“We might as well not bother growing things and leave the farms empty.”<\/p>\n
That is the bleak position facing arable farmer Olly Harrison following three heatwaves already this year.<\/p>\n
Some of his colleagues fear increasingly extreme weather, including prolonged dry spells and flooding, is forcing them to seriously question whether their industry is sustainable.<\/p>\n
After a dry spring, the north-west of England continues to have extremely low rainfall.<\/p>\n
Harrison, from Tarbock, near Prescot on Merseyside, told the BBC the recent hot weather had reduced his crop yield.<\/p>\n
“We have up to a half less to sell and we have to process it in the yard to make it sellable, like wetting them up and increasing the quality,” he explained.<\/p>\n
These additional processes all cost time and money – reducing profit margins.<\/p>\n
Harrison continued: “Last year it was really dry, 2024 was ridiculously wet, there’s no clear pattern other than extremes.<\/p>\n
“I said I couldn’t afford another year like this, so I have a lot of diversifications of the farm.”<\/p>\n
He now has 14 different income streams including dog walking fields, offices and recycling tree waste.<\/p>\n
His YouTube channel revenue Olly Blogs Agricontract has also helped him to afford farming equipment.<\/p>\n
Harrison said: “Unless you’re a large farm with no borrowing and have cash reserves, there’s no future for a farm without diversification, especially in the North West, we just don’t have the climate.”<\/p>\n
To make matters worse, in the latest heatwave Harrison’s fields have also been targeted by arsonists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“We might as well not bother growing things and leave the farms empty.” That is the bleak position…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-710154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}