Scottish farm business income: annual estimates 2023-2024
Farm business level estimates of average incomes for 2023-2024. An Accredited Official Statistics publication for Scotland.
First published: 3 April 2025.
Last updated: 26 March 2026.
Correction
Latest corrections
Corrections were published on 26 March 2026.
Final estimates for 2023-24 are corrected in the latest publication: Scottish farm business income estimates: 2024-25. Users should refer to the latest release.
Error impacting final 2022-23 estimates
Errors in Supporting Documents were identified where 2022-23 data were presented in current prices and not inflated “real prices”. Figures in the main report and elsewhere are not impacted. This error occurred due to a coding mistake in our new analytical pipeline. The issue is corrected. Users should refer to the latest release, supporting documents with errors have been removed from the 2023-24 release. Details of errors are available at Supporting Documents. If specific tables are required, these are available on request to agric.stats@gov.scot
Error impacting initial 2023-24 estimates
An error occurred due to changes in methodology related to Basis Period Reform (BPR) and impacts 2023-24 estimates for general cropping and average farm or “all farms” results. During this change, potato outputs were mistakenly missed in closing valuations of some general cropping farms.
The reported downward trend of farm business income from 2022-23 to 2023-24 remains the same for both the average farm and average general cropping farm. However, the correct percentage decrease in income from 2022-23 to 2023-24 is 40% for the average farm and 9% for general cropping farms. These are smaller decreases than those originally reported (51% and 53% respectively).
Users should refer to the latest release for corrected final 2023-24 estimates.
More information about this error is available in the Methodology.
Supporting documents of the 2023-24 publication have been adjusted as follows. The infographic has been removed. Balance sheet workbook with final corrected 2023-24 data is reissued. Incorrect data are removed from impacted workbooks. A correction notice and a note to indicate where incorrect data are removed are available in relevant workbooks. A list of impacted estimates and workbooks is available at Supporting Documents.
Corrected figures for some tables in the “income distributions and timeseries 2023-24” workbook are available on request to agric.stats@gov.scot.
Previous corrections
A correction was published on 28 April 2025: a correction was made to the cash income figures in supplementary documents: ‘cost centre tables 2023-24 (current prices)’ and ‘cost centre tables 2023-24 (real prices)’. This corrects a data processing error and the impact is small. More details are outlined in these two documents.
Key points
- Farm incomes experienced a sharp decline in 2023-24, after record highs in 2022-23. This downturn is attributed to three main factors. First, some agricultural output prices saw a large drop. This reversed the exceptionally high levels in the previous year. This was compounded by declines in output levels, with adverse weather conditions playing a role in diminishing production. Finally, while some input costs showed a modest decrease, costs did not fall at the same pace as output prices, putting additional pressure on profit margins.
- Average farm business income, a measure of farm profit after costs, fell for all farm types in 2023-24. Income is estimated at £35,500 in 2023-24, a fall of 51%, its lowest level since 2019-20, after adjusting for inflation.
- Cereal farm income fell by 63% to £38,900 on average. Average income for general cropping farms fell by 54% to £83,300. Falls in outputs by both farm types were driven by cereal market prices dropping to pre-2022 levels, and reduced yields. Both farm types are sensitive to market prices.
- Average dairy farm income is estimated at £116,300, a drop of 56%. Dairy income is volatile and is closely linked to milk prices. Milk prices dropped in 2023-24 from exceptionally high prices seen in 2022-23. Dairy incomes remain above the ten- year average.
- Lowland cattle and sheep farm income fell by 87% to £2,600. This is the largest drop in income across livestock farm types, largely driven by falls in livestock output. The average income of Less Favoured Area (LFA) livestock farms decreased by 32% to £17,400.
- There is a mixed picture for input costs in 2023-24 with input costs decreasing for some farm types and increasing for others. Increases in costs for fertiliser were often offset by decreases in feed and fodder, land and property costs. Across most farm types, regular labour costs fell. In some cases, this was offset by increases in casual labour costs. Average costs for both regular and casual labour have increased over the last decade.
- Average incomes of dairy, arable and mixed farms remain the highest across all farm types. However, a larger proportion of farms within these farm types were unprofitable compared to the previous year. In 2023-24, 31% of cereal and dairy farms were loss-making, up from 2% and 4% respectively in the previous year. The proportion of unprofitable lowland cattle and sheep farms increased from 20% to 68%.
- Fewer farms made any profit without including support payments in 2023-24. For LFA sheep farms, no farms in the survey made a profit without support payments, down from 8% of farms in the previous year.
Our infographic provides an overview of farm incomes in 2023-24.
All data tables are available to download under supporting documents.