Chamber and committees

We have lost David. While we are getting him back, I will move on to Alasdair Allan’s questions.

To give you a start, I will ask you a question that was going to lead on from that.

Rachael Hamilton touched on the additional costs for organic, public procurement and so on. However, the prices of agricultural inputs are rising and we are unlikely to see a reduction in food costs for consumers. If we try to transition, there will be quite a squeeze. Where will that funding come from? What mechanism would allow farmers like you to continue to produce high-quality food and be profitable?

I will go back to Ariane Burgess for some further questions, and then I will move on to Karen Adam.

That was nice and short.

Thanks, David. That was useful.

Before I bring in Andrew Bauer, I will give him his proper title—he is the head of foot and footprint at SAC Consulting.

David Finlay, the Ethical Dairy is often referred to in the Scottish Parliament and the work that you do is well quoted. How scalable is your project? It is good to hear that the business is now profitable and that you are looking to a positive future, but what is needed to mainstream your type of venture and what barriers stand in the way of that type of venture coming up quickly and addressing this emergency? We do not have 25 years to transform or become organic. What do we need to do to make your project a mainstream solution?

Do supermarkets actually respond to customer demand? In the UK, the really big players in the supermarket sector dictate what happens. It is the supermarkets that put products on the shelves. There is a lack of choice. Decisions on which food products appear on our shelves are not consumer driven—it is the other way round. Is there an issue in that regard?

I will leave that with you. Andrew Bauer would like to respond to Alasdair Allan’s points.

I will ask David Finlay the same question. I picked up on your point about baselining probably not being the way to go because the funding could go to people who have not done the right thing in the past, and those who have paid particular attention to the role that biodiversity plays in agriculture might not be recognised. How should we tackle the continuing—if on a very small scale—removal of dykes, hedges and so on? What should be our approach in the short term, given that we are in a biodiversity emergency?

Is the committee content to delegate authority to me to sign off our report on our deliberations on the affirmative SSI?

Members indicated agreement.