\nLast updated:<\/p>\n
04 Aug. 2026\n<\/p>\n
Provisional yield estimates produced by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB)\u00a0[2]\u00a0suggest wheat, spring barley and oat yields will all be\u00a0down, with the estimated wheat yield well below the ten-year average at only 6.8 tonnes per hectare.\u00a0With 54% of the wheat crop\u00a0harvested, if\u00a0these average yields hold the UK cereal and oilseeds harvest\u00a0would\u00a0be\u00a019.5million tonnes, surpassing 2020 as the worst harvest on record since detailed records began in 1984.\u00a0This is even after\u00a0good yields forecast for oilseed rape.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even if yields are revised up, 2026 is\u00a0now\u00a0likely to be one of the five worst harvests\u00a0since 1984, which would mean that four out of five of the worst harvests on record had occurred this\u00a0decade after periods of extreme weather made worse by climate change.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tom Lancaster, land, food and farming analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit\u00a0(ECIU) said,\u00a0\u201cAt the start of spring\u00a0farmers were hopeful of a better year,\u00a0but\u00a0the dry April and July and record-breaking heat have\u00a0left farmers facing down the barrel of a third awful harvest in a row.\u00a0Farming is now the sector most exposed to climate change and the risks and damage that it brings.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the wettest winter on record in 2024, to the hottest summer in 2025 and now unprecedented heat and drought this year,\u00a0we are in danger\u00a0of\u00a0UK farming\u00a0entering a\u00a0climate doom loop, as\u00a0repeated\u00a0impacts undermine the capacity of\u00a0farmers\u00a0to drill next\u00a0year\u2019s crop.\u00a0Without reducing emissions to net zero, to bring\u00a0the climate back into balance,\u00a0conditions will\u00a0continue\u00a0to\u00a0deteriorate. It is\u00a0now\u00a0a\u00a0clear priority\u00a0for the future of UK food production, farming and the countryside that\u00a0sustains it.\u00a0Our green and pleasant land\u00a0is\u00a0transforming\u00a0into\u00a0a\u00a0parched\u00a0and increasingly unproductive\u00a0one.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Earlier forecasts by the US Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service in April\u00a0[3]\u00a0and the European cereals association COCERAL in March\u00a0[4]\u00a0suggested that UK yields were on course to be at or above the ten-year average.\u00a0However,\u00a0despite one of the wettest winters on record\u00a0[5], a dry April\u00a0[6] impacted cereal crops at a crucial time,\u00a0whilst\u00a0successive heatwaves in May, June and July hammered\u00a0cereal crops, depriving grains of the moisture they need to fill out and add yield. A\u00a0near total absence of rainfall\u00a0since mid-June\u00a0in some key growing regions\u00a0such as the East of England\u00a0compounded the impact of the extreme heat, with\u00a0southern England seeing the driest month ever recorded [7], in records dating back to 1836.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Martin Lines, CEO of the Nature Friendly Farming Network and a farmer from Cambridgeshire said,\u00a0“Harvest this year has been a real kick in the teeth. After two terrible harvests in a row, the crops this year were looking good and full of potential coming out of spring, only for months of drought and heatwaves to destroy any prospect of a decent harvest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’ve never known it this dry and hot on our farm. Even farmers I know who were sceptical of climate change are now saying they’re really worried about the future of their businesses and production, it’s just been completely brutal for our industry. And with high input costs because of the Iran war, planning crops for next year is a total nightmare. The nature-friendly practices we’ve deployed on the farm have helped our soils hold on to water for longer, but there’s only so much you can do to adapt to these sorts of extremes.”<\/p>\n
If the yields forecast by the USDA and COCERAL had\u00a0come to pass, production based on AHDB crop area estimates would have been\u00a021.4 million tonnes and 22\u00a0million tonnes.\u00a0The post-heatwave yield estimates produced by the AHDB\u00a0suggest overall production\u00a0could be down as much as 2.5million tonnes compared to these earlier forecasts.\u00a0At current prices, this could lead to a loss of revenue for UK farmers between \u00a3293m and \u00a3390m.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
This\u00a0would be in addition to\u00a0earlier ECIU analysis that suggested post-heatwave losses across Europe could cost farmers as much as \u20ac2billion in lost revenue\u00a0[8].\u00a0With other sectors such as horticulture, dairy and potatoes also hit by the current drought and heatwaves, the losses for UK agriculture are likely to be much higher\u00a0still.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A recent study\u00a0by World Weather\u00a0Attribution found that the June heatwave would have been impossible 50 years ago, and that climate change is \u2018unequivocally to blame\u2019\u00a0[9].\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last updated: 04 Aug. 2026 Provisional yield estimates produced by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB)\u00a0[2]\u00a0suggest wheat,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[394,395,234,396,5,6],"class_list":["post-97546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-climate","tag-debate","tag-energy","tag-net-zero","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117040396606471763","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}