Our first CEO Blog Spot!

Tim Bailey, SAOS CEO: Government must act now to unleash the potential of co-operatives and protect Scotland’s food system

At the end of September, I told a Holyrood round table meeting, hosted by Paul McLennan MSP, that Scotland's food and farming businesses cannot be expected to navigate these times of unprecedented change and volatility standing alone.

With producers having to combat the impact of global conflict, extreme weather, a technology revolution, and labour, skills and funding challenges, the real change needed to navigate these challenges, and ultimately make our food system resilient, requires scale, and shared risk and investment. It requires co-operation.

This message is simple and clear and tacitly agreed to within the farming and policy communities, however action on delivery from policymakers is severely lacking.

SAOS represents around 55 member co-operatives across Scotland, businesses with a combined turnover of £1.6 billion. So we’re not a niche pressure group or quaint members’ club, but a real and major contributor to the rural economy and beyond. We’ve been quietly proving the case for collective action for well over a century, but the time for talking is over. It’s time for action.

The challenges primary producers face have grown arms and legs. If not addressed now, the security of our current food system and supply chains looks, at best, vulnerable to shocks. At the same time, and not unconnected, we are living in an era where, increasingly, wealth is being transferred away from communities and into the hands of the billionaire few. Co-operatives are the mechanism to reverse this trend, to anchor wealth not in the hands of shareholders and oligarchs, but in the communities where it belongs.

Ahead of the Parliamentary reception, we at SAOS published a manifesto setting out what government needs to do (and do now) to catalyse the growth and impact of the co-operative model. It is essential reading for every MSP, Minister and official with a stake in food security. Our asks are grounded in what our members are already doing, and could do so much more of, if unshackled from policy constraints and oversights. Critically, we’re not asking for hand-outs. What we need is more support and understanding of the potential of co-ops, and a level regulatory playing field to allow them to deliver on that potential.

Co-ops allow individual businesses to work together, sharing resources and pooling investment whilst retaining their individual ownership and identity. By nature, they increase resilience through shared risk and can drive innovation and environmental measures at pace and scale, but are often overlooked in policymaking and funding eligibility.

A great example of self-sufficiency and vision is soft fruit growers co-op, Angus Growers Ltd. As a recognised Producer Organisation, it can access matched funding support for research and development for new varieties, precision growing techniques and more sustainable production methods. It's a genuinely forward-looking business, and it exists in its current form because a specific piece of policy, the Producer Organisation Aid Scheme, was designed to back collaboration rather than penalise it, exactly the kind of joined up thinking our manifesto asks government to extend into other sectors.

Then there are Scotland’s Machinery Rings. Forty years ago, Scotland’s first ring was established to share machinery and labour. This purpose has grown, developed and adapted with the times, and now rings all over Scotland can assist farmers and businesses with a varied range of additional services, cutting overheads and saving time for farmers and, increasingly, helping to train and develop the workforce the sector actually needs.

Then there's the ANM Group, Scotland's largest community-owned business. With over 5,000 members, the business spans livestock marketing, land agency, auctions and hospitality and events, and is a major employer across Aberdeenshire and the Highlands and Islands. This illustrates what co-operation can deliver when it's allowed to grow; ownership, value and jobs that stay rooted in the communities that built the business. If community wealth building means anything more than just lip service as a policy goal, ANM is what it looks like in practice.

Too much of Scotland’s funding and regulatory architecture was designed with individual businesses in mind and co-operatives bolted on as an afterthought, if at all.

I've made this point publicly before and I'll keep making it, loudly. There is no shortage of warm words about co-operation from governments, regulators and industry bodies alike. Everyone nods along and talks about working together, but the words mean nothing if they don’t unlock the opportunities for funding or remove barriers inadvertently excluding farmer co-ops from schemes they should be first in line for.

Good intentions don't feed the nation, nor do they build the data infrastructure our members need to adopt new technology with confidence, and they certainly don't deliver a national ambition for growing the co-operative economy in Scotland.

The Scottish Government has already recognised co-operation in the Agricultural and Rural Communities Act. However there remains no clear plan to drive forward the growth and potential for the next generation of co-operatives so vitally needed. Meanwhile, the UK Government has committed to doubling the size of the co-operative economy and a £10m package of support directly focused on co-operative development has just been announced.          

The manifesto sets out five practical steps government could take:

1. Set a national ambition for co-operative growth with a delivery strategy behind it.
2. Make co-operation a preferred delivery route in agricultural policy.
3. Open new markets for producers who choose to work together.
4. Fix the funding and regulation exclusions that exclude collaborative projects  rather than support them.
5. Commit to shared investment in the infrastructure, technology and data.

None of this is a radical moonshot. It's a case of correcting oversights and unshackling co-operatives to reach their true potential and provide a cost-effective mechanism for delivery for governments and the public purse on so many fronts.

Scotland's food and drink sector faces a genuinely uncertain future. We can hope individual businesses find a way through on their own, or we can back a model that has already shown, through co-ops like Angus Growers, Machinery Rings, and the ANM Group, and dozens more like them, exactly what co-operation can achieve.

The room at Holyrood last month heard the case. Now it's over to MSPs, Ministers and officials to turn warm words into action.

Owned and managed by a dedicated group of 16 expert growers, Angus Growers specialise in cultivating a wide variety of premium berries, including strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and cherries.  Find out more at:  www.angusgrowers.co.uk

Scotland’s Machinery Rings are Orkney Business Ring, Ringlink Scotland, Rural Services Scotland, Tayforth Machinery Ring, BMR and Tarff Services, find out more about them at https://scottishmachineryrings.co.uk/

Founded in 1872, ANM Group has expanded from its initial livestock mart business into a co-operative encompassing wider auctions and valuations, rural and commercial property and events and hospitality. More at www.anmgroup.co.uk