England has second worst harvest on record: comment

“This harvest is even worse than expected, and marks a second successive poor harvest, following on from one of the worst harvests on record last year after incredibly heavy rainfall, made worse by climate change [3]. We have now seen three of the five worst harvests on record this decade after extreme weather, telling a story of escalating climate impacts that farmers are unable to cope with.
 
“This is what farming with climate change looks like, as extreme weather wrecks harvests, hits farm incomes and reduces our food security [4]. It should now be an urgent priority for government and business to support farmers to adapt to these extremes and build their resilience by investing in healthier soils and more climate and nature-friendly farming. But the only real guarantee against these impacts getting even worse is to reach net zero and bring our climate back into balance. By doing this, we will also reduce the costs of key foods that the UK depends upon [5].”
 
The harvest data from Defra suggests a much worse harvest that estimates so far had predicted, [6] after their provisional data identified much lower yields than previous estimates [7] published by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB). Defra data suggests per hectare yields of 7.0 tonnes for wheat, 6.5 tonnes for winter barley, 5.0 tonnes for spring barley, 4.6 tonnes for oats and 3.5 tonnes for oilseed rape. The final AHDB estimates were 7.6 tonnes, 6.7 tonnes, 5.8 tonnes, 5.2 tonnes and 3.7 tonnes per hectare respectively.