Weather blamed for 'worst harvest for 40 years'

Dan Willis says the impact of the weather on his crop has been "horrific"

Farmers have blamed extreme wet weather followed by prolonged dry spells for a very poor harvest.

Dan Willis, who runs a farm near Newbury, said the weather had been "horrific".

While George Brown, who also farms in West Berkshire, said he thought the conditions could lead to some farmers selling up.

Provisional government figures for the 2025 English barley harvest showed a 14% decrease compared to last year, while spring barley had fallen 23%.

Dan Willis runs the 1,500-acre Rookery Farm near Newbury. He said it had been a terrible harvest.

"Probably the worst I've recorded in my career, over 40 years.

"The weather has played its part horrifically. We had an extremely wet autumn, an extremely wet winter, followed by an extremely dry spring and summer.

"It really did impact the yields. Something in the order of between 50 and 70% in places.

But he believed farmers were very ingenious.

"They will find ways around things. They've got great resolve, that's why we still produce food," he said.

"If we didn't have that resolve farming would be long gone in this country.

"You draw deep that you have friends which are in a similar position that you can talk it through with and you've got your family, and you've got to lean upon them."

Government figures also revealed the majority of the main cereal crops saw lower yields this year compared to last year, with winter barley a notable exception.

Despite there being a nearly 10% increase in land dedicated to growing oats, that crop also showed a decrease in yield this year.

George Brown thinks that some farmers will decide to sell their land

George Brown runs Priors Farm near also Newbury. He said it stayed dry for so long "I guess you can be grateful that you got any sort of crop".

"Coming through June I think we were all very worried that we weren't getting to a harvest at all at that point," he said.

George thinks some farmers are selling up because of the financial pressures they are facing.

"If you look, there's a huge amount of farm auctions, farm dispersal sales going on constantly at the moment," he said.

"There's a lot of land for sale. People don't have the confidence to carry on.

"I absolutely want to keep farming, it gets to the point where if there's no money in it then you've got to take a change of tack," he said.

Dr Paola Tosi, an associate professor in Crop Science at the University of Reading, thinks farmers may have to get used to these conditions.

She said: "They've been extreme in the sense that they're some of the worst we've seen on record, but I'm not sure we should use the term 'unusual'.

"Last season was also not good.

"This could be the new usual. We need to come to terms with and tackle and make sure we prepared to fight it. To control it, to mitigate it.

"At the University of Reading there is research going back to 1990 saying that this was going to happen and that crops were going to suffer," she said.