Agriculture Bouyant In Scotland

Saturday March 2011, 00:00:00

Although in demise in recent decades the Scottish agricultural sector remains one of the countries leading employment and job creators. Scotland as a country ,is a natural habitat for farming with its land mass being highly varied, from rural lowlands to barren uplands and topography of arable and grassland seeing around three quarters of it under agricultural production and use. Official government figures reveal that the agricultural industry employs around 65,000 directly whilst around quarter of a million jobs are dependent on the industry-supply chain,distribution,food processing being leading sub sectors. In the North and Highlands those employed in the agriculture is around 10% whilst in lowland areas 5% is around the norm although this may vary. This combined output of the Scottish farmers and crofters across its regions is valued at around £2 billion annually. The main producers within the whole of Scotland’s agricultural sector are as follows. There are some farms which concentrate their focus on either cattle or sheep production, however to garner economies of scale there are a multitude of farms which cater for both as the said farms are situated near or on the perfect habitat of grazing land. It is recognised that many of these farms are on what is termed as’ Less Favoured Areas’ and the combo of sheep and cattle brings benefits of diversity for land and ecology. Beef production makes up the largest part of the agricultural sector valued at around £500 million total herding numbers are in fact around 500,000 cattle. This is around a third of the UK herd. In contrast the number of dairy cattle is less at 190,000 but is responsible for £300 million pound in output and over 1 million litres of milk. The other main livestock mainstay is Sheep farming which is divided into three tiers-Hill, Upland and lowland. Hill and upland are mainly sought after for breeding and cross breeding whilst Lowland sheep are predominately for quality prime lamb purposes. The lamb market in 2008 was valued at £147 million pounds. The other two main livestock categories are pig farming which had in 2007 population of around half a million. The same year saw 60,000 tonnes of pig meat was produced at a value of £60 .And also poultry and egg production valued at £75 million and £30 million respectively in 2008. The use of land in Scotland for arable farming off course brings substantial benefits to the sector with grain and cereal production along with vegetables and other crops bringing in large revenues ,illustrated by figures from 2008. 454,000 hectares of cereals were grown in Scotland. Broken down this was 320,000 hectares of barley and 114,000 hectares of wheat. There were 21,000 hectares of oats, 1.9 million Tonnes of barley were produced and 948,000 tonnes of wheat. This Scottish cereal out put was around 12 % of the UK's total .The other major output was from potato farming : Most of the seed potatoes for the UK potato industry are grown in Scotland with over 29,000 hectares of potatoes grown in Scotland.Potato output was over 1.28 million tonnes from more than 3200 holdings in Scotland.Other crops include field vegetables such as carrots are grown on the very best land. Along with peas and beans ,growth in other production has included Oil seed rape (distinct with it’s bright yellow colour) and fruit growing for example in fertile areas such as Angus and Perthshire –Strawberry and raspberry cultivation.