Crop yield estimates show fourth year of decline

Despite a mixed picture across the country and between crop types, provisional figures released yesterday on the 2018 harvest show it to be one of the poorest in Scotland in recent decades, with overall production struggling to pass the 2.6 million tonne mark.

While few in the industry were surprised by the official first estimates released by the Scottish Government, which showed that the drop was particularly marked in the spring barley front, NFU Scotland said that indications from its own survey were if anything more pessimistic.

And the final figure – dragged down by cold and wet sowing conditions followed by the near-drought over summer – could challenge the disastrously wet harvest of 2012 for the lowest overall cereal production levels this century.

The National Statistics figures released yesterday were drawn together based on the yield estimates of a panel of experts from the Scottish cereal industry and multiplied up using early agricultural census estimates of areas sown, which showed that around 420,000 hectares of cereals were grown this year, 3 per cent lower than 2017.

This drop in area, combined with the estimated 6 per cent decrease in overall yield, has led to an official predictions of a 9 per drop in production year on year.

Spring barley suffered the most with an estimated drop of around 10 per cent in yield – but, with planting up due to less winter wheat being sown in the back end, overall production of Scotland’s most important cereal crop was expected to have fallen by 7 per cent to a total of 1.3 million tonnes, with early-sown crops hardest hit.

Winter barley yields were expected to have risen slightly, with quality generally good – but a fall in the acreage sown led to predictions of an 18 per cent drop in production.

Official estimates for crops including wheat, oats and oilseed rape show slightly lower yields than 2017 – and reduced areas amplified the fall in overall production.

Final harvest estimates from the Cereal Production Survey will be published in December.

NFU Scotland’s policy manager Peter Loggie said it was concerning that the overall trend in production over the past four years had been downwards.

He said that the levelling off of crop yields was of great concern and that while the reasons for this were complex, it highlighted the fact that growers needed to have some of the impediments to the uptake of new technologies which were curtailing yield advances removed.

He said: “It was improvements in technology, plant breeding and agri-chemicals that were responsible for the big yield improvements in the past. Those are where we need to look in the future too.”