My farm will lose £300,000 in first-ever year without harvest - it's a wake-up call

Farmers fear a funding package to help with ‘catastrophic’ wet weather ‘simply doesn’t work’

EXCLUSIVE: Concerned farmers pile pressure on the Government after being hit by the worst wet weather crisis in a generation.

Farmers fear there are “real problems” with a new funding package to help them deal with the impact of “catastrophic” wet weather.

England has seen record-breaking rain this year, with 1,695.9mm falling from October 2022 to March 2024, the highest total for any 18-month period since the Met Office began collecting comparable data in 1836.

The relentless deluge has left fields completely submerged, rendering them futile for planting crops and unviable for raising livestock.

Writing for the Daily Express today, National Farmers’ Union (NFU) Vice President Rachel Hallos said: “There will be farmers who, for the first time ever, simply won’t have a harvest this year because they can’t get their crops planted.

“It’s no exaggeration to say many farms are nearing crisis point.”

Joe Stanley who runs a mixed farm in Leicestershire stands in a gully created by the constant rain

On Tuesday, April 9 the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced farmers would be eligible to claim grants of between £500 and £25,000 under the Farming Recovery Fund for uninsurable losses from flooding.

But only those within 150m of main rivers were eligible for the funds under the original scheme, sparking a swift backlash and leading to Defra removing the requirement in a U-turn on Friday.

Now farmers are issuing an urgent plea for more help after overall food production was drastically reduced in a concerning development that will mean the UK is more reliant on imports.

Scientists have cited climate change as a key reason Britain is likely to experience more intense periods of rain.

Joe Stanley, who has been farming in Leicestershire for 15 years, said the impact of climate breakdown was clear.

The sustainable farming advocate told the Daily Express: “This climate impact for me as a farmer is not new.

“For me, the climate genuinely dropped off a cliff around 2018.

“And up to 2018, the climate had remained relatively benign, relatively predictable, as it has been for generations.

“But since 2018, every season almost every month now is giving us these weather extremes.

“Whether it is extreme drought or extreme rainfall, they are the two main things we are facing.”

COMMENT: Our farmers face an unprecedented flooding crisis, says Rachel Hallos

Joe Stanley, who has been farming in Leicestershire for 15 years

Leicestershire farmer Joe Stanley, 39, is facing his first-ever year without harvest and stands to lose roughly £300,000 in a devastating outcome for his business.

From October 2023 to March 2024, an entire year’s worth of rain fell on Joe’s farm after intense storms, Babet and Henk.

He intends to plant a small area of spring oats later this month, but other than that, he will be forced to convert most of his farm into a “summer fallow”, which is cropland purposely kept out of production during a regular growing season.

He said: “For some, this weather is catastrophic.

“We would be looking to get maybe £300,000 in income from crops in a year and, goodness knows what we will end up with.

“Last year was almost similarly disastrous, not as bad but getting towards being as bad as where we are now.

“Goodness knows when it will stop raining.

“The majority of our farm is just going to be a non-cash crop this year, which is the first time that will have ever happened.

“So a year without a harvest has more or less been realised, unfortunately.”

Joe, a British Army veteran who graduated from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, later returning to the family farm in 2009, warned the implications of the wet weather crisis for the UK’s food supply were “enormous”.

He said: “It is not just crops like wheat and barley. Root vegetables can be badly impacted, too.

“And even the livestock sector because grass is not growing.

“Fields are too wet to put livestock out and those livestock farmers have already used up all of their winter fodder, and because of the poor weather conditions, they are not out there making silage for this winter, there is not going to be the straw available from arable crops because no one is planting arable crops for the bedding for those cattle this winter.

“So this is going to have significant knock-on effects.”

Climate change is “becoming an increasingly insuperable problem” for British farmers and consumers, Joe warned.

He said: “I’ve been doing conversations like this for years. We as a society need to address what climate change means for our food supply.

“Because we saw last spring, largely due to a mixture of energy costs and climate change, we had empty shelves.

“Lots of salads and vegetables were not available. And this is not normal.

“This is not what British people in the developed world have come to expect – but it is going to become the norm increasingly.”

Joe stands in a crop field devastated by the constant rain over the last six months

Mr Stanley’s concerns were echoed by Chris Williamson, who runs a 300-acre farm in North Shropshire where he lives with his young family and St Bernard Dave.

He said: “The weather has altered significantly in the last two or three years and that is the worrying thing.

“When they started talking about climate change for the first time I would think that is not going to affect me too much because I will have finished farming by then.

“But it is noticeable how much the weather patterns have altered. And it is the extremes.

“It is not as bad as floods in Bangladesh. But it is noticeable and it does have a knock-on effect on your business.

“It is quite possible it could return to normal next year but it is the unpredictability of it.

“You cannot guarantee the seasons any more.”

Chris Williamson, who runs a 300-acre farm in North Shropshire where he lives with his young family

Mike Wilkins is a fourth-generation farmer based in North Wiltshire, where he lives with his soon-to-be husband, Matt, and their whippet, Todd.

He works on the family’s 2,000-acre farm which is primarily arable and sits 650ft-700ft above sea level.

They also run a range of rare breed livestock British White cattle, Oxford Sandy & Black pigs and Wiltshire Horn sheep, plus non-native Boer goats.

Although his farm is high above sea level Mr Wilkins explained his land’s soil type was a very heavy clay loam, which means it retains water more easily, and the constant rain has meant there has never been an opportunity for any of it to dry.

Mr Wilkins has already tried and failed to plant winter wheat three times and is now set to be “tens of thousands of pounds” out of pocket as a result.

He said: “It has been the worst winter we have ever had since my dad started farming here 35 years ago. It has been horrific.

“We always have an issue with the soil here being very water-retentive.

“But this year the weight of the rain falling on the soil has crushed the life out of it.

“There is going to be a delayed harvest.

“The soil is in such a bad condition where the weight of the rain falling on it creates the worst compaction.

“Getting any life back into it is going to be very hard.”

The weather has altered significantly in the last two or three years

NFU Vice President Rachel Hallos said: “The Farming Recovery Fund was never going to be a silver bullet, nor is it going to allay longer-term concerns over the nation’s food security, but delivered in the right way it could be a lifeline for many farmers and growers who desperately need help right now.

“The crisis goes beyond the here and now though. Government must recognise the need for long-term plans for food production and help farmers adapt to climate change, via investment in capturing and storing more water on farms and improving farm buildings to shelter livestock more effectively.”

Farming minister Mark Spencer said: “We want to make sure the Farming Recovery Fund offers the support farmers need to recover from uninsurable damage.

“It’s why we’ve immediately listened and responded to feedback on the launch of the initial phase of this scheme, fully removing the 150m limit.

“This means that farmers will be able to receive payments for all land parcels which are flooded contiguous to an eligible river.

“We’ll continue to listen to farmers and look at how we can expand the scheme and improve support for those affected.”