Results from the Scottish Agricultural Census: June 2024

Final results from the 2024 June Agricultural Census on land use, crop areas, livestock and the number of people working on agricultural holdings.

Module results on slurry storage and agricultural machinery are also included within this publication.


Decrease in winter planting but increase in spring barley

Winter planted crops are generally sown in autumn and grown during the winter. Spring planted crops are generally sown during the first three months of the year.

The area used to grow winter crops (wheat, winter barley and winter oats) decreased by 6.4% compared with the five year average. This was due to decreases in the area used to grow wheat (-6.2%), winter barley (-5.6%) and winter oats (-12%).

Spring planted crops (spring barley and spring oats) increased by 2.4% compared with the five year average due to a 3.5% increase in the area used to grow spring barley. The area of spring oats decreased by 10% when compared with the five year average but was up 12% on 2023.

Figure 2: Area of winter and spring planting of cereals, 2024 and five year average (2019-2023)

Chart with four bars, two bars comparing the spring planting of barley and oats over a five year average period between 2019 and 2023 (270,500 hectares) and 2024 (277,000 hectares). The other two bars compare the winter planting of wheat, barley and oats over a five year average period between 2019 to 2023 (159,200 hectares) and 2024 (149,000 hectares).

Contact

Email:  agric.stats@gov.scot

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