ROG WOOD

The recent spell of fine, sunny weather has helped Scottish farmers get up to date with seasonal work like making silage and combining. Biggest problem with this year's harvest is that it is ripening two to three weeks later than usual in many areas. That has left those in the north-east having to anxiously wait and hope that there is more good weather to come.

Down in Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, and Dumfries and Galloway many are harvesting their cereal crops - wheat and barley - before they have fully ripened. The first method is simply to chop up the entire crop when the grain is still soft and store it in clamps like grass silage to be mixed in with the cattle rations. The second, and increasingly more popular technique, is to combine it when the grain has about double the moisture content of dried grain and then crush or "crimp" it before adding propionic acid and ensiling it. That pickled, crimped grain makes a particularly good feed for cattle.

The arable areas in the East and the Borders had a stop/start harvest in the early stages with combines regularly parked up on wet days. Fortunately the cost of drying grain has eased with the drop in oil prices.

On the bright side, while crops were later than usual due to the lack of sunshine this year, yields of grain and straw have been much heavier.

News from south of the border is that there have been record yields and big tonnages of winter wheat and oilseed rape. A record-beating crop of oilseed rape yielded 7.2 tonnes/hectare on a farm near Northallerton, while a Lincolnshire farmer claimed a world record for a crop of wheat of 16.5 tonnes/ha - more than 2 tonnes/ha above his own UK record of last year. Meanwhile, a Chichester farmer has claimed to have combined a British record crop of milling wheat that yielded more than 14.3 tonnes/hectare.

All this talk of bumper yields should be putting a smile on the faces of arable farmers, but high global grain supplies and large domestic carry-over stocks have depressed domestic prices of feed wheat and feed barley to their lowest level since 2010. The situation is exacerbated by the strength of Sterling in relation to the Euro which hampers exports and makes imports more competitive.

Like dairy farmers who have also seen the price of milk depressed by global oversupply and the strength of Sterling on top of reduced demand from China for dairy products coupled with the Russian import ban, cereal producers are also suffering the economics of price volatility. That's unlikely to change and, along with milk producers, they will have to get used to the fact that they won't get any significant, additional help from Europe.

Anyway, in common with all other EU farmers, including those who produce milk, arable farmers will be subsidised by the new Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) which should be paid around the end of the year.

I have a lot of sympathy for the serious plight some dairy farmers find themselves in, but there are others who are still doing reasonably well. While the cost of production is around 25p per litre (ppl), depending on how efficient the business is, some are getting as little as 14ppl for their milk and others close on 30ppl. That difference in price is worth around £150,000 per annum for a typical herd with an annual yield of 1m litres

According to the Scottish Government's published figures the average annual farm business income for the 900 or so Scottish dairy farmers between 2007/8 and 2013/14 was around £75,000. That average figure conceals the fact that while the bottom 25 per cent were struggling to break even at best, the top 25 per cent were making money hand-over-fist. Little wonder so many decided to invest and produce more milk.

While the dairy industry was enjoying that period of prosperity, many of Scotland's 16,000 cattle and sheep farmers would have struggled to break even without subsidies. After all their subsidies were taken into account they made on average about £25,000, or a third of the income of milk producers.

More and more of Scotland's beef and sheep farmers are having to take other employment and become part-time farmers in order to survive, or sell up to their neighbours.

All farmers are going to have to get used to reduced support from the taxpayer in the future.