English The Scottish Government are currently consulting on the next Land Reform Bill , “Land Reform in a Net Zero Nation” which is looking at ways to address what is the most concentrated land ownership pattern in Europe.
Secure access to land is one of the most significant challenges for our members. Very few farms come up for sale in Scotland, and there is high demand for land from investors as well as farmers and new entrants. This has driven up the value of farmland in Scotland by over 30% in 2021, which is a significantly higher increase than the rest of the UK. At the same time, farm tenancy availability has been in decline for decades, and recent moves by the Scottish Government to address this trend do not seem to have had a significant effect.
These dynamics are seriously limiting the transition to agroecological farming in Scotland and must be addressed. Many people who would like to access land for agroecological farming are unable to do so. Those that do have land access often have insecure tenure which means they are constrained in developing long-term relations with the land and local community that are so integral to agroecology. Many people work on much smaller plots of land and so are constrained in their ability to take a holistic approach to land management and building healthy soil through long-term rotations and space for biodiversity. There is no social justice in this system, where we are limiting access to land to those that can afford to buy land.
The proposals in the Land Reform Bill do seem, on the face of it, to be quite radical. They propose to introduce a public interest test on the acquisition and transfer of significant areas of land, as well as increased responsibilities for landowners. There are currently no constraints on who can own land, how much land they can own, so, if this Bill passes, this will be a significant step.
However, we believe that the proposals in the Bill should be much stronger, and are concerned that this will be a missed opportunity to address some of the most significant land access struggles faced by our members. The Bill proposes that the public interest test applies to landholdings over 3,000Ha or a proportion of an inhabited island or data zone. We argue that this is far too large and that there should be a more sophisticated approach to assessing whether the sale of land is in the public interest, including land price, a more localised approach to establishing this criteria, and a stronger emphasis on the protection of agricultural land.
The Bill also proposes that all family farms be exempted from the public interest test. While we support family farms, it’s important to understand that family farming is a very broad concept and can include very large-scale farms carrying out agriculture in a way that doesn’t necessarily benefit to the environment or communities, and that some family farms in Scotland are built on a historical wealth built on colonialism.
In our consultation response we argue for stronger public intervention in the sale of agricultural land, more support for increasing the number of tenancies available to new entrants, and an alignment with the current consultation on the Agricultural Bill to support the agroecological transition that Scotland desperately needs.
We welcome feedback from our members on this response, and we encourage anyone to respond to the consultation, closing on 30th October.
