Sheep farmers ‘will lose out under any Brexit plan’
A new report into the effects of Brexit has shown that Scotland’s national sheep flock could drop to less than half its current level, while the number of beef cattle could drop by almost a third.
The latest report to look at the effects of Brexit was released by the SRUC – and author Steven Thomson a senior agricultural economist at the college said the findings reiterated how vulnerable hill farming systems were to trade deals and policy choices.
Stressing the need to take the disadvantaged areas into account during the withdrawal negotiations process, Thomson said: “Brexit is an extremely complicated process, particularly when it comes to agriculture due to the EU’S protection for the sector. Our results highlight the potential threats, and opportunities, to the profitability of different Scottish farming sectors under possible post-brexit trade and policy scenarios.”
Looking at the now well rehearsed three scenarios – a deal offering continued free trade with Europe (FT) the World Trade Organisation most favoured nation approach (WTO) and a Uk-adoption of unilateral trade liberalisation (TL) – the college also superimposed the effects of support
0 Scotland’s hill sheep farmers will be hit badly by Brexit measures on to these options.
And while milk and beef fared reasonably well under the WTO option, and cereal and cropping showed only minor reductions in profitability under all options, the sheep sector was hit hard under virtually all scenarios – the report predicting that under the worst scenario the national flock could slump by over 56 per cent – and almost 90 per cent of producers could be in a loss-making situation by 2022.
Using information gathered to provide the statistics for farm income figures, the college modelled the effects of the trade and support scenarios on the actual incomes farmers were likely to receive under the various options, factoring in the likely changes of enterprise mix farmers might take to mitigate the effects. The report states that specialist beef and LFA mixed livestock farms are predicted to experience substantial financial pressure under Brexit, especially if the UK market is unilaterally liberalised.
“LFA specialist sheep farms are particularly vulnerable to trade scenarios where exports face tariffs or imports face no tariffs, particularly where direct support is removed,” it said. “In the extreme scenario some 89 per cent of the specialist sheep farms are expected to return losses in 2022.”
Scotland’s rural economy secretary Fergus Ewing said: “This study confirms once again what the Scottish Government has been saying all along – that the interests of farmers are best served by remaining within the EU.”