Dairy Action Plan

2. Promoting best practice in dairy farming

Dairy farmers are the bedrock of the sector. The Review of the Scottish Dairy Industry (Ambition 2025) looked at the efficiency and competitiveness of all parts of the Scottish supply chain, including the opportunities for greater collaboration among primary producers. There is clearly scope to spread better best practice in the many areas which contribute to world class dairy farming. Achieving that will require effective measures to provide information services bespoke to dairy farmers and to make it easier for ordinary farmers to benefit from practical advice from both advisers and, crucially, peers. We will therefore:

2.1: Spreading best practice

• Give priority access to the dairy sector to whole farm reviews and the new SRDP advisory services and actively encourage farmer uptake. Ongoing ( SG/ SDS/ NFUS)
• Enhance the role of dairy Monitor farms. Target: July ( SG/ SDS/ NFUS)
• We will continue to support the new Dairy Hub as an effective one-stop shop for advice. Ongoing ( DH)

2.2: Tax Averaging

• We have successfully lobbied UK Government to extend the tax averaging provisions from the current 2 years to 5 years for Scottish Dairy farmers. The Chancellor announced in his recent budget that he would allow dairy farmers to average their incomes for tax purposes over 5 years. This will take effect in April 2016.