NEW ENTRANTS KEY IN ENSURING FARMING FUTURE
September 4, 2008 12:00 AM
Jim Hume, MSP for the South of Scotland, today challenged the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Richard Lochhead, on the SNP's new entrants scheme during the weekly question time.
Jim Hume said:
"Tenant farming has long been known as the best new entrants scheme into farming in Scotland and the Tenants' Farming Forum recommended that the best way to help new entrants is to give them access to the single farm payment scheme. We need to know whether the Cabinet Secretary has pursued this or whether is he ignoring a hugely important sector of the industry.
The MSP continued:
"The Scottish Government originally stated that its new entrants scheme would provide a grant of £10 million per year for the duration of the SRDP, but we now know that that has been changed to a loan scheme of £10 million over the whole five years - £2 million each year, and not £10 million as previously promised by the SNP.
"With food security at the forefront of our minds and with the decline in sheep and cattle numbers demonstrated in the Scottish Agricultural College's recent report, we need to know that the powers that be are doing everything possible to ensure an economically viable long term future for our agriculture sector.
"If the SNP are serious about our farming sector, then they will have to do better than a limited, inflexible loan scheme."
ENDS
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