Dealing with dodgy statistics!

SIR, – In the recently reported negotiation between a crofter and the Royal Dornoch Golf Club concerning them buying up his grazing rights, both parties employed valuers. 
The crofter’s valuer put up a figure of £1,974, 962.50 and the valuer for the golf club replied with a value of £32,965. Without speculating about the merits of either, it should be noted by anybody who has attended an auction of pedigree livestock that when you get up into the realms of thousands of guineas, the auctioneer is highly unlikely to be asking for bids higher by a mere £100 let alone 50p. 
It is presumed that figures going down into single digits imply some rigorous scientific method that gives these figures more merit. 
Similarly, the met office and media outlets, such as the BBC, have the hubris to make detailed weather forecasts up to five days ahead, yet these forecasts often change the next day, let alone four days hence. 
We are told that the global surface temperatures are at their highest for more than 125,000 years, yet this is based on the temperatures at a relatively small number and altitude of locations.
Pollsters often take particular constituencies as typical of the whole country and they are often embarrassed. Without knowing how most of the atmosphere all the way up and most of the oceans all the way down are changing, predictions about future temperatures should be treated with caution.
Why should this matter when we are mostly aware of it and take due account? Over the next few years, with the changes that Brexit is going to set in motion, agriculture and all it means and does is going to be scrutinised and valued and those putting up figures as facts may not have any love or sympathy for farmers and farming. 
That's due to more than 60 years of cheap, abundant food and you can take it for granted they see farmers as a privileged ‘feather bedded’ group unworthy of ‘their’ tax money. 
The other fact that most of them are also subsidised, one way or another, is not considered. Those negotiating on our behalf must hold those proffering dodgy statistics to account and make them put these figures in real context.