This year has seen the hottest spring and summer on record in the UK, and the driest spring in England for over 100 years. This has had a significant impact on the development of key arable crops across the UK, with the dry spring in particular hitting yields. 

This analysis uses published per hectare yield figures for England and combines them with crop area estimates for the UK produced by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) to estimate the total crop production for wheat, spring and winter barley, oats and oilseed rape. It then uses current ex-farm prices to calculate how much farmers would generate in revenue this year if the whole crop was sold at those prices. 

We differentiate between milling and feed prices for wheat and oats and malting and feed prices for barley based on Defra figures on end use for each of these crops. Using these harvest estimates and prices, we estimate that farmers are set to lose approximately £828m in revenue when selling at current ex-farm prices, compared to if production volumes had been at the 10-year average (between 2015-2024), as reported by Total Income from Farming (TIFF) data. This is 20% less. 

This year’s anticipated poor harvest comes following one of the worst harvest on record in 2024, following extreme autumn and winter rainfall in 2023/24. Lost production in 2024 was partly offset by high prices, which remained elevated following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine driving up commodity prices in 2022-24. This effect has now subsided, and with prices around the 10-year average for most crops, lost production this year is likely to translate much more acutely into lost income for Britain’s farmers.