Perthshire farmers uncovered broad cross party political will to square up to supermarkets and get a fairer deal for producers when six parliamentary candidates faced an NFU Scotland (NFUS) hustings meeting.
Debate turned again and again to the plight of farmers who are seeing prices fall for almost every commodity they produce. And while a perfect spring evening meant a poor turnout of union members, those that were there were outspoken in demanding solutions from the candidates.
The SNP’s John Swinney pointed out that the international climate had a bearing on the costs of Scottish agriculture and end commodity prices, but insisted there were measures that could be taken domestically.
“But powers of corporate regulation lie with the UK Government. We don’t have those powers in the Scottish parliament,” he said.
“I would be very happy to work with the UK Government to get corporate regulation to deliver fairer returns for farmers. The risk and reward relationship in Scottish agriculture is currently absurd.”
He said the last Government had called supermarket leaders in to talk to the First Minister and Rural Affairs secretary, Richard Lochhead to try to “rebalance the relationship” between them and primary producers.
Scottish Liberal Democrat candidate, Willie Robertson said it was pointless to have a “quiet chat” with supermarket leaders, and argued the Scottish parliament’s rural affairs committee should be able to force supermarket leaders to appear publicly before the committee to make them account for their approach to suppliers.
“Supermarkets are nailing farmers to the wall. We need more labelling of meat to show its provenance. Farmers spend a fortune tagging their cattle and sheep so it should be possible to look at a pound of mince and tell where it came from,” he said.
“It would be a great selling point. People would see the cattle in the fields and identify with the name. We’ve got all the equipment. We should make it enforceable. When farmers make money they spend it locally, not in a tax haven in Panama.”
Green party candidate, Louise Ramsay agreed: “We need regulation to make the code work properly. It’s not fair to leave farmers with no profit after all their work.”
Scottish Labour’s Thomas Docherty, a former shadow agriculture minister at Westminster, said his party would step in and regulate supermarkets when they failed to meet codes of practice, and he also singled out some milk companies non-compliance with the dairy voluntary code of practice.
He said: “When the market fails the Government has a duty to take action.”
Scottish Conservative, Murdo Fraser also called for more teeth for the supermarket adjudicator.
“We’ve got to be realistic. The days of supermarkets making massive profits are in the past. We can expect a major casualty in the supermarket world in the next few years.”
UKIP’s candidate, Philip Anderson’s solution to Scottish farming’s many ills was to leave the EU. He said: “It’s costing us £55million a day. If we left the EU that money could be redirected to the NHS and agriculture.”
