Economic Report on Scottish Agriculture 2011 Edition

Number of Unpaid Persons involved in Farm Business

FBI is designed to reflect the return to all unpaid labour (farmer and spouses, partners and directors and their spouses and family workers). It is therefore useful to consider the number of unpaid persons involved in the business as these persons can be considered to be, to at least some degree, dependant on the income of the farm business.

The Farm Account Survey records detailed labour information on the farmer, spouse, other partners, directors and managers and spouses. Each person with an unpaid involvement in the running of the farm is recorded along with their full-time equivalent ( FTE) work units ⁴. In addition, the number of work units for other unpaid regular family labour is also estimated. However, it should be noted that the figures do not include unpaid casual family labour so will underestimate the total number of unpaid workers. Table B2 shows the estimated average number of unpaid workers (headcount and full-time equivalent), by farm type.

Table B2: Average number of unpaid persons working on farm, by farm type

In 2009/10, for all farm types, the average number of unpaid workers measured by headcount was 1.93 and by full-time equivalent was 1.45. Average FTE ranged from 1.19 for Specialist Cereal farms to 1.98 for Dairy farms. Within these average figures, total FTE of unpaid persons working on individual farms ranged from less than 1 FTE to around 5 FTE.

Chart B2 shows a comparison of FBI to FBI per unpaid worker ( FTE). The largest differences between the two measures are for farm types with the highest amount of unpaid workers, with FBI for Dairy farms almost halving to reflect the 1.98 FTE of unpaid workers, bringing it more in line with other farm types. It can be seen that the variation in FBI by farm type is smaller when the number of unpaid workers is taken into account.

Chart B2: FBI compared to FBI per unpaid worker ( FTE), 2009/10