The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) has released the total area of land claimed under the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) in 2021 for England.

Since the RPA started publishing this information back in 2018, there has been a question around which area information to ‘believe’ – the Defra area collected via the June survey, or the BPS area data? It has been argued that the BPS area is more accurate as it has a higher uptake. However, it is worth noting there are limitations and differences between the area collected by both sources. It is understood that following industry consultation, Defra now use the BPS data to inform the June Survey.

It is worth noting that for wheat, the difference between the BPS and AHDB cereal supply and demand estimates is the smallest it has ever been, at 17Kha lower. The largest difference in percentage terms is the difference between the two oat areas. As mentioned in the section above, the size of this season’s oat crop is under question. Is it too high?

If you take the BPS area for England and multiply it by the Defra UK average yield for oats (2021), it would give an English production figure of c.847Kt. Add that to the production figures for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and you would get a total UK oat production figure of 1.073Mt.  The official Defra figure is 1.123Mt, almost 50Kt more. These are rough calculations using the Defra yield, which is derived from the June survey, but it gives an indication of a possible production scenario.

With oats being a smaller crop in comparison with wheat and barley, what looks like small differences in area, can have a much bigger impact.

BPS data can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/farming-statistics-crop-areas-in-england-sourced-from-basic-payment-scheme-data-compared-to-the-june-survey-of-agriculture-2015-2021

UK cereals supply and demand estimates here: https://ahdb.org.uk/cereals-oilseeds/uk-cereals-supply-demand-balance-sheets