An analysis of wealth and viability of the Scottish agricultural sector

It is pertinent to discuss the viability of Scottish farming to understand how resilient farmers may be to future shocks due to market prices and changes in policy. As we move to leave the European Union Common Agricultural Policy, there are oppourtunities to explore newer arrangements and protocols for promoting sustainability within the rural economy.Viability embodies this concept by using a threshold to determine whether farming incomes operate above or below the level of a minimum hourly wage and thus infer farmer well-being to determine business planning. However, farming offers a range of non-pecuniary benefits when attempting to compare with other sectors of the economy. Moreover, the ownership of land and the accumulation of this land over successive generations provides an accumulation of capital which may influence farmer well-being and approaches to risk taking. In addition, for tenanted farmers the acquisition and management of livestock and investment into machinery assets may also provide source of liquid assets which are not easily compared with other sectors of society.With this in mind this report presents a number of approaches to study and compare the viability of the industry. We include proxies for the underlying wealth of the industry in determining its viability status. We analyse a sample of Scottish farms over the period 1989/90 to 2015/16 who provide detailed information into the Farm Business Survey.Firstly we present a discussion of the issues around incomes and wealth and map general trends by owner-occupier and tenanted farmer status. Land and buildings provides a significant tranche to total assets at farm level and this does determine differences across the different ownership categories but nevertheless do fluctuate as farming weathers the bad years and accommodates the better years within the farm management account.Secondly we apply a threshold, in this case a minimum wage rate per hour, to impute the viability of the farm in the short term (inferred by cash income) and the long term (inferred by net farm incomes. The converse of asking how poor farmers are is to ask how rich farmers are and we provide a further indicator, referred to as ‘wealth-adjusted’ viability, which tries to accommodate these factors. Hence, a series of states can be identified for each farm and for each year, ranging from viable to non-viable. These are mapped across farm types finding remarkably similar trends and issues other arable and livestock sectors.Thirdly we ask how do transient is non-viability for the farm, through looking at the persistence of a farm being in one state, e.g. long-term non-viable, over a number of years. We find high probabilities for farms remaining in a particular viability state over the period which infers some level of persistence of non-viability status. To explore this further we examine the key drivers such as policy change, farmer factors such as age, education and farmer attitudes towards farming, biophysical disadvantages and other effects. We find a number of these factors significant in determining viability status and more (entrenched) characteristics, such as owner-occupation, land quality and remoteness, are significant it is notable that others such as education and, even farmer attitude, are also significant in determining the state of viability of the farm economic outcomes.Finally, we examine inequality through simple indicators of the spread of income across the sector as whole and by ownership category, finding that inequality in incomes has increased and that tenanted farmers experience more inequality than owner occupiers, potentially indicating inability to accommodate market shocks compared to owners of land. We also examine by size, finding that inequality has grown the FBStest in larger farms, as they grow and potentially intensify their operations. Smaller farms show more fragility towards market pressures and, in the period 1999-2007 tended to move to more equality in incomes as incomes generally dipped for the farming population

Identifying best practice in Less Favoured Area mixed livestock systems

CONTEXTThe ruminant livestock sector is under scrutiny for its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. Less Favoured Areas (LFA) carry a large proportion of Europe's cattle and sheep ruminant population and is also characterised by variable economic and biophysical constraints.OBJECTIVEThis study aims to assess the heterogeneity in carbon emissions, resource usage and financial performance in a sample of mixed LFA livestock farms in Scotland.METHODSIndividual farm account data for 263 LFA cattle and sheep producers were augmented with emissions data over the period 2019–2020. Environmental impacts were estimated for each farm using emissions intensity and carbon productivity. Technical efficiency at the farm level (the rate of output to total inputs) was estimated using non-parametric data envelopment analysis. Financial resilience was measured through returns on assets to meet short-term liquidities. To manage the heterogeneity in these indicators Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) was employed. This allocates farms into separate groups, or profiles, representing different levels of environmental, resource efficiency and financial dimensions. To gain understanding of the drivers on membership of profiles we assess the impact of intensity and enterprise mix using multinomial logistic regression (MLN).RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONSThree profiles were identified within our sample which reflect different levels of performance; i) a best practice profile (23% of farms) have relatively low mean emissions intensities (22.3 kg CO2-eq./kg CW), high carbon productivity (£0.17 GVP/ kg CO2-eq.), high technical efficiencies and strong financial resilience; ii) a low resilience profile (31% of farms) which are the most economically fragile and susceptible to economic shocks, and iii) a high emissions profile (46% of farms) which have the lowest technical efficiencies and also the highest mean emissions intensities (31.9 kg CO2-eq./kg CW) and lowest carbon productivity (£0.10 GVP/ / kg CO2-eq.). The MLN identified that farms within the best practice profile will be more extensive compared to the other profiles.SIGNIFICANCELess Favoured Areas dominate global agricultural systems and they offer a more heterogenous picture compared to more intensive lowland or feedlot cattle systems. Agricultural support payments are changing to reward public goods. Our approach sets realistic thresholds for higher level performance across multiple dimensions that may merit higher payments if an outcomes-based payment scheme were adopted

A search for the decay modes B+/- to h+/- tau l

We present a search for the lepton flavor violating decay modes B+/- to h+/- tau l (h= K,pi; l= e,mu) using the BaBar data sample, which corresponds to 472 million BBbar pairs. The search uses events where one B meson is fully reconstructed in one of several hadronic final states. Using the momenta of the reconstructed B, h, and l candidates, we are able to fully determine the tau four-momentum. The resulting tau candidate mass is our main discriminant against combinatorial background. We see no evidence for B+/- to h+/- tau l decays and set a 90% confidence level upper limit on each branching fraction at the level of a few times 10^-5.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Evidence for an excess of B -> D(*) Tau Nu decays

Based on the full BaBar data sample, we report improved measurements of the ratios R(D(*)) = B(B -> D(*) Tau Nu)/B(B -> D(*) l Nu), where l is either e or mu. These ratios are sensitive to new physics contributions in the form of a charged Higgs boson. We measure R(D) = 0.440 +- 0.058 +- 0.042 and R(D*) = 0.332 +- 0.024 +- 0.018, which exceed the Standard Model expectations by 2.0 sigma and 2.7 sigma, respectively. Taken together, our results disagree with these expectations at the 3.4 sigma level. This excess cannot be explained by a charged Higgs boson in the type II two-Higgs-doublet model. We also report the observation of the decay B -> D Tau Nu, with a significance of 6.8 sigma.Comment: Expanded section on systematics, text corrections, improved the format of Figure 2 and included the effect of the change of the Tau polarization due to the charged Higg

Study of the reaction e^{+}e^{-} -->J/psi\pi^{+}\pi^{-} via initial-state radiation at BaBar

We study the process $e^+e^-\to J/\psi\pi^{+}\pi^{-}$ with initial-state-radiation events produced at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy collider. The data were recorded with the BaBar detector at center-of-mass energies 10.58 and 10.54 GeV, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 454 $\mathrm{fb^{-1}}$. We investigate the $J/\psi \pi^{+}\pi^{-}$ mass distribution in the region from 3.5 to 5.5 $\mathrm{GeV/c^{2}}$. Below 3.7 $\mathrm{GeV/c^{2}}$ the $\psi(2S)$ signal dominates, and above 4 $\mathrm{GeV/c^{2}}$ there is a significant peak due to the Y(4260). A fit to the data in the range 3.74 -- 5.50 $\mathrm{GeV/c^{2}}$ yields a mass value $4244 \pm 5$ (stat) $\pm 4$ (syst)$\mathrm{MeV/c^{2}}$ and a width value $114 ^{+16}_{-15}$ (stat)$\pm 7$(syst)$\mathrm{MeV}$ for this state. We do not confirm the report from the Belle collaboration of a broad structure at 4.01 $\mathrm{GeV/c^{2}}$. In addition, we investigate the $\pi^{+}\pi^{-}$ system which results from Y(4260) decay

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente