The president of Scotland’s National Farmers’ Union (NFUS), Martin Kennedy, has called for the Scottish government to make food security its number one priority.
The union’s AGM, conference and annual dinner kicked off in Glasgow yesterday (Thursday, February 9) and will continue today (Friday, February 10) with more than 420 members in attendance.
Kennedy said that food is too far down on the government’s list of priorities and that he has “major concerns” over the lack of understanding that both the government and the general public have of what happens in Scotland’s countryside.
“All too often, our ability to produce food, not just ourselves but for others who are less fortunate, is placed at the bottom of the priority pile and viewed as least important,” he said.
“That fails to recognise that without food production, we will not be able to address any of the many challenges ahead as we will not have the people on the ground with the skills, knowledge and technology to do it for us.
“As food producers, we are only one per cent of our population. We deliver the most important energy source of all and yet there is a far bigger percentage who claim to be the experts.”
Kennedy said political decisions made at a UK level currently affecting the industry were made by those no longer in post and that policy must be reflective of what is going on presently.
“The lessons learned from Brexit, the Covid pandemic and the devastating war in Ukraine, must open government’s eyes in terms of what is important right now and the critical role that the nation’s food producers play,” he said.
“If we get our future policy for Scottish agriculture wrong, and listen to the ideology of those blinkered people who cannot see the wider picture, then we will go in a backward direction in terms of delivering the wider benefits to society that we all want to see.
“Poor policy will drive change on an unimaginable scale and it will not be farmers and crofters that will be jumping, it will be our consumers who will point out that this happened on the watch of a government who were taken in by false rhetoric.
“To get our future policy correct, we must listen more to those who live and breathe this industry.”
