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Farmers in the UK are hoping for dry weather as they continue to struggle with widespread flooding. BBC figures show that fruit and vegetable yields have fallen by around 5% across the country, with carrots down more than 7% over the past year. This has led to a rise in imports and prices, which have increased by an average of about 40% since 2020. Many growers are concerned that the country will not be able to produce enough food if current conditions persist.
Market gardener Phil Collins said that it had been difficult. “We had three inches of flood water last Monday and that really messed things up. It’s the first time in my entire life that we haven’t had enough spuds out – we’ve normally got quite a lot of spuds in the farm shop but we didn’t have any to sell.” Collins, who has been working in the sector for 50 years, said that he regularly checks the forecast in order to plan around the weather. However, contractors are currently waiting for his next big crop, but he said it is “too wet” to harvest the vegetables right now. “We work with the weather, we work with what conditions we’ve got.”
Seven counties in southern England – Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Gloucestershire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire – all experienced more than three times their average September rainfall, the Met Office has stated. The area had its wettest September since 1918 and the third wettest in records dating back to 1836.
Chair of the British Carrot Growers’ Association, Roger Hobson, explained that farmers were feeling “devastated”. “Here on my farm we lost about 12% of our crop, which is about 3,000 tonnes. This is typical of the carrot growers in the country. We just pray that it doesn’t happen again.” Hobson added that flood water always runs to the lowest part of the field, which makes the “vegetables rot.”
Climate change is leading to more frequent and intense weather events. For every 1C rise in average temperature, the atmosphere can hold about 7% more moisture. This can produce more droplets, resulting in heavier rainfall, sometimes in a shorter amount of time and over a smaller area.
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