Farm Incomes Disparity Revealed

FARM income figures for 2007, published by Defra yesterday, show how unbalanced the industry has become, the National Farmers Union has said.

Arable profits are increasing, while livestock farms continue to struggle, the figures have revealed.

Farm incomes overall showed an improvement of around 10%.

Total income from farming per head rose by 8.7%, to pounds 13,349 in real terms. But that hides a huge variation in the performance of the various sectors, the NFU is claiming, with the sharpest increase in cereal prices in recent years being the dominant influence.

This is forecast to boost profits on cereal farms by 38% in the 2007/08 financial year. But it has also decimated incomes on pig and poultry farms. The average pig farmer will make a loss of over pounds 4,000 this year, while poultry farmers have seen their profits slashed by more than 90%.

The grassland livestock sector has also had an extraordinarily difficult year, caused by a combination of the market disruption which followed the outbreaks of foot-and-mouth and bluetongue disease in the autumn, and which added to the woes of a lamb market already depressed by badly phased New Zealand imports.

This has resulted in forecast income falls of 34% for lowland livestock farmers, and of 44% for hill farms, to just pounds 8,700 and pounds 5,900 respectively per farm.

NFU president Peter Kendall said the figures demonstrated how important it was for the livestock sectors to recover, if the industry as a whole was to make its full contribution to securing Britain’s food supplies. He said: “Although an increase of 10% in net farm incomes looks like a worthwhile move forward, where we are now is neither healthy nor sustainable for the long-term.

“We desperately need to bring the industry back into balance, through a phased increase in producer prices for beef, lamb, poultry, eggs and pigs.

The alternative will be the emergence of a boom, bust cycle, which could destabilise the arable sector as well as ultimately fuelling food price inflation by leaving us dangerously dependent on increasingly expensive imports.”

Jeff Rooker, Minister for Sustainable Food and Farming and Animal Health, said: “I am encouraged by these figures that estimate a rise in farm incomes, during what was a very difficult year for farming. This is testament to the resilience of the industry.”

(c) 2008 The Journal – Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.