England suffers worst harvest on record: comment

"For many farmers, this summer has been the worst in living memory. Unprecedented early summer heat, the driest July on record and a dry April combined to desiccate cereal crops, driving down yields and with them farm incomes.  

“Confirmation of 2026 as England’s worst cereal harvest on record means that four of the five worst harvests have now occurred since 2020 following extreme weather [2]. Climate change is now undermining the very fundamentals of our food security, a fact that should create more urgency to reduce emissions to net zero and bring our climate back into balance.

"Farmers will also need more support in the short term to adapt to the inevitable impacts baked in to projected warming, making green farming schemes such as England’s Sustainable Farming Incentive [3] vital to the resilience of English food production."

Commenting on the Defra data, Martin Lines, CEO of the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN) and an arable farmer from Cambridgeshire, said:  

"This should be a major wake-up call to politicians and the food supply chain. Climate change demands that we fundamentally rethink how we farm in this country, and urgent action to protect our food supply and national security is now essential. 

"Sticking to conventional farming systems in the face of rapidly changing weather conditions is leading to plummeting yields. The solution is to rapidly reduce our reliance on pesticides, fertilisers and other fossil fuel-based inputs and instead build farming systems based on healthy soil, clean water, abundant nature and thriving biodiversity. Soil rich in organic matter that can hold and store water all year round is essential if farms are to withstand the summers of heatwaves and droughts, and the mild, wet winters we know are coming. 

"What politicians and those working across the supply chain really need to understand is that, as bad as this harvest data is, this is only the beginning. Without dramatic action to curb fossil fuel use, growing conditions will only become harder and more hostile. If we don't control and then rapidly reduce carbon emissions, runaway climate change will make agriculture almost impossible, with disastrous consequences for our country." 

ECIU has produced a ranking of harvests in England [4] since 1984, when detailed records begin. 2026 is now England’s worst harvest on record for wheat, spring and winter barley, oats and oilseed rape in volume terms, just marginally worse than the previous low of 2020. Although yields for the main wheat crop were marginally better than expected at 7.2 tonnes per hectare, they were still well below the 10-year average of 7.9 tonnes per hectare. Yields for winter barley, spring barley and oats (predominantly spring sown) were below previous yield estimates. 

Good yields for oilseed rape were not enough to offset yield losses for these cereal crops associated with the extreme heat and drought experienced from May onwards, following a dry April that also limited crop development. World Weather Attribution found that the June heatwave would have been ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change [5].

The UK harvest is also projected to be the worst on record [6] according to yield estimates from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), although official confirmation of this will not come until December when Defra publish UK-wide production estimates.  

The lower than average UK crop area, largely due to the low barley area also played a role in driving down production. However, earlier forecasts [ in March and April suggested that UK cereals were on course for yields at or above the 10-year average, which would have delivered a much better harvest in volume terms even taking into account the lower than average barley area.