Scottish Rural Development Programme 2014-2020: ex-post evaluation - main report

30. Fostering the competitiveness of agriculture

This chapter answers CEQ27: To what extent has the RDP contributed to the CAP objective of fostering the competitiveness of agriculture?

Response

The answer to CEQ 4 dealt explicitly with the extent to which factors associated with competitiveness have been addressed by the SRDP 2014-2020. The conclusion was that that many of the activities available under the KTIF umbrella and FAS contributed to improving economic performance (and hence competitiveness) through improving human and social capital. Several other schemes (for example, NECGS, SFGS, CAGS) contributed, albeit to varying degrees, mainly through improving physical capital.

The answers concerned with innovation, cooperation, development of the knowledge base (CEQ 1), with strengthening the link between agriculture and the research and innovation community (CEQ 2) and lifelong learning (CEQ 3) also impinges on the competitiveness of agriculture.

However, evidence to quantify the impact on competitiveness was limited to a joint evaluation of the NECGS, SFGS and CAGS. The evaluation found that supported farms were able to increase their value of sales of livestock, projects, and services from £5,757 per FTE pre support, to £9,503 per FTE post support and further to £14,546 per FTE 2 years after support. Scaling up to all supported farms and accounting for additionality, the schemes resulted in the following impacts:

• increase of £23.4m in value of sales of livestock, products and services in the year of project completion.
• increase of £62.5m in value of sales of livestock, products and services two years post project completion.
• increase of £11.0m in value of stock (including unsold products/stock and growing crops) in the year of project completion.
• increase of £19.2m in value of stock (including unsold products/stock and growing crops) two years post project completion.
• Note that due to the nature of the evaluation which covers impacts and financial values across different points in time it is not possible to accurately convert from Pound Sterling to Euros.

At this point it may be appropriate to underline the recommendations made in relation to earlier questions that emphasised the need to collect appropriate monitoring data and for independent evaluations that drew on these data, as well as additional information. It is also noted that various schemes have the intention of collating information relevant to competitiveness taken from application forms.

Schemes such as LFASS helped to maintain output, and both KTIF and FAS put in place positive incentives, advice and support for farmers and crofters to help unleash innovation in their farms, contributing to improved income, employment, and growth prospects.