High feed costs and pressure from weather has caused lower yields and higher feed bills for many farmers, the Office for National Statistics has revealed.

However, pig and poultry farms have been the exception to a rule of smaller margins and lower profits that has seen average farm business income fall for the 2012/13 financial year.

Dairy farms and ‘mixed’ farms both saw income drop heavily, down 40 per cent and nearly 50 per cent respectively.

On average, milk producer income was £51,000 and mixed farms came in at £38,000. This was down to lower crop yields, higher feed bills and a shortage of forage from the growing season.

This is according to Department of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs analysts who said poultry farm income had more than doubled largely due to greater output.

The report stated: “For specialist poultry farms average incomes more than doubled due to a substantial increase in output via higher output from the broiler and other poultry enterprises.

"Although egg prices increased, average output from eggs was unchanged due to a fall in production. Input costs also increased on these farms but to a lesser extent than output.”

Defra analysts have cautioned that the samples of specialist pig and poultry enterprises are relatively small meaning a big business can heavily impact results.

The report went on, “Higher output from the pig enterprise is due to the increase in costs being slightly less, particularly as feed costs did not increase to the extent expected, the net effect being that average Farm Business Income increased by 8 per cent in 2012/13 for this farm type.”