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Yes.

Okay—you will not be surprised to know that I disagree with you. I do not think that this is a boorach. I definitely think that it has been complicated for all of us to try to work our way through this, and I do not dispute that, but it is not a boorach.

The rural support plan is, as I have just outlined, what we will have at the other end of this. We are going through the just transition, and we are working with the farming community to ensure that what we are bringing forward fits with its expectations but also aligns with the policy objectives that the Scottish Government has set and that are expected by the public for the money that we are putting into the sector.

We will all see what the whole picture looks like. I do not know all the answers at this stage, because we have not had the full conversations about all the bits that will be added to the support plan at the other end of the process. I can guarantee that, if I did have all the answers, every one of you sitting round this committee table would be asking if I had thought about this or that. That is the whole point about the method that we are using. Martin Kennedy said that we need to take the industry with us. This is us effectively trying to take the industry with us in order to deliver what is expected.

We are bringing the SSIs to you to approve or not—that is the prerogative of the committee—and we will have these conversations, but I do not accept that this is a boorach. I accept that the situation is complicated, and I accept that there are things on which we would have liked to be clearer from the outset, but they were never going to clear from the start, because this is a complicated matter.

Some of that is fairly technical, so we might write to you with that technical detail. An early list of measures was shared with key stakeholders, including ARIOB, and we are looking at delivering a number of different elements. As we move forward, there will be greater reach in what we will require people to do.

One of the great pleasures of my current job is that I was able to visit Amy Geddes’s arable farm near Arbroath. She has fully embraced the EFA-type stuff that is available at the moment. Her work is really inspiring.

Yes. A lot of support is available via the farm advisory service, the rural payments and inspections division area offices and the route map. Farmers can look to a number of areas.

We have already provided financial support for carbon audits and soil sampling. A lot of information is available to farmers as they work out what they want to do in relation to their farms.

No. I am going to look at why people are not coming back to us with their concerns sooner, when they have told us previously that they are content to do something. That concerns me. When an organisation that has said, “We have had the conversation, we have listened to the evidence, we know what you are trying to do and we are comfortable with that” and then sends me a letter, two or three weeks before the start of an initiative, that says, “We are not comfortable with any of that,” I want to understand what is going on, and I will pursue that. However, I absolutely push back on the suggestion that we have not co-designed things.

We have spent an inordinate amount of time—rightly—speaking to all the stakeholders that are involved in trying to get Scotland to be a world leader in regenerative agriculture, which allows us to produce food and do all the things that all of us in this room have agreed that we want to do. I will pursue why the situation that I described is happening at those stages, because that is not where I want to be and it is not conducive to having the right kind of conversations here.

I will ask Iain Carmichael to come in. He has been dealing specifically with this issue.

The route map has set stuff out from the start.

I have just had a quick check with James Muldoon—we are talking about probably starting to implement stuff properly in the autumn of this year.

I think that you are right. On day 1, we set out the vision, which is that we want to continue to be able to produce, in this country, the food that the country needs, and we want to support our farmers in the best way that we can.

A lot of the stuff that we are trying to deliver now came from the farmer-led groups. You will remember the five farmer-led groups; off the top of my head, I cannot remember what they were called. They looked at their sectors and asked how they could reduce the emissions from their practices while continuing to be sustainable. We are trying to bring all those things together. For months, the members of those groups discussed how they would deliver stuff.

One of my frustrations in talking about farming is to do with the fact that farming is vast. An upland farmer will have nothing in common with an arable farmer, a dairy farmer or a pig farmer. It is a vast area. We are trying to bring all those things together and ask, “How do we produce food?” That is the question at its simplest. How do we produce food in such a way that we can feed the country but also meet the objectives of the policy?

I see that the convener is indicating to me that I should wind up. Clearly, I am talking too much. I am passionate, convener.

I think that where you are going with that question is how the rural support plan will tie in to policy affecting rural communities. The Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024 is not just about agriculture in Scotland; it is about the entire rural community. If you need more information on that, I will write to the committee with a fuller explanation, if it would help.

Good morning, convener, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to discuss the future of agriculture policy with the committee.

As we know, Scotland’s agricultural businesses are at the heart of our rural communities, and we want to ensure that farmers and crofters continue to thrive while we look to tackle the twin threats of climate change and biodiversity loss. That is why we are changing the support that we offer to farmers and crofters. We will continue to support active farming and sustainable food production through essential support and direct payments, but we are asking farmers and crofters to do more for climate and nature in return.

We want our support to deliver five outcomes: high-quality food production, thriving agricultural businesses, climate change mitigation and adaptation, nature restoration and support for a just transition. The systems that we use to support farmers and crofters were built to deliver the common agricultural policy, and they did that successfully. However, it is now clear that those systems are limiting what we can do to deliver the vision for agriculture, and more fundamental reform is needed to give farmers and crofters the support that they deserve in order to deliver on those outcomes.

The way in which Scotland delivers its public services is changing, and we plan to modernise the way in which we work while improving efficiency and user experience. We need to give farmers and crofters a modern, easy-to-use service that meets their needs while enabling them to farm in a way that protects our environment. Delivering all of that will require a comprehensive organisational redesign. In the immediate term, we will continue to work towards our vision for agriculture as far as we can with the tools that we already have at our disposal, and that includes the changes that we will discuss today, such as the whole farm plan.

At the same time, we are working closely with stakeholders on our future operating model and the transition plan. It is complex and will take time, but it will deliver the investment in the sector that is needed to deliver against our ambitious outcomes in partnership with those who are most impacted. I am happy to take questions from the committee.