Agriculture - Government-backed loans: research

Methodology

This report explores examples of government-backed loans used in agriculture in comparable countries and those available in the United Kingdom (UK) (Section i), and to engage with stakeholders to identify the need, how these types of loans could work and the challenges associated with them (Section ii). The report does not include recommendations as to how the Scottish Government could practically implement a new loan scheme.

The first section reviews a selection of government-backed loan schemes in the UK and European countries (including Ireland, France and Italy), describing different types of government-backed and private finance schemes that target new entrants/young farmers and detailing the loan and risk sharing structures of these. A purposive sampling approach was used to select relevant loan schemes in European countries with publicly available information. Therefore, the schemes reviewed for this report do not constitute a fully representative sample of government-backed loan schemes in Europe and may not include some relevant schemes due to factors such as publication bias and language barriers.

The second section reports information gathered through interviews with key stakeholders. A group interview was conducted with the NFUS Next Generation committee, and five individual interviews with bank employees, all with agricultural expertise. Interviewees were recruited by email and had all engaged with previous discussions about agricultural banking with the Scottish Government. Only one person per banking institution was interviewed; therefore, the views recorded may not be in line with other employees. This sample was not designed to be representative but to provide context and views in a UK context. Interviews were conducted between December 2025 and January 2026. All interviews were conducted online using Microsoft Teams. The interviews followed a semi-structured interview script (Appendix 2), allowing a core set of questions to be answered by interviewees, whilst also allowing them freedom to introduce new ideas and themes to the discussion. Interview findings were manually grouped into themes and then consolidated through an inductive process.

Due to the small sample size and the interviewees' wish to remain anonymous, individual responses are not reported, and all identifiable features have been removed.