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They would all be relevant, yes.

You are asking me about a specific letter, but I have no idea of the background. As far as I am aware, no one has told us that they are not prepared to take part. However, please send the letter to my office and we will have a look at it to work out what is happening. Without understanding the size of the farm in question, what type of farm it is or anything else, I am afraid that I simply cannot comment on what you have just put to me.

The numbers that I have in front of me show that 3,255 farmers and crofters have carried out soil testing and 2,718 have carried out carbon auditing as part of the programme.

Bear in mind that there are farmers who already do those things as part of their normal practices and the process is about bringing everybody into the system. Amy Geddes—I spoke about her earlier—has, like a number of people, been doing it for years.

I reiterate that this is the start of the process of bringing everybody into the system, which will allow us to have a much better understanding of what we are doing.

No, I do not, because the crofting community has been a part of the conversation since day 1. Donald MacKinnon was part of the steering group that helped to develop the legislation. It has been discussed at ARIOB. However, I go back to my earlier point: Donna Smith has written to me and I will ask her to come in and outline what those concerns are.

We are trying to give people as much help as we can in order to fulfil our aims. There are thousands of crofters, and they have to be a part of the process. We will do as much as we can to bring them with us, and we will provide as much help and support as we can. I feel that we have done the work with them, through consultation, but I am more than happy to continue that conversation in order to get us to a place where they feel that they are part of the system.

I agree—but the opportunity exists for them to come in early on in the process. I am trying to find my list of what we have coming up. There is a list of opportunities for engagement across all sectors, so I encourage people, if they are watching this meeting, to pay attention, please, to what is happening and what is coming so that they can engage as early as possible and we do not get to the position that we are in currently.

The only word that I disagree with in what you have said is “suddenly”, because we are not suddenly asking people to do this; we have been trying to get people into the mindset that change is coming. However, I agree 100 per cent with everything else that you said.

We have just announced an extra £75,000 for the Royal Scottish Agricultural Benevolent Institution. I am acutely aware of mental health issues in the farming community. I take the issue seriously, and I am glad that the First Minister has committed to investing that money. This needs to be—to use an oft-used phrase—a just transition. People need to feel that they are taking part in the process, rather than it being done to them.

As the debates and discussions that we have had today have shown, there is an element of disagreement on whether we have done enough. I firmly believe that we have, and we have taken on board the views of the group that was set up to look at the issue in the first place, but I absolutely take the point that I need to find a way to get people to engage with me far sooner, so that I understand what the issues are, long before we get to the stage where I am sitting in front of you with members of the committee telling me that they want to discuss matters that have been raised with them in letters. That is not where we need to be. I want us to be in a much more practical and better place than we currently are with regard to the situation that we are in.

I would dispute your characterisation, convener.

I do not dispute in any shape or form the benefits that the crofting community brings to Scotland. I do dispute the idea that we are not taking consideration of the circumstances in which crofters live and work. I have been extremely diligent in talking with my officials and with the crofting community—that is why I have invited Donna Smith to speak to me—so that I have a proper understanding of what is required to make this work for them.

I am not going to give you financial guarantees. I will sit down and have the conversation with Donna Smith and with any other crofter who wants to talk to me about it. I will ask them what their concerns are and how we can make this work for them in a way that allows them to be part of the system.

What I do not want is people opting out. You might be telling me that you are hearing that people will do that, and if that is what Donna Smith tells me, that is fine—I will have that conversation with her. I do not know how much clearer I can be in saying to you that I am taking the issues that have been raised with me very seriously. This is not something that we are trying to beat a community with. It is meant to get them into a position where they can take part in these schemes and enable us to help them to be part of the schemes.

The process started long before I became a parliamentarian, let alone a minister. It started with farmer-led groups. As I mentioned in the earlier session, they agreed with the Government that they wanted and needed to change the way things were going. They knew that the systems would change. So, those farmer-led groups were established and what we are working on now came from that. I was not involved in all the iterations of the story, but that is how we got to this place.

The baselining that Rhoda Grant touched on is something that will help businesses; it will help their profitability. What we are trying to do is make this better for everyone.

So, the story for me is as follows. We came out of the EU against our will, we are now in a position where we have to develop processes and systems that will allow us to continue to support our agricultural and crofting communities, we are working in co-design—I push back on the suggestion that the conversation is a one-way street, because I do not think that it is; I think that it is very much a two-way street—and we are getting to the point where we will get things done. We are going to start making things happen.

As I said in the earlier session, I understand that people do not want to be doing things that they did not have to do in the past, but huge amounts of public money go into farming and crofting every year, and we have to be able to justify that. One thing that I want from this is to get us to the point where we can answer anyone who asks us, as the Parliament, or the farming industry, why we are justified in paying so much money.

We are already seeing that conversation happening on the inheritance tax that was proposed by the United Kingdom Government. It creates a division. It creates a “them and us” situation, and I am trying to get to a point where we are not in that position and where the public funding that we put into agriculture and crofting is accepted as doing something and delivering for the people, as well as for the communities, that receive it. That is the purpose behind this, as far as I am concerned.

So, if you ask me what the story is, I say that it started a number of years ago with the farmer-led groups, and it got us to the current position whereby we are trying to do everything that we can to support our farming rural communities with public funding.

That was discussed, was it not?