Latest farm income figures released by Defra show a surprising increase.
The figures are for Farm Business Income (FBI). This effectively shows the profit for an average full-time farm in each of the main sectors of English farming. The data is for the 2020/21 year (March to Feb) which covers the 2020 harvest, 2020 BPS payments and the first months of the Covid outbreak.
The aggregate farm business profitability figures (Total Income from Farming – TIFF) released in May showed a 15% fall in returns. Although this was for the calendar year 2020 and the whole of the UK, it might be thought that the FBI figures would show a similar trend. However, looking at the table below it can be seen that all sectors, apart from General Cropping and Poultry showed higher profits. And, overall, FBI rose by 5%

The latest figures show significant (upwards) revisions from the first estimates of FBI published in April 2021 (figures in italics). It seems there was a general under-estimation of output in the first set of data.
This means that the TIFF figure for 2020 could well also be revised upwards. An update of this is expected shortly, along with the first estimate for farm profits for the 2021 year. Overall, the emerging data suggests that the 2020 harvest year was not as bad, financially, as many feared.
Farm Business Income represents the financial return to all unpaid labour (farmers and spouses, non-principal partners and their spouses and family workers) and on all their capital invested in the farm business, including land and buildings.