“The nation’s harvest is in trouble – again,” said The Independent, and it’s not just farmers who should be concerned.
The 2025 harvest was the second worst on record, after 2020, with 2024 in third place, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
How bad is it?
During the summer, Jeremy Clarkson, who runs the Diddly Squat farm in Oxfordshire, warned in the summer that this year’s harvest was on track to be “catastrophic”, said The Telegraph. He wasn’t far off.
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The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board estimated yields of 7.6 tonnes per hectare for wheat, 6.7 tonnes for winter barley, 5.8 tonnes for spring barley, 5.2 tonnes for oats and 3.7 tonnes for oilseed rape, said the Press Association. However, actual yields were lower: 7.0 tonnes for wheat, 6.5 tonnes for winter barley, 5.0 tonnes for spring barley, 4.6 tonnes for oats and 3.5 tonnes for oilseed rape.
Potato farmers in particular have been bit by “one of the driest potato growing seasons in living memory”, said Farmers Weekly. When temperatures hit the “high 20s and low 30s”, potato plants begin to “shut down”, although there was an upside for some farmers because the dry conditions “meant fewer disease and pest issues”.
Why is this happening?
Months of “scorching heat followed by sudden deluges” mean that Britain’s farmers are “watching once-reliable crops wither, shrivel or rot in the ground”, said The Independent. The “pattern of the year” has been that “crops have come early, caused by the unusually dry and sunny weather beginning in March and April” – the “hottest spring in a century”.
All of this tells a “story of escalating climate impacts that farmers are unable to cope with”, said Tom Lancaster, an analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. This is what “farming with climate change looks like, as extreme weather wrecks harvests, hits farm incomes and reduces our food security”.
An “increasingly unpredictable climate and extreme weather” are “making it much harder to produce food”, Jamie Burrows from the National Farmers’ Union told the Press Association. While last year’s harvest was marked by heavy rain and flooding, this year it was drought: these twin extremes show that “growing crops in the UK is increasingly challenging”.
How are we feeling the effects?
The “climate crisis” is “hitting farmers hard” and “ultimately impacting UK supermarket shelves and the food we put on our tables”, Philip Evans from Greenpeace UK, told The Independent. Poor harvests make our domestic food chain less secure and could in turn lead to a rise in prices for consumers.
Recent agricultural challenges are a reminder that “the food on our plates begins in fields at the mercy of a changing climate”. That change is “not distant, not theoretical – but happening now, in every loaf of bread, every pint of cider and every punnet of strawberries that ripened too soon”.
