Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill

Overview

The Rural Affairs and Islands Committee is looking at the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill and wants to hear your views.

What is the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill?

The Bill’s policy memorandum states the purpose of the Bill is to provide a framework that the Scottish Ministers “will use to develop the support that farming and rural communities need in order to adapt to new opportunities and new challenges, and to prosper in a changing world”.

The Bill would make changes to the law in a number of ways:

• require the Scottish Government to develop a five-year rural support plan to deliver the key objectives of high-quality food production, climate mitigation and adaptation, nature restoration and wider rural development
• provide powers for the provision of conditional financial and other support to farmers and crofters to achieve the key objectives
• set out the purposes for which support may be provided including agriculture, forestry, rural communities and economy, rural land management and the environment, and administrative and technical support
• provide powers to amend the EU common agriculture policy rules that are currently in place in Scotland
• provide powers to create a code of practice on sustainable and regenerative agriculture, and to include continuous professional development as a condition of support

How to submit your views

Before making a submission, please read our Privacy Notice about submitting your views to a committee. This tells you about how we process personal data.

Please note that, in most cases, your submission will be published on the Scottish Parliament's website and may be quoted in the Committee's report or in committee meetings (which are public and broadcast).

Please submit your views using the online submission form, linked to below.

We welcome written views in English, Gaelic, Scots or any other language. 

The call for views closes on 24 November 2023