Gains in the horticulture and dairy sectors may have helped push up official farm income figures, but farmers are still suffering financially, the NFU warned last week.

The union's comments follow the release of the government's estimate on UK Total Income From Farming (TIFF) for 2001 of £1.8 billion, marking a £0.23bn increase on last year's figure.

NFU president Ben Gill suggested government figures were misleading. He said that Defra had revised its original TIFF estimate for 2000 'downwards', from £1.88bn to £1.57bn, so the situation over the last few years has been worse than official figures revealed.

'The industry had hit rock bottom, so the only way has been up,' he said.

'Given that foot and mouth and the poor harvest severely damaged farmers' earnings, these figures show that only the cost cutting and efficiency gains farmers have made have enabled them to hold their ground.' The government's 2001 TIFF forecast is significantly lower than the £5bn estimated in 1996, and is equivalent to £8,267 per farmer to cover salary and reinvestment.

Separate figures released by Defra last week showed that 7,800 farmers and farm workers lost their jobs in the year to June 2001, bringing total redundancies to 64,000 in England since 1997.

'We must hope that this tide of job losses will now be stemmed,' said Gill. 'The income figures may show a rise, but on the ground farmers have had the stuffing knocked out of them because of foot and mouth and arable farmers have made dire losses because of the poor harvest.

'Farmers are still working far longer than the average working week and taking home far less than even the minimum wage.'

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