Scots need action, not strategy – Walker
21 June 2000
Scots need action, not strategy – Walker
By FWi staff
ACTION not strategy is required now if agriculture in Scotland is to return to profitability, a Scottish farmers leader has told conference delegates.
Speaking on Wednesday (21 June) at a meeting on the future Scottish agriculture, National Farmers Union of Scotland president Jim Walker demanded a government action plan.
Otherwise the farming crisis would threaten the viability of the countrys food industry, Mr Walker warned delegates at the Scottish Executive Rural Affairs Department summit.
“Farming businesses are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, through sheer determination not to give up on an industry they believe could have a future,” said Mr Walker.
“But they are seriously questioning whether it is worth getting up in the morning to turn the farm on, just to make further losses.
“The time has come for action not strategy,” insisted the NFUS leader.
Mr Walker said neither Westminster nor the Scottish parliament had satisfactorily tackled the problems facing the sector.
“Headline-grabbing aid packages and initiatives have failed to deliver meaningful policies which address what are fundamental problems,” he claimed.
Mr Walker pledged the NFUS would do everything it could to help draw up a plan of action “to give farmers the confidence to persevere through this unprecedented crisis”.
But he warned Scottish rural affairs minister Ross Finnie that the Edinburgh parliament must do more to support its farmers.
“If the blame is continually put at the door of Brussels or Westminster for decisions and policies which discriminate against rural Scotland, then the Scottish Parliament must actually stand up and prove its worth to those whose futures depend on it.”
Mr Walker has described the current crisis in agriculture as the worst since the depression of the 1930s.
He has lain much of the blame on the strength of Sterling, which makes exports uncompetitive and draws in cheap imports.