NFU Warns of UK Food Shortages as Earliest Harvest Confirmed
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- NFU president Tom Bradshaw warned Britain could face food shortages due to drought, telling BBC Radio 4 he has asked the prime minister to grant farmers tax breaks for water storage systems.
- England had just 8% of its average July rainfall — likely to be confirmed as the driest July on record by the Met Office — while around 23 million people across England and Wales are under hosepipe bans.
- The AHDB's first 2026 harvest report confirmed the earliest harvest since records began in 2006, with farmers in the south and east finishing two to three weeks ahead of the long-term average; cereal yields are running below the 10-year average.
- UKHSA issued amber heat-health alerts for the East Midlands, east of England, south-east and London, plus yellow alerts for the north-west, Yorkshire and the Humber, West Midlands and south-west, running 9am Monday to 9am Wednesday with temperatures set to exceed 30C.
- CLA president Gavin Lane warned this could be many farmers' last harvest, noting wheat at half its usual height and that the government must plan for recurring drought; a recent report found a third of British farmers are making a loss or only breaking even as EU-derived subsidies are removed.
Why it matters: Britain's third drought in five years is colliding with the loss of EU farm subsidies, leaving a third of farmers breaking even or in the red. With below-average cereal yields and the earliest harvest on record, domestic production is shrinking just as import-dependent partners face their own climate shifts — turning a weather story into a strategic vulnerability.
