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Cereal harvest estimates
11/10/2007
The Scottish Government today issued the preliminary estimates of the 2007 Scottish cereal and oilseed rape harvest.
These preliminary estimates indicate that, compared with final estimates from the 2006 harvest:
- Total cereal production decreased slightly by 13,000 tonnes or 0.5 per cent to 2.653 million tonnes, with overall yields slightly down on last year to 6.6 tonnes per hectare
- Wheat production decreased by 12,000 tonnes or 1.4 per cent to 833,000 tonnes, with a 2.1 per cent increase in areas and a 3.5 per cent decrease in yields to 8.2 tonnes per hectare
- Total barley production increased slightly by 4,000 tonnes or 0.3 per cent to 1.682 million tonnes, with average yields unchanged at 6.1 tonnes per hectare. Production of spring barley increased by 18,000 tonnes and winter barley production decreased by 14,000 tonnes. This was mostly due to changes in spring and winter barley areas, as yields for both crops remained similar to last year at 5.7 and 7.6 tonnes per hectare respectively
- The production of oats decreased by 4,000 tonnes or 3.3 per cent to 131,000 tonnes, with a 5.1 per cent decrease in areas and a 2.0 per cent increase in yields to 6.1 tonnes per hectare
- Oilseed rape production increased by 10,000 tonnes or 8.4 per cent to 133,000 tonnes. This was mostly due to the 7.0 per cent increase in areas of 2,300 hectares
The 2007 estimates of production are based on provisional crop areas from the 2007 June Census, along with crop yield estimates from Scottish Government Agricultural Staff, supplemented by discussions with trade organisations.
The 2006 estimates of production are based on final yield results from the 2006 Cereal Production Survey and final crop areas from the 2006 June Census.
Final estimates of production from the 2007 harvest will be obtained from the 2007 Cereal Production Survey and published in January 2008.
Some caution is advised when comparing these preliminary trends in yield and production estimates between 2006 and 2007 which have been derived from different sources.