Renewed FFIS funding risks failing isles farmers without admission of past failures – Carmichael

Orkney and Shetland MP, Alistair Carmichael, has today warned that a new round of funding for the Future Farming Investment Scheme risked failing if the SNP did not admit failures in the original allocation last year.

Writing in the Scotsman today, Mr Carmichael highlighted widespread complaints amongst isles farmers and crofters after the first round of allocations, which left Orkney businesses receiving 3.5% of the funds, Shetland 1.9%, and the Western Isles 0.2%, while across the whole scheme just 3% of funding went to farms smaller than 74 acres in size – despite the programme being in theory aimed at island and small-scale farmers.

Last week, First Minister John Swinney announced renewed funding of £14.25m for a second round of the Future Farm Investment Scheme, aimed at helping more farms and crofts modernise, improve efficiency and invest in climate-smart technologies.

Mr Carmichael wrote:

“That there will be more support forthcoming ought to be good news – and yet I fear that this renewed funding round will fail again unless and until the SNP can admit what went wrong in the first place, and listen to the people of the Highlands and Islands.

“So far, the signs are not good. When the first complaints rolled in from our communities about FFIS allocations in November, the SNP response was not to take criticism on board but to circle the wagons. It was the fault of farmers and crofters who applied in the wrong way; it was “political point-scoring”; it was simply that the plan was too popular for its own good – anything but admitting that the scheme was not working the way it should have.

“Island crofters and farmers and other smaller operations were supposed to be targeted as beneficiaries, and yet Orkney businesses were awarded less than 3.5% of the funds, Shetland 1.9%, and the Western Isles a miserly 0.2%. Just 3% of funding went to farms smaller than 74 acres in size. Just this week new data showed that a total of 5,910 applications, nearly four out of five, were thrown out.

“This is not the sort of outcome you would expect if you had genuinely engaged with Highland communities beforehand – but it does look suspiciously like what you would expect if the policy had been dreamt up in a windowless room in Edinburgh. Unless and until the SNP admit to their problem and start listening to our communities, they are going to repeat the same mistakes time and again.”