‘We’re in the lap of the gods’: UK farmers face extreme weather

Receive free UK farming updates

we will send you a myFT Daily Recap email rounding up the latest UK agriculture news every morning.

Six months ago, after Britain’s driest February in 30 years, Andrew Blenkiron feared a lack of rain would threaten crops on the farm he runs in Suffolk, eastern England. He now he has the opposite problem.

Some 2,000 acres of wheat and barley on the 7,000-acre Euston Estate have been compromised by wet weather, with the Met Office, the national weather service, finding that this July was the sixth wettest on record for the UK.

“The day we took the combine out, it started to rain,” Blenkiron said.

So far this year has been a period of extremes: February was the second driest month of the year since 1993, while June was the hottest since records began in 1853. Throughout July and the first week of August Unusually heavy rains followed.

Weather patterns have always dictated the success of a harvest. But this year, as wheat remains sodden in the store or untouched in the fields, farmers say it is becoming more difficult to mitigate the risks that an increasingly volatile climate poses to UK food security.

As of August 8, just 5 percent of the grain grown in Britain had been harvested, well below the five-year average of 36 percent at that stage of the season, according to the Agriculture and Development Development Board. Horticulture, an advisory body for farmers.

High early summer temperatures meant the beans were ready for harvest earlier than usual, but by the time they reached maturity, persistent downpours made the fields too wet for harvest.

Simon Griffiths, a researcher at the John Innes Center’s Institute of Plant Sciences, said that if the grain is kept moist, “it will start to soften and start the germination process.” The process triggers the breakdown of the starch in the grain into sugars, making it less viable for use in bread making.

If the quality of the grain falls below a certain level, farmers are forced to sell it as animal feed, and at a much lower price. AHDB data puts the cost of a tonne of bread wheat in the first week of August at £248.50, compared to £187.60 for a tonne of wheat sold as animal feed.

“If we don’t have the quality, the values ​​we have as farmers are greatly reduced; it all ends up in animal feed,” said Tom Bradshaw, vice president of the National Farmers Union, which farms in North Essex.

“Right now we are in the lap of the gods. . . The weather used to be 50 percent of what we do on farms. Now it is 80 percent,” he added. “When you look at all the extreme weather we’ve had, that’s climate change in action.”

To prevent spoilage, some farmers brought out their combines as soon as the rain stopped, taking sodden crops indoors to dry in hopes of preserving their quality. If harvested at a moisture level above 15 percent, the wheat must go through a grain dryer to restore it to sufficient quality to be made into flour.

However, using heaters to dry grain is very expensive because they are mostly gas or diesel powered, so other farmers have waited for more sunlight. Blenkiron opted to bring in his grain, incurring a cost of £15 per tonne to remove 3 percent moisture in a process that added 10 percent to overall production costs.

Bread made in the UK contains about 80 percent homegrown flour, according to industry body UK Flour Millers. The rest comes mainly from Germany, Canada and France, which together accounted for 69 percent of imports last season.

But harvests abroad have also been compromised this year, as the German Farmers’ Association reported that wet weather had forced members to delay their grain harvest.

AHDB analyst Helen Plant said that while it was too early in the harvest to say how much domestic wheat volume had been affected, the concern was whether there would be sufficient mill quality.

“If you don’t meet the specifications, the buyer will penalize you. . . or they may not accept it at all. Then there is the cost of additional transportation to reroute it to another home, such as a feed wheat market,” he said.

Griffiths said farmers could mitigate the risk of soggy crops by choosing a wheat breed whose grain was less likely to germinate before being harvested, although no farmer would have contemplated this during last year’s record-breaking heat wave.

The NFU this week called on the government to boost homegrown food production, citing “recent episodes of extreme weather”. He warned ministers not to allow the country’s food production to supply ratio to fall below current levels of 60 percent.

Agriculture Minister Mark Spencer said the government recognized “how crucial food security is” and was taking steps to increase production.

“We are committed to maintaining food production at current levels and will continue to support our farmers and food producers as part of our plans to grow the economy,” he added.

Blenkiron is a firm believer that farms need to tackle climate change and has earmarked 10 per cent of the farm’s arable land for solar panels to help reduce emissions. But as a result, the farm produces less food.

“We need some mechanisms where we are encouraged to farm, and our cost of production is kept low,” he said. “If we lower our production then [the UK has] bring plenty of food. That’s the dilemma I face all the time.”