SAC Rural Policy Centre

Addressing climate change features prominently as an objective in the most recent round of proposed changes to the CAP.

This Policy Briefing summarises the key messages from a recent Debate organised as part of the 'Rural Scotland in Focus' series.

In order to meet Scottish government targets for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, all sectors of Scottish society will have to change the way they currently consume energy and contribute to GHG emissions.

This Policy Briefing draws on the findings from an EU-funded project to highlight a range of measures that could be taken to ensure that farmland biodiversity concerns are addressed in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) at an appropriate scale to be effective.

This Policy Briefing discusses the issues associated with ruminant livestock production, placing Scottish livestock production and its relationships with food production and climate change issues in a global context.

This research provided an indication of the scale of future environmental land management requirements, taking account of a wide range of environmental objectives in a synergistic way, and examined all four UK administrations from the perspective of both coverage and cost.

Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, land use, land use change and forestry (ALULUCF) are a significant percentage of UK emissions.

Recent research involving ADAS, SAC, IGER and the AFBI sought to develop projections of the likely impact of current policies on future land use.

Nitrogen is an essential plant nutrient and the cycling of nitrogen through the environment is a natural process, but excess nitrates lost from the land into the water environment can cause harm to both aquatic life and to drinking water.

Agricultural activity effects our environment in a variety of ways.