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Raising the competitiveness of Scotland's agri-food industry (2011)
The European Commission considers productivity to be the most reliable long term indicator of competitiveness, and the Scottish Government's aim of growing the output of the Scottish agri-food industry to £12 billion by 2017 is intrinsically based on a growth in productivity.
This research measured the productivity and efficiency of Scottish agriculture and found that productivity growth has been reducing over the twenty years since 1989, with the rate of slow down increasing over time. This reduction predominantly reflects a large fall in output growth.
At the farm level, a more mixed picture emerges, with a downward trend in the rate of efficiency of the specialist sheep sector, for example. The study highlights a number of drivers of productivity which are particularly relevant for Scotland and discusses a number of areas which need to be explored further by both researchers and industry.
The full report from this research and a summary Research Briefing are available below.
- The Competitiveness of Scotland's Agri-Food Industry (PDF: 637 kB)
- The Competitiveness of Scotland's Agri-Food Industry Research Briefing (PDF: 211 kB)