Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
I want to pick up on something that Claire Daly was kind of saying. In the previous panel, Nim Kibbler talked about how we need to move away from looking just at cow numbers. I think that she meant that, rather than looking at the cow, we should look at the practices of the herdsman or woman. It is not just about having a cow, but about how you work with a cow. In that earlier evidence session, I mentioned that I had gone to see the work of Jock Gibson in Moray. My sense is that we could be looking at more farmers doing that kind of practice across the whole of Scotland. We could keep a certain number of cattle, and then there is the balancing act of the size of throughput that is required to keep the abattoirs running and all that kind of stuff. Could we be looking at smaller herds in more places? I also guess that she was getting at the holistic aspect of how the cattle or sheep are raised.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
Do you have a sense, from your work on the farm, what would work?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
We have already touched on the food system and the need for it to be integrated. The draft plan focuses mainly on agricultural production; it says much less about the wider food system with regard to things such as consumption, waste and dietary changes. From your perspective, does the fact that we are not already talking about those issues as part of the climate change plan represent a gap? It has already been suggested that it does. If so, what kind of policies would help to close that gap?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
I will pop back in with a supplementary on that specific point. I was surprised to learn from Henry Dimbleby’s UK report on food and the book that came out of it, which was called “Ravenous: How to get ourselves and our planet into shape”, that people would only need to reduce the meat that they ate as part of their normal diet for two days a week in order to reduce emissions. I thought that that was interesting, and I wonder whether you have any thoughts on it.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
Twice in this meeting so far, we have talked about trees falling, which is a real thing—we see that from storms such as storm Arwen. Do we need to be thinking about taking a more joined-up approach, where we are not looking at the carbon sequestered in a forest, but at the timber that goes into housing, where it cannot fall down?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
I need a little bit more understanding for this conversation. This is not the question that I was going to ask, but I would like to get a sense of this from Nim Kibbler. You have talked a number of times about resource efficiency. At the very beginning of the evidence session, I noted down your mentioning healthy livestock and local food in that context. Could you unpack what you mean by “resource efficiency” a bit more, so that we can understand it?
You can perhaps also touch on the question that I was going to ask, which follows on from Emma Harper’s questions on opportunities with what could be used as fertiliser. That is also what Donna Smith talked about in discussing how crofters are using seaweed. The seaweed sector in Scotland is growing; it seems to be moving. Does that present a possible opportunity for more natural fertilisers, or does it become too technical?
Anyway—what does “resource efficiency” mean?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
Okay. I guess that I will just have to go and research it.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
That would be helpful. It seems to me that that is quite an important part of the conversation, which we need to unpack and understand more.
What about the seaweed? Do we think that it presents a possibility?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
Is there enough funding and other support to allow you to think about where to put the trees and so on?
10:45
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
Nim, you talked about soil being a driving factor in the overall—you used the word “holistic”—practice that you and other farmers in the Nature Friendly Farming Network use. In the whole farm plan, there is a soil test that farmers can opt into voluntarily. However, it is surprising to me is that farmers do not test their soil, if soil is a driving factor. That testing is currently optional. What more do we need in place?
There is a spectrum of people, ranging from those who have never tested their soil all the way to Mr Griffin down in the Borders—I cannot remember his first name—who tests his soil to an incredible level. What more would we need, by way of support, training and so on, to help farmers to move to an understanding that soil really is a direct, driving factor?
09:30
