Monitor Farm programme launches Contract Farming Agreement Q&A Guide

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