.ruralpayments.org

Not too onerous (initially) having to do two of the five hoops. Most will (or ought to!!!) already have soil samples. If you're in QMS Farm assurance the animal health plan has been the law for years (sorry, has been a "regulation")

Nature Scot has been developing an app for the biodiversity audit. Was asked to trial it this summer, and have to say it's impressive how easy, quick, and well thought it is

No doubt the "consultants" at the likes of the SAC will be vehemently lobbying to make it more complicated. They don't want something simple that farmers can complete themselves

The only thing I'm not happy with is the "science" behind carbon audits. The results they produce have been scientifically proven to be bollox. Methane from ruminants is considered effective for 100 years, when it actually decays after around 12. Unlike gas released by the fossil fuel industry, Farm methane has been recycled by ruminants for millenia and doesn't increase global temperatures one iota. Also grassland and cereal crop sequestration seems omitted entirely due not to it not occurring (even the village halfwit can tell you plants absorb carbon), but because they're too difficult to model

However, there's a 100% grant to get an audit completed, though the money all goes to those clever folks at the likes of the SAC who know which box to fill in

All in all, the "whole farm plan" shows the city bound plebs that farmers are doing something environmentally cuddly, and gives the bureaucracy a justification for continued subsidy payments to farmers who produce actual food

It could be far, far worse: We could be getting forced to plant trees on good ground like the Welsh, or plant weeds like the English