Covering Scotland in trees is destroying our countryside economy
Sacrificing farmland to forestry, when farmers are being encouraged to produce more food, makes no sense
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Narrated by Magnus Linklater
From the pages of the Eskdale and Liddesdale Advertiser, a cry of anguish. Three more good farms have been sold for tree planting — jobs lost, productive land disappearing, another Border hill retreating beneath the regimented canopy of sitka spruce. This, says the newspaper, is akin to “modern-day clearances and nothing short of rural political crime”.
The Scottish government however wants more of it. Ministers would like to cover 21 per cent of the countryside with trees by 2032 and if farmland has to be sacrificed to achieve that, so be it.
The rural affairs secretary Mairi Gougeon is in favour. “It is clear that although Scotland is performing way better than the rest of the UK, our planting rates are not meeting our ambitious
