Agricultural Business Confidence Survey

This document has been commissioned by the Isle of Wight Economic Partnership to help us develop the application for the new Leader bid for the Isle of Wight.

The survey found that:
• At the time of the survey more businesses were confident about the economic health of their business than concerned;
• Businesses are more concerned now than five years ago and ten years ago;
• The majority of respondents were not able to say if they thought their business would be better, neutral or worse in five years and ten years time;
• The majority of respondents believe that there are barriers to accessing vocational training;
• Only 39% of businesses with woodland actively manage it, of those with woodland 10% derive an income from timber products and 33% from amenity use or funding;
• Nearly 60% of respondents consider that there are barriers preventing them from secondary processing agricultural or woodland products;
• Collaboration within livestock businesses is much less common than in comparison to arable, dairy and field vegetable businesses;
• More than half of all businesses have diversified into non agricultural (non tourism) activities and over one third have diversified into tourism, both more than the national average;
• Livestock and dairy businesses are less likely to diversify into non-agricultural enterprises (non-tourism). Dairy businesses are more likely to diversify into tourism based enterprises;

You can download the rest of the report here "Agricultural Business Confidence Study"