Borders farm subsidy average highest in Scotland

by DOUGLAS SHEPHERD

Over a thousand eligible farm businesses in the Scottish Borders received average payments of more than £51,000 from CAP funds in 2019, the highest mean figure in any of Scotland's 14 agricultural regions, according to new research published by the Scottish Government.

The level of financial support from subsidies for the rural economy of the Borders is there for all to see in the figures contained in the document following detailed research by Steven Thomson, of Scotland's Rural College, together with Andrew Moxey, of Pareto Consulting.

The researchers estimate a total of £53.86 million was paid to Borders farmers and agri-businesses in the region over the year covered by the study. This equates to 10.6 per cent of the Scottish total of £508.79 million.

The payments to 1,052 qualifying Borders recipients (Scottish total 17,850) cover all sectors of agricultural activity. And as the report explains: "Reflecting the larger average sized businesses the largest average payments were in the Borders (£51,201) followed by Tayside (£41,135) and Lothian (£40,260)".

So far as the Borders was concerned £20.4 million worth of subsidies went to the beef sector (570 individual payments), £16.18 million to sheep farming (674), £15.58 million to crop growing activity (530), £760,000 to dairying (13) and £940,000 to other sectors (223).

In addition £5.87 million worth of environment and forestry payments were made to 302 recipients.

The report says: "Future funding arrangements for farm support once the UK is no longer under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) remain uncertain. However, data on the level of past funding provided to individual farm businesses can (via various modelling assumptions and caveats) be used to estimate notional sectoral payment ‘envelopes’ to different sectors.

 "£506.9m was allocated to farmers through ‘direct’ support in 2019 – Basic Payment Scheme, Greening, Scottish Suckler Beef Support Scheme Mainland, Scottish Suckler Beef Support Scheme Island, Scottish Upland Sheep Support Scheme and including both the Beef Efficiency Scheme and Less Favoured Areas Support Scheme. 

"Using the Standard Output (SO) model for 2019, beef activities were allocated 43.5% of direct support payments, whilst crop and horticulture activities received 24.7%, sheep activities 23.6%, dairy activities 5.3% with the remainder (2.9%) being allocated to grazing or fodder crops without any (June) stocking activity."

Nationally, in 2005, when the last sectoral payments were known, from the £632 million CAP direct support budget the beef sector received 46%, the cereal sector 30%, the sheep sector 18% and the dairy sector 6%.

In 2019 the North East of Scotland received 18.5% (£93.8m) of ‘direct’ payments with 43% allocated from the beef envelope and 41% from the crop envelope. Dumfries and Galloway received 13.5% (£68.2m) of payments with 56% of allocated through the beef envelope, 21% the sheep envelope and 16% the dairy envelope.

The researchers explain: "The analysis is a direct response to evidence requests from the Farmer Led Groups on Climate Change. The main purpose of this research was therefore to provide an estimate of how the current (largely decoupled) funding might be allocated to sectors within Scottish agriculture – in essence an analytical exercise in recoupling support payments to enterprise types on farms and crofts.

"The exercise serves as an indicator of the level of funding that may be required for relative sectoral support continuity under future schemes, if that is a policy objective."