Jim Cunningham – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Cunningham on 2015-10-27.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment she has made of the productivity of UK farmland; and if she will make a statement.
George Eustice
Defra produces a number of statistics on UK agricultural productivity and these are published on the GOV.UK website.
The land productivity index (calculated as total agricultural output divided by the amount of land in agricultural production) shows:
|
2009 |
2010 |
2011 |
2012 |
2013 |
2014 |
|
|
Productivity by land |
98.1 |
100.0 |
103.8 |
99.2 |
100.7 |
107.7 |
Index base year = 2010
Care needs to be taken in interpreting this measure, as agricultural output is determined by a number of inputs, both within farmers’ control (eg. labour) and outside their control (eg. weather).
