Farmers across Scotland had to fork out an additional 6% for the cost of renting agricultural land last year, according to statistics released by Holyrood.
The Scottish Government report, Tenanted Agricultural Land in Scotland 2014, which was published yesterday revealed an average rent of £15.37 per acre compared with £14.56 per acre the year before.
Scotland’s chief statistician said the increase was driven by increased rental values for poorer-quality Less Favoured Area land.
Rents for this type of land were up 10% in the year to £10.11 per acre, from £9.30 per acre prior to 2014.
The average rent for other land rose by 1% from £49.77 per acre to £50.58 per acre.
Commenting on the statistics, Angus McCall from the Scottish Tenant Farmers’ Association said: “Rents are going up in line with inflation so that’s quite positive.
“However, I’m surprised that rents are going up at all because the prognosis for agriculture is not very clever in the short term.
“Our Single Farm Payments are going to be down on average by 30% and commodity prices are down too.”
According to the report, an estimated 23% of all agricultural land 3.28 million acres in Scotland was rented on a full tenancy or croft throughout 2014. The area of land let out on a seasonal basis was down by 3.5% to 1.9m acres.
The number of holdings with rented land increased from 16,444 to 16,760. Within this, the number of 1991 Act tenancies fell slightly to 4,993 (from 5,086 previously).
Short-limited duration tenancies were buoyed 28.7%, rising from 648 to 834, while the number of limited-duration tenancies increased by 35.7% to 528 (389 in 2013).
The report said there was no clear link between profitability and whether a farm was entirely owned or entirely rented.
Rents were highest in Fife and the Lothians, with three quarters of farmers paying more than £24.28 per acre, and lowest in the Shetlands and Western Isles, where nearly all rents fell below £2.63 an acre.
n Farm minister Richard Lochhead has pledged to ensure landowners cannot claim subsidy payments if they are not actively farming.
Speaking ahead of a seasonal lets meeting yesterday he said: “Would-be slipper farmers have no place in the new Cap.
“If anyone thinks that land owners with no track record of farming can take land back in hand and get payments then they are mistaken.
“And they are severely mistaken if they think payments will be made on entitlements where there is no farming activity.”
“Everyone claiming basic payments will need to provide verifiable evidence of appropriate farming activity that will be carefully scrutinised by my officials.”