Deloitte & Touche's Food &Agriculture Group and the Royal Agricultural Society of England published the study jointly.

Entitled The cost of it all – benchmarks for the future, it is the 10th survey undertaken by the two organisations, examining the activities and attitudes of producers.

'What emerges is a multi-skilled individual,' says Mark Hill, senior partner of the Deloitte & Touche Food & Agriculture group. 'The report found that responding to tighter margins, producers are cutting costs and taking more control of their prices. Many are becoming less shy of securing specialist advice with more than 75 per cent using agronomists, thereby freeing up time for other activities. Overall, producers are fully committed to staff development and involvement in running and planning the business. Hill said: 'This is an encouraging trend, but the worrying aspect is the lack of long-term vision with the vast majority of those surveyed not knowing where their business will be in 2005 – just two years away.' However, living in the countryside does bring lifestyle benefits and many farmers are able to secure revenue as support is increasingly channelled into environmental schemes.

Farmers must recognise the need to score themselves against a series of benchmarks, including the need to develop an overall business plan, focus farm production on meeting market needs utilising all resources to generate revenue and generally being more flexible and imaginative, the report concluded.