The Dourie Farming Diaries

Day three and I was off to another off-farm job for the NFUS (National Farmers Union Scotland), Milk Committee, as I'm a invitee board member for that.   I do a piece of specialised work for them, which is on contract legislation.

In particular, it's trying to improve contracts between farmers and processors, and make a better commercial environment for both of them to operate in. It's been a long-standing piece of work, I've been working on it since about 2008.  We had big achievement in 2012, when we managed to pull together what's called a voluntary code of practice, which was a guide as to what contractual relationship should look like between a farmer and a processor. This created some really positive change and it was a good piece of work.  Those who implemented it, generally speaking, have better relationships now than they did before.  

It was voluntary, however, and not everybody put it in place. So the work continues, and it is now hopefully going to be put into legislation. At the end of the day, what we hope for is a fairer commercial environment for the farmer and for the processor, a rebalancing of power, so that it is not in favour of a processor or in favour of the farmer, but fairly shared between the two and that it creates respectful relationships and respectful dialogue between the two parties. I went to the NFUS milk committee to report on that piece of work, but it's also a good chance to get together with some like-minded farmers who are interested in making sure that the industry issues from a farmers point of view are sorted out and the farming union is of course involved in just about everything that farming touches.  There were lots of other things discussed at the meeting -  things like grants for slurry separators and dribble bars etc. Why do we need grants? Well, because it's expensive equipment to buy and we need to bring down greenhouse gas emissions and these bits of equipment will help no end!

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