By Ewan Pate, farming editor

A CONCERTED effort is under way to preserve the status of Scotland’s Less Favoured Areas (LFAs).

Yesterday cabinet secretary for rural affairs Richard Lochhead urged the European Commission not to make a hasty decision without fully considering the Scottish position.

“Less Favoured Areas are an important feature of land-use in Scotland with 85% of all agricultural land falling under this category.

“Some 13,000 farming and crofting businesses rely on LFA support to offset the significant physical and climatic handicaps faced,” Mr Lochhead said.

The significance of LFA designation for those who farm land within it is the £61 million per year which is paid out in the LFA support scheme. Although the payment is no longer tied to livestock numbers it is generally accepted that without the extra support cattle and sheep production in the hills would be unviable.

The EU has stirred slowly over the issue of reviewing LFA designation following a critical audit report in 2003. A consultation was launched in 2007 and closed earlier this week. The Scottish position backed by NFU Scotland is that there should be no change and that member states should be allowed to select their own criteria as to what makes an area of land less favoured.

The problem is that the EU Commission have been examining options for common criteria across all 27 member states. The fear is that this might favour Mediterranean countries with factors such as temperature, heat stress and soil/water balance holding greater sway.

Other options would limit support to farms operating in an environmentally sustainable manner or to land deemed to have “a high nature value.”

These are worthy objectives but the fear is that the eligibility rules would be drafted in such a way that large areas of Scotland would be excluded.

NFUS also said yesterday that it believed the current system of LFA is effective in delivering its objectives.

In addition it has argued that LFA payments must be allowed to continue to reflect the additional costs that are caused by socio-economic factors, such as distance to market, remoteness and low service provision.

There is deep concern that the “Mediterranean” biophysical criteria favoured by the EU Commission are simply not applicable. Scotland experiences a combination of soil and climate factors which limit its productive potential, rather than extremes of heat or drought, and this must be accommodated in the LFA designation.

Jonnie Hall, NFU Scotland’s head of rural policy, said, “After extensive consultation with our members at both branch and regional level and following what was almost universal agreement, we have submitted our views on where the future of LFA should lie.

“The LFA is of crucial importance to Scotland’s agriculture and its rural areas and it underpins farming businesses in many areas, enabling them in turn to play their key role in rural development.

“Extensive farming in many remote and upland areas supports a host of economic, environmental and social aspects of rural Scotland. Yet, farming and crofting in such locations remain marginal in every sense.”