by “We’ve had the wettest October, November and December since we started keeping records 27 years ago,” says Andrew Ward, an arable farmer based in Lincolnshire.
He flicks through videos on his phone of nearby fields that were destroyed by the heavy rains this winter, including one that shows him in front of what looks like a lake.
“That’s my god’s farm,” he says, pointing to the two-metre-deep water that has completely swallowed the land. “It’s been under water since October […] The farm was drilled and fertilized [before the rain]so he might have lost £70,000 in one trip.”
Fortunately for Ward, his 650-hectare (1,600-acre) farm, which produces wheat, sugar beet, barley and beans, is not half-flooded, but the high rainfall has taken its toll.
“We managed to plant about 25% of winter crops […] Our fruits this harvest will be terrible,” he says.
Talk to farmers across the country and you’ll hear similar stories of how one of the wettest winters in years wiped out thousands of acres of crops and put farms under enormous financial pressure.
There are very few regions left.
In the 12 months to January, only four of England’s 139 hydrological areas (regions around rivers, lakes and other water sources) were classified as having normal levels of rainfall. Of the other areas, 47 were considered to have very high levels, while 76 – more than half – were considered to be extremely high.
The Kent area, known as the “garden of England” and home to many arable farmers, had the wettest 12 months since records began.
Regions near major rivers such as the Wear, Don, Calder, Derwent, Mersey and Irwell reported the wettest six-month period on record.
Although January provided some relief, the UK Center for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) said the saturation from the previous months of heavy rain meant soil had no chance to dry, and February’s high rainfall caused problems still there
For the 1,500 delegates at the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) conference this week, flooding was top of the agenda in the conference halls and coffee breaks.
In her welcome speech, outgoing NFU president Minette Batters described the extreme weather, saying some winter crops had not been planted, and others had been put away.
That was the experience of Henry Moreton, grain farmer and Lincolnshire county vice-chairman for the NFU. About 150 acres of his land has been under water since the beginning of autumn, with some areas under as much as five meters (15 feet) of water.
“This is the worst year we’ve ever had in terms of flooding,” he says.
His oilseed, winter wheat and barley crops have been damaged, with losses estimated in the six figures.
Dale Robinson, head of supply chain and technical at organic vegetable box company Riverford, described the season as a “freak”, with a shortage of cauliflower, and an impact on other brassicas such as sprouts and turnips.
Forecasts for this year’s harvest look bleak. The Agricultural Development and Horticultural Board (AHDB) is predicting that wheat output will fall by a quarter.
David Eudall, AHDB director of economics and analysis, says: “In 2019-2020 when we had a very similar wet period during the autumn and winter for planting, we saw a 24% reduction in the area planted.
“If we are in a similar area and have a similar weather pattern we would expect to see the same scale.”
That means production will drop from around 14m tonnes of wheat to around 10m tonnes.
A drier spring season would normally allow new crops to be planted. But increased demand for spring seed from farmers who missed out on planting in the winter due to rain has led to shortages and higher costs.
“Seed availability is a huge problem,” says Ward. “Merchants are trying to get seeds from abroad, which costs an awful lot of money.”
Due to persistent flood waters some will not even have a chance to plant these seeds.
This resulted in calls from the rural community for more spending on flood protection, and more support for those affected.
It was crucial for farmers that the government expects them to store water on their land – allowing it to flood – to stop the surrounding towns and villages from being flooded, without paying compensation for this if their a piece of land on a flood plain.
Rishi Sunak, who was the first prime minister to visit the NFU conference since 2008, weighed in on this issue at Batters. She called for a review of the flood protection grant scheme, to recognize the public good that farmers were doing by storing water.
Sunak said flooding was “terrible” and he was always open to suggestions on how the government could improve matters. However, he defended steps taken by his government to support farmers.
“We have support in place. The flood recovery framework, which has payments of up to £25,000 for severely affected land, is there and it’s working,” he said.
Sunak added that as chancellor he almost doubled spending on flood defenses to £5.2bn, with around 45% of this going to rural areas.
But for those who are storing water on floodplains, they are unlikely to receive any compensation. Alan Lovell, chairman of the Environment Agency, said in a speech: “We cannot use public flood money for areas that are already natural floodplains.”
These responses caused frustration among farmers and many felt abandoned.
Anger over the response to floods, as well as unsettled post-Brexit trade deals and a bungled agricultural transfer from EU farming payments, appears to have driven some farmers away from the Conservative party at the ballot box.
A Deltapoll poll released during the conference showed support for the Conservative party in the 100 largest farming constituencies had fallen from 58% in 2019 to a projected 32% this year. Labor reached 36% of the vote. It is a seismic shift for a section of the electorate that traditionally strongly supports the Tories.
With the climate crisis likely to lead to even more extreme weather events, finding a solution to protect agricultural land and finances will become increasingly important for governments of any party hoping to get or keep the farming vote.
Without more help, unlike the water sitting on hundreds of farms across the country, votes from rural areas could quickly dry up.
