INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND
In November 2006, the Scottish Government launched a public consultation on farm income measures 1, which was co-ordinated across the UK. This consultation was concluded in September 2007, with the publication of the Scottish Government response 2. A key commitment from this consultation was to develop the Farm Business Income ( FBI) measure, which would provide more relevant and more accurate estimates of incomes at the farm business level, replacing NFI as the headline measure.
This publication contains results and analysis of FBI, generated from 442 farms which participated in the 2007/08 Farm Accounts Survey. It provides a detailed explanation of differences between FBI and NFI.
FBI results are also shown for 2006/07, although these need to be treated with some caution as information on diversification was collected on a different basis for that year.
In future, FBI will replace NFI as the headline farm business income measure. Summary results for 2008/09 will be published alongside 2009 Total Income From Farming ( TIFF) estimates in January 2010. A more detailed analysis of 2008/09 FBI results will follow in the Spring 2010 'Farm Incomes in Scotland' publication.
Although NFI results will be given a lower prominence in the future, they will still be produced to preserve longer term trends and to meet another commitment from the public consultation.