Big Read: Salmon is Scotland's biggest food export and we must help it compete

The islands were the wedding dowry of Margaret of Denmark, the future wife of King James III of Scotland.

Some Islanders still hark to government by Oslo or Copenhagen rather than Edinburgh and London. Especially when inter-island tunnels and much needed ferry investment is so wanting.

The islands’ economic ties – fishing, salmon farming and trade have important connections to Norway. The Nordic countries are seen as successful, progressive and mature.

If Scotland’s government wants to learn from our Scandinavian cousins then the opportunity is here at home – salmon farming.

Back in 2010, Scotland had 10 per cent of the global salmon market. By 2020, this share had shrunk to 6.6%. Some industry experts suggest that Scotland’s share could sink as low as two or 3% in the next decade.

Yet the global salmon market is growing by 8% a year.

Fuelled by worldwide population growth, an insatiable appetite for protein and the strictures of the United Nations that aquaculture is at the heart of meeting this demand.

While Scotland manages modest growth – 1.4% per year – our competitors are racing ahead. Norway is growing at three times Scotland’s rate and now has more than 50% of the global salmon market.

The Faroe Islands are expanding at four times Scotland’s rate and although they currently have 3% of the global market, the Faroese salmon sector grew by 78% between 2010 and 2020. Iceland’s new government aquaculture strategy is explicit in overtaking Scotland.

The picture is clear. Our Scandinavian competitors are growing faster, they are doing better, they are selling more salmon across the world. If we simply stand still, Scotland – and the 10,000 jobs that depend on salmon – will be remorselessly squeezed out.

The Scottish Government now has the opportunity, not just to put Scottish salmon back on more dinner plates and worldwide restaurant tables, but to build an enabling approach to seafood business that could be the envy of the Scandinavians.

In the coming days, ministers will receive proposals to reform the regulatory framework for fish farming. Professor Russel Griggs, a well kent business figure, has reviewed what currently happens. We expect him to propose a system of oversight which will be both transparent and enabling, efficient yet accountable.

Business regulation can be dry and soporific. Yet the outcome of this review and the Scottish Government’s response will set the tone for salmon farming in Scotland for the coming decades. Does the Scottish Government want a successful salmon sector, generating significant export revenue, supporting remote rural communities and producing substantial tax revenues or will it allow the sector to languish as Scotland’s competitors power off into the sunset?

The answer just has to be the former.

The Griggs report will demonstrate that the burden and cost of regulation is higher than growing fish in Norway or Faroe.

According to the latest available figures, it costs £4.44 to produce one kilogram of salmon in Scotland. In Norway, it costs £3.48, in Canada it costs £3.85 and in the Faroes one kilogram of salmon costs £3.57 to produce.

It is simply more expensive to grow salmon here than elsewhere and part of that extra cost comes in the form of regulation.

To establish a salmon farm in Scotland requires five separate approvals from four different government bodies. Duplication is inherent in this messy and unsatisfactory procedure. Each one of these processes can take extraordinary lengths of time. It is not unusual for each individual consent application to be left undecided for months while the whole process normally takes two to three years to complete.

One salmon farmer in Scotland had to wait 550 days for a single consent from Sepa, Scotland’s environment regulator. This was not for a new farm. Instead 78 weeks passed as a business sought to change the position of an existing farm.

Scotland’s salmon sector does not want less regulation. We farm in the marine environment. We look after our fish 365 days a year in the best and worst of weathers. Our sector should be regulated. We seek a regulatory process that is quicker, more efficient and clearer for all: clear for people whether they be in Argyll or Bearsden, clear for coastal communities who depend on the wages and local jobs and clear for government who want both our tax income and for the sector to be sustainable. We have unequivocally committed to matching Scotland’s 2045 target to be net zero in greenhouse gas emissions.

So to paraphrase a certain Prime Minister, regulators should regulate and government should govern. That means ending the tendency for regulators such as Sepa to set the direction of policy, rather than just regulate. It is for government ministers to set policy as they see fit.

Inevitably, some will not like change. Why would Crown Estate Scotland – the marine landlord – suddenly announce a 95% increase in fish-farm rents just ahead of the review’s publication? A review which has studied all the costs the sector faces in judging how salmon farming should be managed in a comprehensive and holistic way.

There is a greater goal here too: community benefit. The Scottish Government is rightly determined to make sure that more money generated from fish farming is invested in the areas that host sea farms. That hardly happens. But it should happen in the future, under a reformed system of regulation and seabed ownership. I served on the cross-party parliamentary Smith Commission that recommended the devolution of the seabed from London to Edinburgh.

We did not do that to see one rapacious landlord replaced by another with little benefit to people who live and work in our coastal areas.

There is often a live and ongoing tension in the areas where we farm over economic development. There are those – often retirees and second-homeowners – who want our coastal areas to remain untouched and who view any economic development as an affront to their view out the front window.

Yet without fish farm jobs, the families and wider local employment there will be fewer primary schools across Highland, Argyll and the Islands. Income would disappear, employment would disappear, schools would close and the trend of de-population, which the Scottish Government rightly wishes to reverse, would accelerate. There are critics of salmon farming who will claim that this is more than about economics. It is about the environment and fish welfare. I agree. Our sector faces challenges.

We work every day with regulators to make sure we have some of the toughest and most transparent farming operations anywhere in the world.

As well as government regulatory oversight, our farms are audited by supermarkets, independent bodies such as RSPCA Assured and global accreditation organisations. There is not a day in the year when a farm is not being inspected.

There are farms which have been so successful in their use of natural remedies like cleaner fish (which eat sea lice off the salmon) that they have eradicated this challenge.

In looking after the welfare of our fish, our farmers make sure our pens are 98.5% water and only 1.5% fish. These stocking densities allow Scottish salmon to grow without crowding, using the tides and the currents to develop the best-tasting and healthiest protein in the world.

But we need space to grow and we need a regulatory framework which is fit for purpose. A framework that enables Scotland to compete with our international competitors.

The Griggs report and, crucially, how ministers respond to it, represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to set salmon farming in Scotland on the right path. One that leads to sustainable growth with a regulatory framework which helps and guides, rather than inhibits and delays.

At COP26 in Glasgow last November, Mairi Gougeon, Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Islands, talked about the forthcoming review.

She said: “Where those recommendations identify regulatory obstacles to realising our goal of a sustainable industry on the pathway to net zero, the Scottish Government will consider them carefully and will act. Effective and efficient regulation is in everybody’s interests. The salmon sector can only be a truly sustainable success story if economic growth goes hand in hand with positive outcomes for Scotland’s communities and Scotland’s natural environment.”

Salmon is the UK’s biggest food export. If we want that to continue and retain its place as a key flag-bearer for Scottish quality exports abroad, then Scotland must step up to the challenge laid down by our Scandinavian competitors.

The Griggs report provides our government with a fantastic opportunity to create an enabling approach to business regulation that would be the envy our Nordic cousins. Let Scotland seize that moment.

Tavish Scott is Chief Executive of Salmon Scotland.