THERE are no fortunes to be made in Scotland from growing arable crops. That trend is set to continue for several years, with cereal prices likely to remain around current levels.

However, if farmers use the correct technology, control costs and take the best advice, a profit can be made, according to Dr Keith Dawson, principal crops consultant with the Scottish Agricultural College.

Speaking yesterday in Edinburgh at the launch of a new independent consultancy service - SAC Agronomy Select - Dawson said: "Grain prices will remain low for the next three or four years, but there are businesses that cope with that.

Farmers have to look at all the opportunities. Bio-fuels is clearly one, while consideration will have to be given as to whether it is worth cropping lower-yielding fields.

"We live in a rapidly changing industry. There are 3.2 million farmers in the European Union, 160 million consumers, but just 110 buying desks."

There are, according to Dawson, three factors farmers must consider - risk, return and rotation. As far as risk is concerned the objective must be to maximise profit rather than yields.

However, only 2-per cent of farmers actually know what their true costs are.

Where support is no longer related to output, farmers must treat fuel and drying charges as variable costs and not hide them in the fixed cost side of the business. Rotations are likely to change and some growers may take land out of production to build up fertility using practices such as green manuring.

There are two packages available from SAC. The first involves agronomy planning, which comes at a cost of pounds-250 plus VAT. Bulletins, visits to local trial sites - SAC has 16,000 plots on two sites in Scotland - and forward planning meetings are all part of this deal.

The same fee will secure a rather more detailed agronomy field management package, plus an additional charge for crop walking.

Both of these initiatives are designed to take SAC, which claims to offer the best research and development resource and independent advice to farmers anywhere in the UK, to a new level of support for farmers.

Professor Bill McKelvey, principal and chief executive of SAC, said:

"There will be significant changes following CAP reform. A lot of units will get bigger and become more specialist and require a higher level of technical expertise. This latest initiative is part of a series of specialist consultancy services we have developed for sectors of the industry, including dairy, beef and sheep."

As ever on such occasions there was emphasis on how the best 25-per cent of farmers are achieving results, but spending no more than those who are less successful.

It was a topic that John Kinnaird, president of NFU Scotland, chose to address. He said: "We must not isolate the best 25-per cent from the rest of the industry. There are lot of other farmers striving to get there, and they need all the help and advice they can get."