The future of farming

*August 2024

Farm for Scotland's Future campaign winding down

Following the recent passage of the Scottish government’s Agriculture and Rural Communities Bill, Scottish Environment Link is winding down its campaign and reflecting on the success of its efforts to improve the bill as it was debated.

"Our campaigning led to some important improvements to this legislation, including allowing government ministers to set targets to reduce farming’s environmental impact, for example by reducing overall pesticide use. We also successfully campaigned for greater transparency in how the farming budget will be spent. 

"These changes will help make Scottish farming more sustainable.  However, much of the detail of the new system is yet to be developed. Crucially, it’s still not clear how the money will be distributed. We need to see farm funding move away from paying people for how much land they have towards paying people for how well that land delivers what we all need – a stable climate and a healthy natural environment that will underpin our food security for generations to come."

Read our blog post on the Agriculture and Rural Communities Bill and what our campaign achieved.

Scottish Parliament overview of the Bill 

Scottish Environment Link is now shifting its public campaigning resources to the Scotland Loves Nature campaign, calling on the Scottish government to urgently bring forward a Natural Environment Bill that sets legally binding nature recovery targets.  It believes targets are essential to drive action across society to restore Scotland’s nature – and would increase the impetus for the government to support farmers and crofters to work in nature friendly ways. 

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May 2023

Farm for Scotland's Future - the Case for Change

 A report by Scottish Environment link

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