Chamber and committees

I have a final question, convener. If the Scottish Government, as it wishes to do, aligns policy with the EU, which areas in the sphere of the agriculture bill does the NFUS believe will affect farmers if there is divergence across the UK? It is important to eke out those parts that you have not given as examples in answers to questions from Jenni Minto and Alasdair Allan.

On the previous question, we know that farmers have been disappointed by the lack of progress by the Scottish Government. We saw them outside the Holyrood Parliament protesting on the issue of the lack of clarity. Jonnie, with the time left, is there a possibility of the Scottish Government carrying out a pilot tier payment scheme? Would that be useful?

Thank you.

That is really helpful. Thank you. I take the opportunity to say that this has been a really useful session.

I understand that the approaches are very similar. They bring together urban and rural, industry and tourism; they prioritise goals for water quality and wildlife; and they basically look at the land use strategy. Bearing in mind what has been said about the regional approach, what work have you been doing that could help to create a future agricultural payments scheme? How do you envisage all the stakeholders who are trying to reach the same goal being part of that payments scheme?

I have asked my question on that specific section, convener.

On 13 May 2022, I visited a grouse moor in my constituency of Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire. The owners practise managed muirburn and they have an active grouse moor below which is a farmer who has a lowland farm of mixed livestock enterprise. I will read to you a list of what I saw on that day: lapwing, oyster catcher, curlew, golden plover, snipe, heron, red-legged partridge, black grouse, red grouse, corvids, meadow pipit and whinchat. I have never seen such a large amount of biodiversity in my entire life, and it was a fabulous experience. That proved to me that a managed farm, a decent stocking density and the rest of it, including the managed upland, was working. I just wanted to make that point.

My question is on where the biodiversity loss is occurring. Are we calculating biodiversity loss across Scotland and the islands, including marine, when we talk about these things, or are you talking specifically about agriculture when you cite intensification? The 60 per cent decline in curlew numbers is twice the rate of the decline in England. Why is that the case if we have similar agricultural practices? Is the agri-environment climate scheme reversing biodiversity loss?

Can I ask Ross Lilley about AECS?

The James Hutton Institute did some work on the increase in biodiversity that came about from certain actions. For example, it found that, where there was woodland and scrub, there was an increased number of biodiversity species but there was also a loss of meadow pipit and merlin. How do you prioritise one species over another in the actions proposed by the Government? Have you done any modelling on loss and gain?

First, I am going to ask you a broad question. What is the difference between a catchment management approach and a landscape-scale approach?

You talked about streamlining the process that we use to look at agriculture outputs. Last night in Parliament, the committee met representatives from Farming for 1.5°C, and I asked the question of which measure of global warming potential we should use to calculate methane emissions—GWP100 or GWP*—and there was an overwhelming consensus that we use one calculation rather than both, because that is skewing the data. What is your opinion on that?