As the member knows, I am a great supporter of crofting and all the benefits that it brings. Does he agree that crofting law reform would be of great help in making crofting sustainable into the future? It was promised in the previous session of the Parliament but has not been delivered yet.

I absolutely agree. You must have guessed the next subject in my speech, which is the new farming policy.

We need to build a wider policy to make it fit for the future, and the Government needs to ask itself these questions as it does that and to trust farmers to deliver food, conservation, biodiversity, employment and local investment, with farmers often being the centre of local communities. If the Government does that and bears that in mind, farming will continue.

If the Government does not believe that farmers can do that, one has to ask whether it believes that focus groups and large multinational companies—some of which, in order to get subsidies, want to burn the very food that we need to feed ourselves and our animals—will deliver it. I am talking about groups that want to rewild, forestry companies that look for hedge funding to make maximum use of carbon credits without knowing fully what that means and—God forbid—politicians. They do not do what farmers do, which is produce the food that we need to eat.

The minister has been clear about producing timescales, but Chris Stark of the Climate Change Committee has told the Government to get on with it because it is taking too long. At NFU Scotland’s annual general meeting dinner, which the cabinet secretary attended, farmers also said that the Government needs to get on with it. Surprisingly enough, even non-governmental organisations are telling the Government to get on with it.

Although the Government has come up with a timescale, it has not come up with a policy. The policy that the Government will develop will come into place only in 2026, which means that we will have less than six years to meet the climate targets that we are being asked to meet. I wish that those climate targets were earlier, and they would have been had the Conservatives had their way. I do not need to remind anyone that, in the previous parliamentary session, it was the Liberal Democrats who voted with the Government to decide that the new agriculture policy did not have to be unveiled until 2024. That is deeply unhelpful, and it leaves farmers in the lurch.

When the Government does not reach its targets, it will blame farmers, which will also be deeply unhelpful. The timescale does not allow you to model the effects of the changes that you will put in place in 2026. That will repeat the error that Richard Lochhead made when he introduced his revised scheme in 2015. It is deeply unhelpful. I suggest that you probably have not left yourself enough time to commission a new software programme, because it takes a long time to do that, and the previous one cost you more than £200 million.

There are some key questions that the agriculture policy will need to address. Will you protect the budget? Will you support less favoured areas? I think that you need to. Will all farmers be able to apply for all payments in all tiers? Will you make conditionality progressive, not regressive? Will you allow all farmers to apply for conditionality payments? Will you make food security a cornerstone of your policy? If the answer to any of those questions is no, you will fail.

I am deeply concerned that we still do not know the full extent of the Government’s farming policy. Since 2016, we have had debate after debate, report after report and task force after task force. The one thing that we have not come up with is a full and detailed policy. Farmers are resilient, but how does the Government expect farmers to improve our food security and meet climate change targets if they do not even know what they will be doing in two years’ time?

Sadly, it appears that, when the cabinet secretary inherited the portfolio from Fergus Ewing, she also inherited his amazing ability to dither and delay. My message—which is repeated by farmers across the country, whom I meet and talk to regularly—is that we need to get on with it if we are going to deliver our net zero targets. Unfortunately, cabinet secretary, until you get on with it, farmers cannot get on with it.

I have been one of the people who were employed to draw up such schemes so I know the costs of doing so and of doing those audits. Does the member share my concern that farmers will lose more money in employing surveyors and such like to draw up their plans than they will get in grants?

I wonder what the cabinet secretary would like me to tell my constituent who was told in November that she would be able to join the cataract waiting list in July this year. Does he think that that is acceptable?

Presiding Officer, can I clarify whether I have been given a generous six minutes so that I can take interventions?

That is very generous of you, Presiding Officer.

I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests. I want to be clear that I farm as part of a family farming partnership, I farm on land that I own, I am a tenant farmer on other bits of land and I am in receipt of agricultural subsidies. Without those subsidies, there is no way that my farming business could survive. That is the fact of the matter, and I am very open about it.

I come to the Parliament having proved that I have dirt under my fingernails from being involved in a family farming business for more than 40 years. Indeed, I think that that means that I was farming before either of the ministers was on the planet. That does not make me any better than them, but I believe that it allows me to come here with a certain amount of knowledge.

During that time, I have seen Governments and policies come and go, but one constant that has remained is the farmers who have managed to deliver some of the best managed land in the world. Our land is a key driver, because we need to remember that they are not making any more of it—we have a finite resource that delivers our food and will help us to protect our climate. As Oliver Mundell said, the problem is that, if we take more of the good, food-growing land out of production for things such as forestry, there will be even less land that can be used to grow food. That is important. As Oliver Mundell also said—I did not write his speech—we cannot eat trees, and we need to be careful about exporting our carbon footprint by importing more food from other countries.

Of course, the seller has those rights. However, I do not need to remind Mr Fairlie that the structure of agricultural subsidies in about 2005 meant that planting on good agricultural land in Aberdeenshire—no deer fencing was required and no work was required on the land—paid more than producing a crop. That was not a good or clever use of the subsidies. We need to be really careful about those things.

Growing more trees so that we cannot use that land for food production means that we are purposefully, or perhaps unwittingly, saying that we approve of the Amazon rain forest being chopped down in order to plant soya. I do not think that we should tolerate that. The future of Scottish farming should be about using the resources that we have a lot more wisely than is being suggested.

I think that we all agree that increasing production is important but so, too, is ensuring that livestock enter the food chain as quickly as possible. We have a strange system in which a lot of beef animals are now ready at 11 months, but, under the Scottish quality assurance scheme, they cannot leave the farm until they are 12 months old because they cannot be sold as Scottish beef. That is not good for the environment or the farmers. Should ministers change such rules as well?

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests as I am a member of a farming partnership.

Farmers often play an important part in keeping rural businesses open and trading by opening up the roads during bad weather. Will the cabinet secretary speak to local councils about the importance of them providing equipment such as snowploughs to help farmers to do that?

I fear that I will not take four minutes, Presiding Officer. I was inspired to stay for the debate in order to listen to John Mason talk about his camping experiences, and I was not disappointed because, of all the lovely places that he talked about waking up in, most were in the Highlands and Islands. What he said was entirely true. Committee business has provided a perfect opportunity to visit the Highlands and Islands, and I can vouch for the fact that, when he was on the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee, he always came in happy in the morning, even when he was on Mull and it had been pouring with rain. He did not look too bedraggled. I do not know whether he used the facilities that the rest of us used in the hotel, or whether he ate the breakfast. However, he was happy and we did not have to sit upwind of him, so it was all good.

My experience of camping came later in life. I missed out on the experience as a child, but for 12 years the Army gave me great experiences of camping, usually on the back of an armoured vehicle that was oily and smelly, but warm. I was taken all over the world, and I have some happy memories. At one stage, when I was in the deep bush in Uganda, I thought that I might end up sharing my camp bed with a hyena that thought that my bed was the appropriate place to be. I was not quite so keen on that. I have less than happy memories of being in Canada, which makes our midges look positively tame. We spent most of the final hours of daylight collecting cow poo, which we then burned and slept downwind of, because it was the only thing that kept the mosquitoes away. Those were happy times and I did enjoy camping. After that, I have to say that my camping has been limited to taking my children out to places. I tend to go earlier in the year before the midges come out. However, I have had great fun and have many happy memories.

I will pick up on one of the points that have been a theme through the debate. I live in the Highlands and have a farm. I am always glad to see campers out enjoying the countryside, because it is a place that I enjoy, but it is also a place that I and others work in, and where wildlife lives and survives. Therefore, it is important that, when people go camping, which I am delighted for them to do, they respect the animals and the other people who use the area.

It is also important, as Murdo Fraser said, to note that the Scottish outdoor access code, which was published in 2005, is in desperate need of review. I have been working on the minister in that regard, but he is less keen on the idea. I would like it to encourage camping on the understanding that people carry in and carry out, and that they do not just camp on the edge of the road or in honeypots. It should be very clear that people should take away what they bring in and—not to put too fine a point on it—do not leave it in a bag hanging on a bush, as too many of us see in the countryside.

I would like to encourage camping. I am delighted that John Mason has brought this motion to the chamber for debate. I am annoyed at Murdo Fraser for stealing the punchline that I guess we all wondered whether we could use but doubted whether we would get away with: carry on camping. I will not use it. Instead, I will make one comment. Those people who have spent a night out around a campfire will always know that that is the best pace of life. It is very good around that campfire, and it generates memories that we will treasure for ever.