Formal board meeting - paper 5 - agricultural land use and farming activity - 26 September 2025

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Form­al Board Paper 5 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 1 of 10

For dis­cus­sion Title: Agri­cul­tur­al land use and farm­ing activ­ity Pre­pared by: Colin McCle­an, Head of Land Man­age­ment and Mal­colm Smith, Agri­cul­tur­al Adviser

Pur­pose This paper sets out an over­view of farm­ing and croft­ing in the Nation­al Park over the past 20 years, based on June census data. The inform­a­tion provides pre­lim­in­ary con­text on agri­cul­ture in the Nation­al Park, how sys­tems have changed and some of the influ­ences which have driv­en those changes. Sub­sequent, more detailed dis­cus­sions on policy set­ting and stra­tegic dir­ec­tion will take place as part of devel­op­ing the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP).

Fur­ther dis­cus­sion will be sup­por­ted by an eval­u­ation of the amount of pub­lic money inves­ted in farm­ing and croft­ing in the Nation­al Park and the out­comes towards which it is dir­ec­ted. This will be as part of a study of the envir­on­ment­al, social and eco­nom­ic value of farm­ing and croft­ing in the Nation­al Park. This work is cur­rently being com­mis­sioned in part­ner­ship with the Scotland’s Rur­al Col­lege (SRUC) and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Nation­al Park Author­ity (LLT­NPA) and will be presen­ted to Board in due course.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Board is asked to: α) Note the over­all pic­ture of farm­ing activ­ity, trends and pre­dic­tions for the future.

Stra­tegic context

1. The over­arch­ing object­ives of agri­cul­tur­al policy are set out in the Agri­cul­ture and Rur­al Com­munit­ies Act (2024) as: α) The adop­tion and use of sus­tain­able and regen­er­at­ive agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices. b) The pro­duc­tion of high-qual­ity food. c) The pro­mo­tion and sup­port of agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices that pro­tect and improve anim­al health and welfare.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Form­al Board Paper 5 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 2 of 10

1. d) The facil­it­a­tion of on-farm nature res­tor­a­tion, cli­mate mit­ig­a­tion and adapt­a­tion. e) Enabling rur­al com­munit­ies to thrive. Rur­al pay­ments drive much of the activ­ity in the Nation­al Park, as they do across Scot­land. Future rur­al pay­ments, designed to sup­port the deliv­ery of the object­ives in the Act, will be an evol­u­tion of those that cur­rently exist.

2. Sup­port­ing farm­ers on tak­ing an integ­rated approach to deliv­er­ing a range of pub­lic bene­fits as per the object­ives in the Act will form a key part of the next NPPP.

3. The object­ive in the cur­rent NPPP spe­cific­ally relat­ing to farm­ing is to ​‘Work with farms in the Nation­al Park to reduce their car­bon foot­print, con­serve soil car­bon, encour­age sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion and deliv­er increased biod­iversity on in-bye land.” Agri­cul­tur­al land also plays an import­ant role in the deliv­ery of nature net­works and in spe­cies conservation.

Back­ground

1. A large part of Scotland’s area is used for agri­cul­ture. The total Scot­tish agri­cul­tur­al area in 2024 was 5.16 mil­lion hec­tares, 66% of Scotland’s total land area. How­ever, large areas of agri­cul­tur­al land are only lightly farmed. Hilly or moun­tain­ous areas, for example, often have lim­ited grow­ing poten­tial more suit­able for live­stock than crops, and are mostly used for rough grazing.

2. The Basic Pay­ment Scheme (BPS) provides area-based fin­an­cial sup­port to eli­gible farm­ers and crofters, act­ing as a safety net for all farm busi­nesses by sup­ple­ment­ing their main busi­ness income and pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able prac­tices. BPS pay­ments reflect the land’s qual­ity and use for agri­cul­tur­al activ­it­ies. Each land par­cel is alloc­ated a Pay­ment Region. Region one includes bet­ter qual­ity agri­cul­tur­al land that has been used for arable crop­ping, tem­por­ary grass and per­man­ent grass. Regions two and three include dif­fer­ent Less Favoured Areas (LFA) graz­ing cat­egor­ies, broadly rough graz­ing and hill ground respectively.

3. Farm­ing and croft­ing are an import­ant land use in the Nation­al Park and play a sig­ni­fic­ant role in the land­scape, eco­nomy and eco­logy of the Cairngorms. 79% of

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Form­al Board Paper 5 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 3 of 10

1. the agri­cul­tur­al land in the Nation­al Park is region three (hill ground). Most of the region one land (crops and grass) is situ­ated in the fer­tile flood plains of the Spey, the Don and the Dee, and there is also a sig­ni­fic­ant amount up in the hills around Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et that is also more productive.

The cur­rent agri­cul­tur­al sys­tem is pre­dom­in­antly one of rel­at­ively low inputs with mixed live­stock and arable crop­ping, although it’s dif­fi­cult to gen­er­al­ise when look­ing at such a diverse area. There is extens­ive graz­ing with low live­stock units per hec­tare. Crop­ping will involve sim­il­ar inputs to most Scot­tish farms but will pro­duce lower yields due to alti­tude and grow­ing sea­son. In parts of the Nation­al Park with access to bet­ter arable ground then the sys­tem tends towards the high­er input / out­put busi­ness, where farm­ers will try to optim­ise weight gains to sell more kilos. These also tend to be to lar­ger units with big­ger herds of cattle. Con­versely the lar­ger flocks of sheep are usu­ally hill sheep on a low input /​output system.

1. The Park Author­ity does not admin­is­ter, or have dir­ect influ­ence over, any agri­cul­tur­al sup­port or pay­ments scheme in the Nation­al Park. There is an exist­ing net­work of agri­cul­tur­al know­ledge exchange pro­grammes (eg Mon­it­or Farms), tech­nic­al advice and research (eg Scotland’s Rur­al Col­lege and More­dun Insti­tute), land agents admin­is­ter­ing rur­al pay­ments applic­a­tions (eg Agri-Envir­on­ment Cli­mate Scheme), edu­ca­tion pro­grammes (Roy­al High­land Edu­ca­tion­al Trust) and routes into policy dis­cus­sions (Nation­al Farm­ers’ Uni­on Scot­land (NFUS), Croft­ing Com­mis­sion and Scot­tish Land and Estates).

2. The Park Author­ity has employed an agri­cul­tur­al officer, or land man­age­ment adviser with an agri­cul­tur­al focus, almost con­tinu­ously since the incep­tion of the Nation­al Park. To best add value to exist­ing pro­grammes of activ­ity, and not duplic­ate the work of oth­ers, the role has focussed largely on facil­it­at­ing bet­ter lines of com­mu­nic­a­tion and col­lab­or­a­tion through a Farm­ers’ For­um; and sup­port­ing and max­im­ising oppor­tun­it­ies for biod­iversity enhance­ment through pro­jects such as Wet­lands and Waders Ini­ti­at­ives, mob graz­ing and spe­cies rich grass­lands. Activ­it­ies have been sup­por­ted with an annu­al oper­a­tion­al plan budget, which in ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ is £100,000.

3. Cur­rently the post con­tin­ues to ful­fil these roles and also has a remit to sup­port sus­tain­able and suc­cess­ful farm busi­nesses, the pro­duc­tion of loc­al, high-quality

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Form­al Board Paper 5 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 4 of 10

food and pro­mote the pos­it­ive impact of sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture and its role in tack­ling the twin crises. The agri­cul­ture advisor also encour­ages and advises applic­ants to Park Author­ity funds, such as the Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund.

1. Since 2024, the Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund has provided grant fund­ing totalling over £240,000 to farms and crofts for pro­jects that sup­port adapt­a­tion and mit­ig­a­tion to the impacts of cli­mate change and lower­ing car­bon emis­sions. These have included flood bank repairs and ripari­an plant­ing, redu­cing fer­til­iser use, pur­chas­ing seed drills to reduce soil dis­turb­ance and water­ing live­stock through sol­ar powered water troughs.

2. The Park Author­ity provides addi­tion­al sup­port, over and above that which is avail­able nation­ally, for land man­agers to man­age and mit­ig­ate for the impacts of beavers. There is a ded­ic­ated team with­in the Park Author­ity and an oper­a­tion­al budget. Part of this addi­tion­al sup­port includes a guar­an­tee to provide grant assist­ance for any breach in the flood banks in the Nation­al Park proven to be caused by beaver bur­row­ing where the flood bank was shown pre­vi­ously to be in good condition.

3. This spe­cif­ic offer of grant assist­ance to remedi­ation of dam­aged flood bank is a con­di­tion­al aspect of the trans­lo­ca­tion licence and will be in place until March

4. In 2026, fol­low­ing the estab­lish­ment of any new or revised nation­al agri­cul­tur­al schemes, the Park Author­ity will review its pos­i­tion to the end of the trans­lo­ca­tion licence in 2028. A fur­ther review will take place in 2028.

5. In 2024 the Park Author­ity estab­lished the Cairngorms Agri­cul­tur­al Advis­ory Group (CAAG). Mem­ber­ship is drawn from agen­cies and organ­isa­tions, farm­ers and crofters across the Nation­al Park, and the Cairngorms Crofters and Farm­ers Com­munity (CCFC). The group’s main func­tions are to act as a line of com­mu­nic­a­tion between the Park Author­ity and agri­cul­tur­al busi­ness; provide advice and guid­ance; sup­port deliv­ery of the NPPP; and share good practice.

6. The Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme is tri­al­ling a range of farm­ing prac­tices and mon­it­or­ing how they influ­ence everything from car­bon impacts to farm fin­ances, stock per­form­ance to the farmer’s exper­i­ences. Meth­ods include the use of diverse seed mixes that can help to improve soil and live­stock and mob graz­ing where

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Form­al Board Paper 5 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 5 of 10

cattle are rotated around smal­ler patches of land for a short­er time, giv­ing the soil a chance to rest and improv­ing plant diversity.

June census data

1. The June census is coordin­ated by the RESAS (Rur­al and Envir­on­ment Sci­ence and Ana­lyt­ic­al ser­vices) divi­sion of the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. The annu­al census col­lates nation-wide data on land use, crop areas, live­stock and the num­ber of people work­ing on agri­cul­tur­al land­hold­ings. The data is used to help devise sup­port pay­ment sys­tems and grant schemes.

2. Data col­lated for the Nation­al Park has been dis­ag­greg­ated from the nation­al data­sets accord­ing to par­ish bound­ar­ies. This presents chal­lenges in assess­ing the per­cent­age of a hold­ing to include when the Park bound­ary crosses par­ish or hold­ing bound­ar­ies. This has pre­vi­ously been done on the per­cent­age of land area included with­in the Park bound­ary. When look­ing at pay­ments to a par­tic­u­lar hold­ing then those could include pay­ments for land out­with the Park bound­ary, as land gets amal­gam­ated under the prin­cip­al hold­ing number.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Par­ish par­tially or wholly with­in Cairngorms Nation­al Park Form­al Board Paper 5 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 6 of 10

All Scot­land 2003 2023 Vari­ation Vari­ation Ha/​No Ha/​No Ha/​No % Ha/​No % Num­ber of hold­ings 941 854 ‑87 ‑9.2% ‑5620 ‑11.2% Owned Ren­ted 519 589 70 13.5% ‑496 ‑1.5% 422 265 ‑157 ‑37.2% ‑5124 ‑29.9% Land use, live­stock and labour Total agri­cul­tur­al land (excl. com­mon graz­ing) 562,973.08 509,257.19 ‑53716 ‑9.5% ‑187405 ‑3.4% Region 1 area (crops and grass) 63,615.44 55,087.11 ‑8528 ‑13.4% 34968 1.8% Region 2 area (rough graz­ing DA or bet­ter qual­ity land) 3,592.59 546.41 ‑3046 ‑84.8% ‑2285 ‑3.7% Region 3 area (rough graz­ing SDA land) 469,040.02 402,370.29 ‑66670 ‑14.2% ‑476453 ‑14.7% Wood­land 22,347.76 38,751.09 16403 73.4% 166372 70.3% Oth­er land (rocks, roads, yards & build­ings etc.) 4,377.28 12,502.29 8125 185.6% 89993 121.2% Com­mon graz­ings 9,951.73 8,773.17 ‑1179 ‑11.8% ‑13589 ‑2.3% Total sheep 344,359 316,069 ‑28290 ‑8.2% ‑1395625 ‑17.4% Total cattle 49,804 35,656 ‑14148 ‑28.4% ‑255004 ‑13.2% Total full-time employ­ees 615 684 69 11.2% ‑1373 ‑4.9% Total part-time employ­ees 720 700 ‑20 ‑2.8% ‑154 ‑0.4% Total work­force 1,335 1,384 49 3.7% ‑1527 ‑2.2%

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Form­al Board Paper 5 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 7 of 10

Ana­lys­is of trends in farm­ing activity

1. The num­ber of hold­ings in the Nation­al Park has decreased by nearly 10%. This is likely due to amal­gam­a­tion into lar­ger units. There has been a decrease in ren­ted farms, due to large estates tak­ing farms back in hand. Long-term secure ten­an­cies offer ten­ant farm­ers sig­ni­fic­ant rights which may reduce estate flexibility.

2. Total agri­cul­tur­al land has reduced by nearly 10%. This is most likely a reflec­tion of the expan­sion of set­tle­ments, roads, infra­struc­ture and by wood­land cre­ation schemes. Dif­fer­ent land types recor­ded by Rur­al Pay­ment and Inspec­tions Dir­ect­or­ate (RPID), for example ​“oth­er land” have been re-clas­si­fied, res­ult­ing in some anom­alies inn the data.

3. The sig­ni­fic­ant reduc­tion in the area of region two land is pos­sibly due to reclas­si­fic­a­tion by RPID or wood­land schemes. Ground such as areas of brack­en and scree is now con­sidered dif­fer­ently and doesn’t fea­ture in the census hectarage.

4. There has been a sig­ni­fic­ant increase in wood­land as a res­ult of land man­agers’ response to the grant offer on some farm­land. The 73.4% increase in the Nation­al Park is dir­ectly com­par­able with the nation­al increase of 70.3%. The policy in the Nation­al Park is for ​‘no whole­sale con­ver­sion of enclosed, in-bye agri­cul­tur­al land to forestry’.

5. The num­ber of sheep has decreased by over 8%. In Scot­land as a whole, sheep have declined by around 16% so the decrease is much less in the Nation­al Park. The Cairngorms is well suited to sheep pro­duc­tion and is the source of many of the store lambs which are fattened on low­land grasslands.

6. The num­ber of cattle has reduced by nearly 30% in the last 20 years, and the decline with­in the Nation­al Park is twice that of the rest of Scot­land. The Cairngorms is tra­di­tion­ally a suck­ler calf pro­du­cing area. The loss of head­age pay­ments, suck­ler cow sub­sidy, com­bined with rising input costs for feed, fer­til­iser and fuel have all con­trib­uted to mak­ing the industry less viable in an area with a short grow­ing sea­son and chal­len­ging weath­er con­di­tions. Labour shortages,

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Form­al Board Paper 5 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 8 of 10

reg­u­la­tions and mar­ket volat­il­ity lead­ing to uncer­tain returns have all con­trib­uted to the decline of the nation­al Scot­tish beef herd.

1. The agri­cul­tur­al work­force has mar­gin­ally increased over the last 20 years. Some new entrants are com­ing into farm­ing and cur­rent rising live­stock prices may enable more. How­ever, sig­ni­fic­ant start-up costs will con­tin­ue to be a bar­ri­er to many. Although agri­cul­ture is still male dom­in­ated, women now make up 40% of the work­force, often self-employed or part-time due to oth­er jobs and respons­ib­il­it­ies. As farms become lar­ger and busi­nesses con­sol­id­ate and mech­an­ise, it is likely that employ­ment will decrease. Farm diver­si­fic­a­tion, often into agri-tour­ism, has been a major income boost for a lot of busi­nesses, and cre­ated new forms of paid employ­ment for fam­ily mem­bers and staff.

2. The census data does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate when col­lect­ing farm occu­pi­er data and com­bines occu­pi­ers and spouses. Fig­ures below show agri­cul­tur­al occu­pi­ers and spouses in broad age classes as recor­ded in 2023. There is no data on farm employ­ees but there is clearly an aging pop­u­la­tion of occupiers.

Under 41 41 to 54 55 to 64 Over 64 Total Occupier/​Spouse Total work­ing occu­pi­ers 23 70 91 123 451

Future changes, chal­lenges and opportunities

1. Fund­ing sup­port sys­tems to agri­cul­ture are likely to change in future to reflect the oppor­tun­it­ies for sus­tain­able farm busi­nesses pro­du­cing high qual­ity food to also make a sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tion to Scotland’s efforts in tack­ling the twin crises and provid­ing adapt­a­tion and resi­li­ence to the impacts of cli­mate change.

2. The Basic Pay­ment Scheme (BPS) provides area-based fin­an­cial sup­port to eli­gible farm­ers and crofters, act­ing as a safety net for all farm busi­nesses by sup­ple­ment­ing their main busi­ness income and pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able prac­tices. It is thought BPS is unlikely to change sig­ni­fic­antly in the next five years. How­ever, the Green­ing meas­ures which farms must under­take to qual­i­fy for BPS are likely to change. New Green­ing meas­ures will apply to all arable land and the defin­i­tion of arable land will include tem­por­ary grass­land. The inclu­sion of tem­por­ary grassland

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Form­al Board Paper 5 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 9 of 10

means vir­tu­ally all farms in the Cairngorms which wish to claim BPS will have to com­ply with new Green­ing measures.

1. Every farm busi­ness which claims BPS will need to pro­duce a Whole Farm Plan (WFP). A WFP is a series of meas­ures designed to help busi­nesses become more effi­cient, to reduce costs, cut emis­sions and improve biod­iversity. There are five com­pon­ents to the WFP. To claim BPS, farm busi­nesses will have to com­plete two of these com­pon­ents by May 2026. The com­pon­ents are an anim­al health and wel­fare plan, a biod­iversity audit, a car­bon audit, an integ­rated pest man­age­ment plan and a soil analysis.

2. Farm­ers are likely to con­tin­ue to face envir­on­ment­al chal­lenges linked to cli­mate change. These will include increased fre­quency of extreme weath­er events like drought and floods. Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency (SEPA) have recor­ded a great­er fre­quency and an increase in energy of the flash floods affect­ing our rivers. This puts enorm­ous pres­sure on flood­banks, to the point of breach­ing. Cli­mate pre­dic­tions are that this will hap­pen with great­er regularity.

3. Scot­land is cur­rently exper­i­en­cing record water scarcity with 17 catch­ments at Sig­ni­fic­ant, the highest num­ber since the cur­rent ver­sion of the Nation­al Water Scarcity Plan was intro­duced. This stands out for the scale and dur­a­tion of low rivers flows. In the Lower Spey, for example, the 2025 sea­son has seen the highest num­ber of low-flow days in a 70-year record.

4. Reduc­tions in cattle graz­ing could res­ult in increased veget­a­tion growth, changes in biod­iversity and less organ­ic mat­ter being added to soils, which reduces car­bon sequest­ra­tion. No-fence col­lars have rad­ic­ally changed the way cattle can be man­aged. Many estates, farms and crofts are using col­lars to (re)introduce cattle graz­ing in wood­land, on hill ground and unim­proved land, increas­ing het­ero­gen­eity in field lay­er and increas­ing biodiversity.

5. Farm­ers remain vul­ner­able to mar­ket volat­il­ity bey­ond their con­trol. Cur­rently live­stock prices are extremely good, but bar­ley prices are low, and input costs like fer­til­iser remain high. Using dir­ect drills to min­im­ise cul­tiv­a­tion, max­im­ising use of farm­yard manure and recycled fer­til­iser sources, and tar­get­ing spray weeds are all ways that farm­ers are cut­ting costs and redu­cing their car­bon foot­print for arable

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crops. Rota­tion­al graz­ing, soil map­ping and altern­at­ive over­win­ter­ing sys­tems are ways of tak­ing cost out of live­stock pro­duc­tion. The Park Author­ity is sup­port­ing innov­a­tion and know­ledge exchange through the Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund, oper­a­tion­al plan activ­it­ies and the Cairngorms 2030 Future Farm­ing programme.

Colin McCle­an colinmclean@​cairngorms.​co.​uk 09 Septem­ber 2025

Mal­colm Smith malcolmsmith@​cairngorms.​co.​uk 09 Septem­ber 2025