With Contract Farming
Agreements (CFAs) growing in popularity in Scotland, the Monitor Farm programme
has just published an in-depth Q&A
Guide on the topic, aimed at helping farmers and contractors understand
more about the opportunities and challenges involved.
Following a Roxburghshire
Monitor Farm meeting earlier in the year, the four panellists who spoke at the
meeting were interviewed, and their practical business advice captured for
anyone considering Contract Farming.
Scotland’s Land Reform Bill
has transformed the way agricultural land is owned and managed and CFAs are
becoming ever-more popular. While it’s a very different approach from
tenancies, it gives both established contracting businesses and new entrants an
opportunity to grow their businesses, while still allowing farmers (the party
with the land) to retain their land and business taxation status, and to be as
involved in the business as they would like to be.
Jack Frater, agricultural
consultant at Edwin Thomson, who chaired the meeting, gives his views in the
Q&A: “In the last 10 years, contract farming has really increased in
Scotland. It used to be mainly arable, but it’s now common in livestock too. Now
it’s sometimes the only route available to expand a business.”
Annabel Hamilton, who manages
2,700 acres (1,093ha) on the Berwickshire coast with her parents, says the
maxim in their contract farming business is ‘solving problems, not creating
them’. It is a crucial part of building and maintaining trust between parties,
she says.
For Ali Freeland-Cook who,
along with his family, runs six farms with various CFAs and 5,200 lambing ewes
plus 450 lambing ewe hoggs, excellent communication is vital: “You need to be
good at justifying what you are doing, especially if you are changing things or
making financial decisions – and you have to discuss any issues.”
Rob Playfair-Hannay runs a
beef, sheep, and arable enterprise in the Borders in partnership with his
parents covering 4,300 acres (1,740ha), and is both a contractor and farmer in
contract farming agreements. His advice is to anyone interested in the opportunity
is to do it: “Make sure you have a good agreement between parties. The devil is
in the detail, and it is not until things go wrong that you realise that it
is.”
Maura Wilson, Monitor Farm
regional adviser says: “This Q&A guide on Contract Farming Agreements is
full of practical and business advice from farmers, contractors and agents with
direct experience in these types of agreements. It’s fantastic that they have
shared what they have learned and are happy to highlight some of the key
challenges they have experienced.”
The 14-page Q&A guide is
on the Monitor Farm Scotland website: https://www.monitorfarms.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Contract-farming-QA.pdf