IT has become one of the most dramatic illustrations yet of the threat climate change poses to Scottish farmers.
Startling new figures have revealed how Scotland “lost” nearly 450,000 sheep in last year’s extreme weather.
The national flock was dramatically thinned by 2018’s Beast from the East Cold snap and the following scorching hot summer.
It has fallen so low – to under 6.6 million in 2018 from around 7 million a year earlier – that industry analysts predict continuing higher red meat prices over this year.
The Herald can reveal that as many as 25,000 sheep corpses were removed from Scottish farms last March alone.
Huge numbers of animals are understood to have suffocated in horrific snowfall, which amounted to half a metre over swathes of northern and eastern Scotland.
Farmers, new reports suggest, then struggled to “finish” their lambs over the hot baking summer.
The shock figures on the overall sheep numbers and “fallen stock” – carcases removed from farms – come after an independent report for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Scotland found farmers had lost £161 million in 2018. That amounted to six per cent of total farm output.
Sheila George, food policy manager at WWF Scotland, announcing her own report last week, said: “Farmers are increasingly on the front-line of climate change, struggling with ever more unpredictable seasons and extreme weather.
“This report gives a snapshot of the huge financial toll, but behind these stats there is also a personal cost for farmers across the country.
“Last year’s extremes will soon be the norm rather than the exception and that will have huge implications for farmers and the environment.”
However, analysts warn that is not just farmers who are paying for the climate crisis: consumers are too. And scientists say Scots should expect more of what would once had been seen as freak weather. The UK Government’s Committee for Climate Change has warned that the likelihood of a hot summer such as 2018’s will rise to 50% every year by 2050.
Global warming is understood to be bringing increasingly extreme weather, hot and cold to Scotland.
The Scottish Government helped out farmers who lost sheep and other animals in the Beast from the East. They provided £250,000 to a scheme administered by the not-for-profit the National Fallen Stock Company or NFSCo.
The company paid put £370,000 to farmers in March, up £105,000 from the same month a year before, for sheep. It also provided over £365,000 for sheep, up £90,000.
The annual death toll was even more dramatic on a UK level, says NFSCo. It recorded more than 250,000 fallen lambs and another 150,000 adult sheep in 2018, a high for recent years. Sheep numbers had been recovering in recent years with Scotland’s national herd expected to topm in 2018 before the bad weather hit.
Large-scale losses make it harder for farmers and crofters to build their flocks, with fewer lambs, gimmers and adult ewes meaning they have a smaller base to grow from.
The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) – a body funded by farmers – last month said it expected the national flock to be at its smallest for a decade by the summer, peak season for meat production.
Beef farmers face similar problems. Poor grazing because of high summer temperatures forced farmers to buy more feed – which in turn went up in price because of the weather.
Poor forage growing conditions during the year led to many producers culling marginal cows in the hope of conserving forage for more productive animals,” said AHDB analyst Hannah Clarke told trade magazine The Grocer last month that “marginal cows” had been slaughtered because of feedstock prices. But she added: “Higher on-farm mortality of breeding stock will likely have affected the amount of replacements available.”
The weather in 2018, experts have concluded, will translate in to higher prices for beef, pork and mutton.
The WWF report, by analysts Ecosulis, suggested that going vegetarian would not help protect consumers from price rises.
There are still no firm figures for Scotland’s output of fruit and vegetables last year. But prices suggest they were down dramatically.
Farm-gate wholesale prices, said the WWF report, were up 80% for carrots, 41% for onions and 61% for lettuce between March and July of last year.
The WWF report stressed there was more pain to come from 2018. Its authors said: “Due to the timescales involved in some agricultural sectors, the impact of the losses is still being felt.”
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