High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: September 2011
Livestock Trends
The chart below presents livestock trends as indices. This shows the relative change of each livestock category from the baseline year of 2001 and can be used to compare trends across livestock with quite different population totals. It is important to note that this chart starts a year after a widespread outbreak of foot and mouth and therefore does not present the large decreases in numbers of cattle and sheep between 2000 and 2001.
Between 2001 and 2005, there was a slight increase in cattle numbers (2.8%), as the population recovered from the foot and mouth outbreak, and a corresponding rate of decrease in sheep (2.8%).
In 2005 the Single Farm Payment (SFP) scheme was introduced, which decoupled subsidy payments from most sheep and cattle production, with the exception of the Scottish Beef Calf Scheme. With the introduction of SFP the decline in sheep numbers accelerated, with a decrease of 14.3% between 2005 and 2010, although there has been a small increase (0.7%) in 2011 due to increased lamb numbers. Cattle numbers have also been in decline down by 7.9% between 2005 and 2011, albeit increasing slightly in 2010 by 0.7%.
Between 2001 and 2009, pig numbers declined dramatically by 33.6% with numbers levelling since. Since 2001, the trend in poultry numbers has fluctuated with a decrease of 9.5% up to 2011, although there is some variability in the annual poultry data, which can be affected by operational factors.
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