3. Commentary
3.1 Agricultural Area ( Table 1)
Chart 1: Agricultural land use, 2011
The total area on agricultural holdings in 2011 was 5.63 million hectares. The large majority of this area was either rough grazing (55%) or grass (24%), with 10% used for crops or left fallow. A further 8% was taken up by woodland and the 2% 'other land' comprised of roads, yards, buildings, scree, ponds and other such land.
Chart 2: Agricultural land use trends, 2001 to 2011
Over the past 10 years the total area on agricultural holdings has varied between 5.51 and 5.65 million hectares. This variation is more likely to reflect changes to the coverage of agricultural holdings and their areas as recorded on the June Census register, rather than genuine changes in total agricultural land.
From 2009, administrative data on land use has been utilised for holdings which claim Single Farm Payments and other schemes through the Single Application Form ( SAF). This development has improved the overall coverage of land use statistics within the June Agricultural Census, as well as significantly reducing the need for statistical data collection. It did however introduce a step change into the land use series between 2008 and 2009, mostly affecting rough grazing and grassland, where a certain amount of substitution occurred between these two categories, with rough grazing decreasing by 216,061 hectares and grass land increasing by 142,252 hectares. Most other land use series do not appear to have been adversely affected by the switch to SAF data and results before and after 2009 can be reliably compared.
In 2011, there has been a decrease of 73,619 hectares (2.3%) in rough grazing. This decrease may be in part offset by a notable increase in 'other land' up 37,735 (37.2%) in 2011. This is the second consecutive large annual increase in 'other land' and may be partially due to more precise recording of usable areas within individual fields reported on the Single Farm Payments system.
In addition, the increase of woodland on agricultural land, up 26,296 hectares (6.6%) to 426,101 hectares in 2011, may also be contributing to the decrease in rough grazing. It is important to note that the area of woodland reported on agricultural holdings has increased by 223,247 hectares (110%) over the past 10 years. At least some of this increase is likely to be due to increased coverage of this type of land by the June Census register, rather than genuine increases in woodland areas.