Since the Scottish Government set out its Budget and spending plans on 13 January, I’ve read them with two clear questions in mind.

First, does this Budget give farmers and crofters the confidence and stability they need to keep producing high-quality food, investing in their businesses, and supporting rural communities? Second, does it give the Scottish Government the tools it needs to deliver its own policy objectives – on climate, nature, and sustainability?

My honest answer to both is yes – but only just and only in the short term.

There is no question that this Budget maintains the broad structure of agricultural support in Scotland. Around £660 million will again be directed towards farming, crofting and land management, with the majority going into direct support payments and the rest spread across agri-environment schemes, modernisation and investment, and other rural programmes. That continuity matters. It avoids any cliff edge of cuts and that’s vital.

Put into perspective, however, the £660 million headline for farming, crofting, and related programmes represents less than 1 per cent of the Scottish Government’s total £68 billion public spending budget. In other words, while important for the sector, it remains a very small slice of the overall fiscal picture. The hard truth is that keeping funding at the same level alone does not guarantee effectiveness. Ensuring that resources are sufficient to meet the increasingly complex expectations placed on agriculture is a very different challenge - maintaining a spending framework is different from making it fit for purpose. When I look at this Budget through the lenses of both farm business viability and policy delivery, the cracks are increasingly hard to ignore.

From a policy perspective, this Budget locks in an all too familiar contradiction.

On the one hand, Scottish agriculture is being asked to do more than ever. Farmers and crofters are expected to reduce emissions, restore nature, improve water quality, and protect soils while producing food more sustainably and supporting fragile rural economies.

On the other hand, the funding available to deliver those outcomes is essentially flat. In real terms, that matters enormously - input costs across the board remain stubbornly high and many sectors continue to operate on the tightest of margins.

A flatline direct support budget is a real terms decline and inevitably that feeds into a squeeze on delivery – delivery of environmental outcomes, delivery of innovation and investment, and ultimately delivery of food.

Without financial resilience, even the most innovative farmers are forced to prioritize survival over long-term environmental or productivity goals. It’s obvious to me that farm business viability is not a ‘nice to have’. Without financial resilience, even the most innovative farmers are forced to prioritize survival over long-term environmental or productivity goals.It is the foundation on which every policy objective rests – food, climate, nature, people. If a business is financially viable, it can invest. It can take measured risks. It can engage with new scheme requirements and adopt new practices. It can think longer term. If it is not viable, everything else becomes secondary to survival.

This Budget will keep many farms and crofts across Scotland afloat, but it will do little to improve their underlying resilience. For some farms and crofts – particularly in our less favoured areas – it will simply prolong a holding pattern where direct support is just enough to keep them going, but not enough to adapt or invest meaningfully.

That has real consequences, not least whether policy ambitions translate into action on the ground or remain aspirations on paper.

Another issue I struggle with, from both a policy and a practical perspective, is the one-year nature of the funding settlement.

Agriculture does not operate on annual cycles. Livestock breeding decisions, land management changes, infrastructure investment, and environmental improvements all play out over many years. And while I welcome the three-year Spending Plans the Scottish Government has set out, the Budget itself gives farmers and crofters certainty for just one.

If we want future direct support with new conditions attached to deliver intended outcomes, we need to give farmers and crofters confidence that the funding behind such requirements will still be there in three, five or even ten years’ time. Without that, risk aversion is entirely rational.

It’s also clear to me that continued funding for agri-environment schemes, peatland restoration, woodland creation, and skills development shows intent and not least around support aimed at productivity, efficiency, and emissions reductions. 

But intent only goes so far. 

Ambitious targets on climate and nature cannot be achieved simply by asking farmers to do more with the same level of funding. Uptake will only happen if schemes are financially viable, easy to access, and supported by advisory services that help farmers and crofters navigate new requirements. Without that combination, even well-designed programmes risk low participation and limited real-world impact. Delivering it at pace will require widespread uptake. That means schemes need to be accessible, attractive, and, critically, properly funded.

Despite my concerns, this is not a Budget that closes doors. But does it open any?

For farmers and crofters, it offers short-term stability but little long-term reassurance. For the Scottish Government, it maintains a platform for policy delivery but does not materially strengthen it.

This Budget will keep Scottish agriculture ticking over. But if Scotland truly wants a productive, sustainable, and resilient agricultural sector – delivering all that it is now tasked to do – agricultural support budgets will need to do more than stand still.