“We’ve had the wettest October, November and December since we started keeping records 27 years ago,” said Andrew Ward, an arable farmer from Lincolnshire.
He scrolls through videos on his phone of nearby fields devastated by this winter’s heavy rain, including one in which he stands in front of what looks like a lake.
“That’s my godson’s farm,” he says, pointing to the two-meter-deep water that has completely flooded the land. ‘It’s been underwater since October […] The farm was drilled and fertilized [before the rain]so he may have lost £70,000 at once.
Fortunately for Ward, his 650-hectare farm, which produces wheat, sugar beets, barley and beans, has not been so soggy, but the heavy rains have taken their toll.
“We have managed to get about 25% of the winter crops planted […] Our yields this harvest will be terrible,” he adds.
Talk to farmers across the country and you’ll hear similar stories about how one of the wettest winters in decades has devastated thousands of hectares of crops and put farms under enormous financial pressure.
Few regions have been spared.
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 rainfall. Of the remaining areas, 47 were rated as particularly high, and 76 – more than half – were considered exceptionally high.
The area around Kent, known as ‘the garden of England’ and home to many arable farmers, experienced its wettest 12-month period since records began.
Regions near major rivers such as the Wear, Don, Calder, Derwent, Mersey and Irwell reported the wettest six-month period since records began.
Although January provided some respite, the British Center for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) said the saturation of the previous months of heavy rain meant the soil had not had a chance to dry out, and February’s rain meant the problems persisted.
For the 1,500 delegates at the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) conference this week, flooding was top of the agenda in the conference rooms and coffee breaks.
In her welcome speech, Minette Batters, the outgoing NFU president, highlighted the extreme weather and said some winter crops were not planted, while others had been washed away.
That was the experience of Henry Moreton, a grain farmer and vice-chairman of the NFU in Lincolnshire County. About 150 hectares of his land has been underwater since early autumn, with some areas under five meters of water.
“This is the worst year we’ve ever had for flooding,” he said.
Its crops of rapeseed, winter wheat and barley have been decimated, with losses estimated in six figures.
Dale Robinson, head of supply chain and technical at organic vegetable box company Riverford, described the season as “difficult”, with a shortage of cauliflowers and an impact on other brassicas such as Brussels sprouts and turnips.
The forecasts for this year’s harvest look bleak. The Agricultural and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) predicts wheat production will fall by a quarter.
David Eudall, director of economics and analysis at the AHDB, said: “In 2019/20, when we had a very similar wet period for planting in autumn and winter, we saw a 24% reduction in the area planted.
“Given that we are in a similar area and have a similar weather pattern, we expect we will see a similar scale.”
This means that production drops from about 14 million tons of wheat to about 10 million tons.
The drier spring season usually offered the opportunity to sow new crops. But increased demand for spring seed from farmers who missed planting during winter rains has led to shortages and higher costs.
“Seed availability is a huge problem,” says Ward. “Traders try to get seed from abroad, which costs an awful lot of money.”
Continued flooding will mean that some will not even have the opportunity to plant these seeds.
This had led to calls from the rural community for more spending on flood protection and more support for those affected.
Farmers were especially critical because the government expects them to store water on their land – and let it flood – to prevent surrounding towns and villages from being flooded, without compensation if their land is in a floodplain is.
Rishi Sunak, who became the first Prime Minister to attend the NFU conference since 2008, was asked about the issue by Batters. She called for a review of the flood protection subsidy scheme to recognize the public interest farmers were doing by storing water.
Sunak said the floods were “devastating” and that he was always open to suggestions on how the government could improve things. However, he defended the steps his government had taken to support farmers.
“We do have support. The flood recovery framework, which provides payments of up to £25,000 for land particularly affected, is in place and working,” he said.
Sunak added that as chancellor he has almost doubled spending on water protection to £5.2 billion, with around 45% of that going to rural areas.
But for those who store water in floodplains, the chance of any compensation still seems unlikely. Alan Lovell, chairman of the Environment Agency, said at a lecture: “We cannot use public flood money on areas that are already natural flood zones.”
These reactions have led to frustration among farmers and many feel abandoned.
Anger over the flood response, along with unpopular post-Brexit trade deals and a failed agricultural transition from EU farm payments, appears to have driven some farmers away from the Conservative Party at the ballot box.
Deltapoll polls released at the conference showed that support for the Conservative Party in the 100 largest agricultural constituencies had fallen from 58% in 2019 to an expected 32% this year. Labor topped the vote with 36%. It is a seismic shift in what has traditionally been a section of the electorate that overwhelmingly supports the Tories.
With the climate crisis likely to bring even more extreme weather events, finding a solution to protect agricultural land and finances will become increasingly important for governments of any party seeking to win or retain the vote of farmers.
Without more aid, unlike the water on hundreds of farms across the country, votes from rural areas could quickly dry up.