{"id":738354,"date":"2026-08-15T01:54:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T01:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/738354\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T01:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T01:54:12","slug":"farmers-face-550m-hit-from-worst-harvest-on-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/738354\/","title":{"rendered":"Farmers face \u00a3550m hit from worst harvest on record"},"content":{"rendered":"

British farmers face a \u00a3550m hit this year as heatwaves and drought lead to the worst harvest on record.<\/p>\n

The UK was already forecast to suffer its most dismal year yet for farming<\/a>, but figures published on Friday show it will be even worse than feared.<\/p>\n

Key crops will yield only 18.5 million tonnes this year, down from a previous estimate of 19.5 million, according to Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) data.<\/p>\n

The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), which analysed the AHDB data, said this would increase the financial blow to farmers from \u00a3390m in previous forecasts to \u00a3550m.<\/p>\n

Scorching heatwaves and weeks without rain in parts of the country will make it the least productive harvest since detailed records began in 1984.<\/p>\n

The bleak figures mean farmers will make \u00a33.6bn from cereals and oilseeds \u2013 one third less than the average between 2014 and 2023, after adjusting for inflation.<\/p>\n

Chris Jaccarini, a food economist at ECIU, said: \u201cThe outlook for this year\u2019s harvest has gone from bad to worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith this year\u2019s unprecedented weather impacting all farming sectors \u2013 from meat to vegetables to grains \u2013 it\u2019s clear that food production is on the front line of climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s harvest, which is now 85pc complete, will be around 1.4 million tonnes smaller than the previous low in 2020.<\/p>\n

The ECIU warned that as a result, four of the five worst harvests on record have occurred in this decade, including 2020, 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n

Britain has experienced exceptionally hot and dry weather, with very little rain in April and heatwaves in May, June, July and August putting crops under significant stress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British farmers face a \u00a3550m hit this year as heatwaves and drought lead to the worst harvest on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,27525,1103,5438,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-738354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-farming","tag-heatwave","tag-standard","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738354","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=738354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}