Scottish Agricultural Census: June 2019

Soft fruit growing areas remain steady

Steady growth in strawberries since 2012 has halted. As the most popular grown fruit, the area remained steady over the past year at 1,100 hectares. This slow down in growth is most likely due to market uncertainty.

The total area used to grow soft fruit in Scotland remained steady over the past year. In June 2019 there was around 2,000 hectares of soft fruit.

• Area of Soft fruit 2,000 hectares

Scotland has a reputation for growing high quality potatoes, particularly seed potatoes. Scottish seed potatoes are sold all over the world and a register of seed potato producers is kept by Scottish Agricultural Science Agency (SASA)

Both seed (planting) and ware (eating) potatoes increased in area. The area of seed and ware potatoes both increased by approximately four per cent. Seed potatoes increased from 12,100 in 2018 to 12,500 in 2019 and ware potatoes increased from 15,300 to 15,900 in the same period.