UK harvest hits near record lows following Government food security warnings

New data confirms that the UK is set for its third worst arable harvest since 1984, the day after the Government warned that climate change presents a ‘pressing’ risk to food security

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By Tom Lancaster

info@eciu.net

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New data released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affair’s (Defra) this morning [1] confirmed the poor state of the UK’s harvest this year, with the third lowest total production for wheat, barley, oats and oilseed rape since modern records began in 1984.
 
The poor harvest follows record breaking rain last winter – made worse by climate change [2] – that disrupted farmers cropping plans, preventing them from establishing and managing winter crops such as wheat and winter barley. The data comes the day after Defra published their 2024 UK Food Security Report [3], which warned that climate change poses a ‘pressing risk’ to UK food security by driving ‘volatility in the present’ and putting the ‘resilience of food production at risk over the longer term’.
 
Commenting on the data, Tom Lancaster, land, food and farming analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) said:

“These new figures confirm the Government’s warnings about food security. The record breaking rainfall and storms that we saw last winter had a devastating impact on farming across the whole of the UK, and come as part of a growing list of the climate impacts on our food system that we have seen in recent years.
 
“To avoid the sort of impacts that we have seen on this year’s harvest, we will need to ensure farmers are better supported to adapt and build resilience, including through more and better targeted green farming support. It also highlights the importance of moving to net zero emissions for our future food security. That we are seeing these impacts at just 1.2 degrees of warming should act as a wake up call for us all.”
 
The data for the UK follows similar data released for England in October, which confirmed 2024 as England’s second worst harvest on record [4] after 2020. The UK as a whole has experienced its third worst harvest after farmers in Scotland were able to produce more spring barley to offset the loss of winter crops there.
 
Although 2024 was the third worst harvest overall for these five crops in the UK, it was the second worst for wheat and the worst for oilseed rape [5].

Notes to editors: 
 

  1. Data available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/cereal-and-oilseed-rape-production
  2. Autumn and winter storm rainfall in the UK and Ireland was made about 20% heavier by human-caused climate change, https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/autumn-and-winter-storms-over-uk-and-ireland-are-becoming-wetter-due-to-climate-change/
  3. 2024 UK Food Security Report, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2024
  4. Confirmed: England has second worst harvest on record with fears mounting for 2025, https://eciu.net/media/press-releases/2024/confirmed-england-has-second-worst-harvest-on-record-with-fears-mounting-for-2025
  5.  UK harvest production totals for wheat winter and spring barley combined totals oats and oilseed rape ranked from lowest to highest by year in thousands of tonnes


For more information or for interview requests: 

George Smeeton, Head of Communications, ECIU, Tel: +44 (0)7894 571 153, email: george.smeeton@eciu.net