October 16, 2012

As a result of the bad weather, Scotland's 2012 cereal production is expected to drop by 12% to 2.5 million tonnes, while the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has issued a provisional UK wheat crop figure of 13.3 million tonnes, reflecting a 14% fall in yields.

Yields of all crops in Scotland are lower than in 2011. Wheat is down to 6.79 tonnes/hectare compared with 8.09 tonnes/hectare last year, spring barley is 4.87 tonnes/hectare (5.61 tonnes/hectare in 2011) and winter barley 6.51 tonnes/hectare (7.1 tonnes/hectare). Oat yields fell from 5.6 tonnes/hectare to 5.53 tonnes/hectare.

Rapeseed suffered a big drop, falling from 3.9 tonnes/hectare to three tonnes/hectare, with the crop falling to 110,000 tonnes this year compared with almost 150,000 tonnes last year. The drop in the 2012 yield was compounded by a 5% drop in area.

In response to the first estimate of the cereal and oilseed rape harvests, Scotland's rural affairs secretary Richard Lochhead said the department was working to mitigate the effect and ease farmers' cash flow difficulties by working to ensure as many single farm payments as possible could be paid in December. Final harvest estimates for Scotland will be published in December 2012.

DEFRA's crop forecast of a UK wheat crop in 2012 of 13.3 million tonnes is just above the National Farmers Union's (NFU) harvest survey estimate. The DEFRA result sees UK oilseed rape yields dropping 13% to 3.4 tonnes/hectare and barley down 2.7% to 5.5 tonnes/hectare.