The average farm business income rose by 12pc to £96,100 last year - despite high costs for many key East Anglian sectors, according to government figures.

Defra says the overall average for all farm types masked some significant sector variations during a year of "exceptional price volatility" from March 2022 to the end of February 2023.

On cereal farms, average income rose by 25pc to £150,400 with a combination of "increased yields and firm prices more than offsetting rises across most input costs", says the report.

And there was a long-awaited change of fortunes on pig farms, where average incomes leapt by 477pc to £67,900 after several months of financial hardship.

The report says this reflected improved prices paid for finished and store animals, as well as crop and diversification revenues offsetting substantial cost rises, particularly for animal feed - whose value peaked in 2022 after the war in Ukraine drove up grain prices.

There was a similar picture on dairy farms, where average income increased by 63pc to £229,300, with higher milk prices more than offsetting rises to input costs.

But average incomes on specialist poultry farms fell by 23pc to £105,900, with variable costs rising 11pc, mainly driven by poultry feed which "typically accounts for the major proportion of variable costs on poultry farms".

Average incomes also fell for lowland grazing livestock farms, where increased machinery, contracting and feed costs helped drive a 37pc decline to £21,600, while general cropping farms saw a 14pc fall to £125,200, driven by lower agricultural outputs and reductions in Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) subsidies.

The effect of the ongoing withdrawal of BPS - which is being phased out after Brexit to be replaced with a new system of environmental incentives - was also highlighted in the report.

In 2022/23, the average payment across all farms types was about £22,700 - 19pc lower than the previous year, and accounting for around a quarter of farm business income.

Defra says the "farm business income" figure is the agricultural equivalent of the standard financial accounting measure of net profit.