FPMC Scheme

(Food Processing Marketing and Co-operation scheme)

Scottish agricultural produce underpins a locally and globally valuable food and drink sector. But many farmers and crofters feel they do not get fair returns from the supply chain, with too much value lost from rural Scotland. Co-operation, effective marketing, and processing to add value are all recognised ways that farmers and crofters can receive more value from the supply chain.

Farmers and crofters, and the wider rural community, can benefit from investments in organisational infrastructure that adds value to agricultural businesses’ products, and retains this value within Scotland’s rural communities. Supporting the production and processing of high-quality food in Scotland.

We would like to see financial support for a programme that constitutes 10% of the Tier 3 budget, with a third of this funding explicitly ring-fenced for agri co-operatives.

We would like to see the FPMC scheme evolve, to:

• Take a strategic supply chain approach, tackling the market failures of linkages in the supply chain.
• Receive collaborative applications that address common sectoral problems.
• Prioritise applications that support Scottish agriculture in the round, considering existing supply chains and market trends, rather than individual business benefits in isolation.
• Have complementary support for market research and feasibility studies to ensure a robust business case underpins applications and takes into account the wider sectoral and market context to ensure value-for-money for the public purse.

We believe policy programme development can achieve this, considering:

• Scheme requirements and scoring

  • To take a strategic supply chain approach to government investment.
  • Project Assessment Committee members should undergo an induction and training process to ensure consistency of scoring and a clear understanding of its intended outcomes.

• Applicant eligibility

  • To include and favour genuinely collaborative applications from more than one supply chain business.
  • To automatically favour supply chain agri co-ops, as these businesses co-operate across the supply chain by default.

• A complementary Market Development Scheme

  • To strengthen the case for investment, particularly for large projects.

We would welcome further discussions on how we can help support the development of this policy programme.

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