Scotland recorded a massive drop in its cereal harvest in 2016, newly published government figures reveal.

The total cereal harvest is estimated to have fallen 11 per cent on 2015 levels. Scottish farms produced 2.8 million tonnes of cereals this year, including 1.6 million tonnes of barley and 900,000 tonnes of wheat. This led Scottish production as a whole to dip five per cent below the ten-year average.

Scotland’s Chief Statistician, which final estimates of the 2016 Scottish cereal and oilseed rape harvest, said the figures confirm the general messages from provisional results published in August. Lower cereal yields are behind the fall in production, and the area sown to cereals was 3% down on the year, coming in at 428,000 ha. The statistician said there have been no major weather issues affecting cereal crops, just a combination of “less than ideal” factors which took a toll on the seed bed, growing conditions and harvest.

Overall yields averaged around 6.4 tonnes per hectare; ranging from 5.4 tonnes per hectare for spring barley to 8.4 for wheat.

Spring barley, Scotland’s most important cereal crop, is expected to fall 15 per cent to 1.30 million tonnes, its lowest point since 1997. Winter barley recorded a 19 percent fall to 329,000 tonnes, and wheat suffered a nine per cent drop to 926,000 tonnes. Only oats saw positive results, with the crop topping 200,000 tonnes for the first time since the 1970s.

Scottish producers recorded the lowest production of oilseed rape since records began in 1992, with yields averaging 3.3 tonnes per hectare and 102,000 tonnes recorded in all.

The full statistical publication is available here