From Safer Communities and Justice Statistics Monthly Data Report: March 2026 published today:
Total income from farming is the official measure of the profit (output minus costs) of the agricultural industry in Scotland. Initial estimates for 2025 predict record high total income from farming around £1.5 billion.
Higher output and stable costs compared to 2024 drove a higher profit margin in 2025. Continued high commodity prices, including increases cattle, milk and potato prices drove a rise in the value of agricultural output by 8% to £5.1 billion. Total costs are estimated at around £4.1 billion. While many costs continued to fall from their peaks in 2022 and 2023, increases were still seen for labour and seed.
Scotland’s largest agricultural sector is beef. The beef sector was estimated to be worth £1.1 billion in 2025. A record value for beef as market prices remained strong. The value of the milk sector increased as production increased and prices remained high until the end of 2025. Rising livestock prices also drove increased value for sheep.
In the cropping sectors the value of potatoes rose to over £0.4 billion while total cereal crop output fell back for a second year. However, 2025 was a great year for Scottish wheat and increases in volume drove increased total output despite price drops.
Support payments [from the Scottish Government] accounted for 40% of profit from all farming in 2025. Over the last ten years (2016 to 2025) support payments have accounted for around 64% of profit from farming on average.
Source: https://www.gov.scot/news/agricultural-industry-profit-increases-in-2025/
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Cue NFU statement that agriculture ‘faces oblivion’.
In another recent posting a regular contributor highlighted a report published in March by the University of London about the universal provision of free school meals in Scotland.
The purpose of the report was to show that universal provision is feasible, desirable and contributes to the economy.
Since 1968 the concept of universality has been under continuous attack and has largely been abandoned by the Labour Party. Indeed, the hapless Johan Lamont described universalism as ‘the something for nothing society’. Means testing for ‘the deserving poor’ is a hegemonic concept amongst most UK political parties. The report was praising the Scottish Government for embarking on free school meals at the height of ‘austerity’.
The report indicates the wider benefits which have accrued to Scotland, despite the financial restrictions imposed by Westminster which have led to the slow pace of implementation.
The report shows how procurement policies can encourage councils to source a greater proportion of food locally, thus supporting local agriculture and providing employment opportunities. This, in turn, provides more tax revenues which can be invested in extending universal free meals to all students from nursery education through 6 years of secondary education.
Univeralism is still a widely applied concept in the Nordic states. Of course, orway, with its Sovereign Wealth fund has been able to fund transport and other public services in the sparsely populated north of this oddly shaped country. Imagine if Scotland had had a Sovereign Wealth Fund when oil and gas was discovered in the 1960s.
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It will be ‘interesting’ to check if the Scottish Farmer online magazine and/or the NFU Scotland website mentions any of this latest account of the measure of farming profit.
Hot on the heals of the British Labour Party fielding Dame Jackie Baillie on a TV election programme aimed at young voters, has the Party resorted to the even more ‘odd’?
NFU Scotland has just held an election hustings in Stirling for its members. The NFU web site lists one ‘Jack McConnell’ representing Labour. This humbly titled figure in the notice of the event seems not be standing for election and neither is he be a democratically elected member of Labour’s presence in Westminster. By all accounts, this plain Jack McConnell is actually Baron McConnell of Glenscorrodale, current member of the House of Lords. Do Labour have no-one else to put forward their case to the farming community in Scotland?
His Lordship’s locus in matters agricultural is not obvious – see https://members.parliament.uk/member/4168/focus
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