DISTURBING accounts of a mouse plague gripping the east coast of Australia have served as a reminder of the growing severity of climate change and what could lie ahead for Scotland, if farmers aren’t properly equipped to tackle the impending challenges.

Heart-breaking reports from farmers living through the infestation and horrific footage to match, hardly begins to capture the extent of the damage millions of mice have inflicted on people’s crops, sheds, machinery and even their homes.

Australian farmers have battled through years of bush fires and droughts, only now to have their crops destroyed by a mouse plague which isn’t looking like it is slowing any day soon. The recent dry conditions, coupled with a reduction in predator numbers due to the bush fires, has allowed breeding to explode.

I spoke to one farmer who said the scale of the problem is “out of this world”. He spoke of farmers who had set traps, catching hundreds over night, but still weren’t even making a dent in numbers.

In desperation, the Australian government has applied for approval of a currently illegal poison known as bromadiolone to try and get to the bottom of the problem. A poison so powerful, New South Wales’ agriculture minister likened its potential use to “napalm for mice”.

Debates have sparked over authorising this poison and the government is faced with having to strike a fine line between helping farmers whose livelihoods are being destroyed and the secondary damage this poison could cause to wildlife and other animals who ingest it. As the farmer I spoke to rattled off a list of some of the challenges they face on the other side of the world: cyclones, floods, droughts, fires and locusts, it really hit home that Scotland cannot take for granted our climate. And with the planet warming up, we should heed warnings from Australia and ensure farmers here are enabled to tackle the climate crisis head on.

According to a report by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in No-vember 2020, Australia has warmed on average by 1.44C since 1910, creeping very close to the Paris Agreement target of keeping global warming below 1.5C.

Farmers depend on a steady climate to grow food and raise livestock which has meant the climate challenges facing the country are making it increasingly difficult for farmers to grow food. All farmers are affected, from dairy farmers to fruit and veg producers, to wine growers. Heat stress on dairy cows typically reduces milk yield by 10-25 per cent, and this can rise to 40% in extreme heatwave conditions.

Australia’s wine-growing regions could be facing crisis as it is predicted that up to 70% of areas will be less suitable for grape growing by 2050.

The Australian agriculture department reported that climate change has reduced farms’ average annual profitability by 22% – or $18,600 per farm – in the past two decades.

Not only is Australia dealing with a Covid recovery like the rest of the world, but it is still recovering from the extreme bush fires that savaged the country in 2019, off the back of its worst drought in living memory.

The blazes burned an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom, killing or displacing nearly three billion animals. I remember speaking to farmers from Kangaroo Island off the mainland of South Australia, back in January 2020, after reports that thousands of rounds of ammunition had been ordered by farmers to shoot injured animals trapped by the flames.

One sheep farmer had lost 9,000 sheep to the fires engulfing his farm and a cattle farmer had opened her farm gates to help her livestock escape the blaze, as she shared horrendous images of piles of burnt carcasses scattered all over the farm.

It is so heart-breaking to think what farmers in Australia have had to cope with in the past few years which makes the current mouse plague all the more upsetting.

Although Scotland might seem a world away from the realities facing Australia, the hot weather which has been warmly embraced this bank holiday weekend, following a wet and miserable May, is a stern reminder of the extremes in weather fronts that are becoming commonplace over here and the necessity to act to mitigate against the impending climate emergency.

The SNP has unveiled its priorities for its first 100 days in government and tackling climate change was rightly high up in its proposals. As well as committing to complete the creation of 12,000 hectares of woodland in 2021, the party has promised to drive forward the recommendations of the farmer-led groups which were shelved prior to the election.

This is welcome news to the farming industry who have fed into lengthy discussions on how farmers and crofters can play their part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, supporting the natural environment, and boosting biodiversity, alongside their important role of producing food to feed the nation.

The ongoing situation in Australia reminds us that food security must not be taken for granted and that farmers are very much on the frontlines feeling the impacts of extreme weather changes.

The Scottish Government must act without delay to introduce the recommendations of the farmer-led groups to ensure farming is enabled to play its part in tackling climate change and to prevent similar challenges from coming to our shores.