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Drawing on a range of evidence, this report summarises the ACCSG's findings regarding the implications of climate change for Scottish agriculture and offers a number of recommendations for further action. Responsibility for taking these forward rests jointly with the Scottish Government and its agencies, but also the industry and other stakeholder bodies. It is their responsibility to collectively rise to the challenge.
Summary of Recommendations
A RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT NEEDS
A1. On-going developments in UK-level scenarios, and projections for climate change must be monitored. Existing research to interpret these within and across Scotland must be updated and extended to more sites.
A2. The methodological basis for estimating and reporting agricultural emissions must be improved to more accurately reflect the baseline and on-going sectoral position. Failure to do so risks misdirecting mitigation efforts by misrepresenting the volume and pattern of emissions and industry attempts to adjust.
A3. Further research must be conducted within the Scottish context to identify and cost both adaptation and mitigation options, to assess their individual practicalities and their relative cost-effectiveness rankings.
B POLICY DESIGN NEEDS
B1. Better integration between currently separate policy themes such as agriculture, forestry, deer management, flooding and biodiversity - all of which are linked to land use and require some degree of spatial co-ordination and co-operation across different parcels of land and therefore different farms - must be pursued.
B2. Recent experience of incentive schemes under Pillar II of the CAP and of regulatory controls under (especially) Nitrogen Vulnerable Zones or the Water Framework Directive must be used as a guide to how best to encourage Scottish land managers to respond to climate change.
B3. The scope for modifying Scotland Rural Development Programme measures and funding and/or enhancing cross-compliance to better control net emissions must be explored. For the longer-term, attention needs to be paid to designing market mechanisms to promote mitigation.
C INDUSTRY ACTION NEEDS
C1. Farmers and other land managers need to be aware of the potential positive and negative influences of climate change and adjust their business practices accordingly.
C2. Farmers and other land managers need to contribute to mitigation of the anthropogenic drivers of climate change and to helping wider society adapt to climate change
C3. Representative industry bodies at all stages of the supply-chain need to acknowledge the challenges and opportunities of climate change - including sectoral responsibilities - and then to help shape and guide collective and proportionate responses in collaboration with government, research institutions and other stakeholders.
C4. Some of the most important measures that land managers can take to mitigate climate change or adapt to its impact on the environment are likely to be more effective if they are taken collaboratively, acting together at the landscape or catchment scale.
D COMMUNICATION NEEDS
D1. Consistent and key messages must be agreed and methods for communicating them to different target audiences identified. This should be informed by professional communication experts.
D2. Established communication channels - such as codes of practice, newsletters, trade-shows and seminars - should be exploited as communication mechanisms for general information.
D3. More focussed, bespoke, interactive, facilitated communication approaches require to be adopted. A number of recommendations that have been put forward for adaptation and mitigation of climate change will require not only communication and advice using conventional approaches but also a more interactive approach. Such an approach needs to engage farmers in determining solutions that are relevant to their operations and for which they take responsibility and ownership.
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