BBC Radio Shropshire

Image source, Christopher Booth Photos

“The term I’ve learned in this last week is 'whiplash weather events',” Paul Tompkins, the deputy president of the National Farmer's Union tells BBC Radio Shropshire.

“We seem to have lurched into a drought very quickly and we’re concerned that, as we come through the rest of the year, we might lurch into another extreme weather event where too much water is about.”

He says there is an irony to this as "we do have sufficient rainfall over the country – it’s just that it’s increasingly falling in certain parts of the year in deluges and then not for others".

“We could do more to store the water that comes down in the winter months and, rather than pump it out to sea, reserve it for growing our crops and supplying households in the summer,” he said.

While he acknowledges this would be a “complex process”, he says “water security underpins our food security and that is so important for us all”.

Kirk England
South West environment and tourism correspondent

The head of an organic vegetable box company says staff will have to choose which plants to water and which to let die "within weeks".

Guy Singh-Watson, of Riverford Organic Farmers in Buckfastleigh, Devon, called for it to be easier and faster to get the permissions needed to install on-farm water storage, such as irrigation ponds.

Drought was declared in Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly on Tuesday, and the Met Office said extreme weather was becoming the new normal for the UK.

The government said it was making it easier for farmers and rural businesses to build the infrastructure they needed.

"We're running out of water," said Singh-Watson, who founded the company about 30 years ago.

Other farmers have also expressed their concerns to the BBC.

Ema Sabljak
England Data Unit

Four heatwaves and a particularly dry July are taking their toll on farms across England.

Farmers began their harvests early after the prolonged hot weather, with drought declared in seven regions yesterday.

A recent report from the National Drought Group, external warned there was an increased risk of fires breaking out in combine harvesters.

The heat has also led to moisture issues for cereal while spring barley yields, widely used for livestock feed, have been hit by a lack of rain.

Paul Tompkins, deputy president at the National Farmers Union, said farmers are facing “another difficult and expensive harvest”.

“To help farmers adapt, we must strengthen resilience to climate volatility,” he said.

The lack of rain has resulted in some farmers in East Anglia being banned from taking water from local rivers for their crops or livestock.

Tompkins added that there needed to be more investment in on-farm water storage.

Image source, PA Media

Alex Black
News editor, Farmers Guardian

Water is agriculture's most essential input and the one least talked about, from irrigation and livestock to food processing, yet it rarely features in mainstream conversations about water scarcity.

If you look at the government’s drought map, only Yorkshire and the North East remain classified as normal - everywhere else is parched. Water underpins almost every part of the food chain, often in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

This season's straw shortage is hitting livestock farmers hard. A 2 Sisters chicken processing plant recently had to halt production due to water restrictions and in a sector where biosecurity is critical, disruptions like that can back up fast, with serious consequences for animal welfare and supermarket shelves alike.

There are early signs that minds are concentrating. Sainsbury's this week acknowledged the threat to continental crops and committed to British-grown cucumbers. It is a small but welcome signal.

Summers like this are becoming the norm. Clear water policy and a serious commitment to food security cannot wait.

Katie Martin
BBC Radio Solent

I’ve been to Alresford in Hampshire, where watercress grows in free-flowing water.

Drayton Farm is situated on the clear, spring-fed chalk waters of the River Arle.

Farmer Tom Amery told me that the crop grows well in the blazing hot sun and the freezing cold winter, because the water is a constant 10C (50F) - but the tropical-feeling nights do limit the growth.

Watercress has been growing in Hampshire for centuries, but boom time came the expansion of the railways in the 1860s meant farms could get their crop to restaurants in London within hours.

Today, the Watercress Company produces 500,000 bags of watercress every week - a whole lot of vitamins for very few calories.

Coming up shortly, we will be live at a dairy farm in Devon as a herd of cows are brought up from their field for milking.

Stay tuned for the Farmwatch Mooscast!

Hannah Walsh
BBC South

It's been a crisp and cloudy morning at Lyburn Farm.

Based just on the Hampshire and Wiltshire border, it specialises in cheese and vegetables.

I arrived just before 06:00 and it was already busy, with lots of jobs in full swing.

By 07:00, the cows had been milked, the harvesting had begun and the cheese-making was in action.

But, with Hampshire now in a drought, and prolonged hot weather, it is starting to have a big impact on the farm.

Mike Smales, who runs it with his son Jono, says: “It’s having a huge impact and is really quite disruptive.

“We’ve completely run out of grass and did so several weeks ago. So, the cows are on full winter ration and will be right the way through until the end of next March.

“We’re completely in the hands of the weather at the moment.”

Jon Lockhart
Channel Islands reporter

When Maj Christopher Beaumont inherited the title of Sark's lord of the manor he did not expect to also take on tending the Channel Island's cattle.

As seigneur, he is the symbolic head of the Channel Island, pays a nominal annual tribute to the Crown and hosts members of the Royal Family.

Beaumont has been leaving his 17th Century stately home every morning for two years to look after the island's herd since the previous dairy farmers left the island.

He said of taking care of the herd: "It's enjoyable. They're quite sweet and they don't complain. They're very stoic, I quite like them as animals.

"I served the Queen [Elizabeth II] coffee in here," Beaumont said in the grand entertainment room of the Seigneurie residence, which was built in 1675.

"Last year, we had Princess Anne in for lunch."

Delve into Beaumont's story here

Mat Trewern
BBC Radio Manchester journalist

Image source, Family Photograph

A great-grandmother has described running her family's farm for nearly 70 years as a "brilliant" life.

Margaret Lees, 89, took over Park Farm near Ramsbottom in Greater Manchester in 1957 with her late husband John.

"We got married, jumped in the Land Rover and drove over here," she explained. "The next day I was milking the cows and starting the milk rounds."

The thriving farm business is still family-run nearly seven decades later.

Margaret said their farmhouse was "unbelievably basic" when she and her groom first arrived following their wedding.

"We had a chair, a table and a bed," she remembered. "Two knives and two forks and one teaspoon.

"We were quite poor for a while as we saved our money for the outside, for the cows."

Over the following years, Margaret and John slowly built up the business, buying and selling pigs, increasing milk rounds and setting up a small roadside shop.

Park Farm now has a tearoom, a farm shop and a garden centre.

"We've worked hard, been lucky in many respects but on the whole it's been brilliant," reflected Margaret.

She tells more of her story here.

Louise Hobson
BBC Radio Tees

Andrew Sturrock and his brother Henry grew up on Home Farm, in a pretty, rural village on the outskirts of Hartlepool, in the North East of England.

Their parents bought the land in Elwick in the late 1950s and started dairy farming.

Now the siblings run the farm, but will be the last generation.

Nearly 10 years ago they installed a raw milk vending machine for customers, which Andrew said “has been popular from the start”. This summer the farm bought a second machine which can also offer flavoured milk.

Over the last decade, Andrew said they had sold more than one million litres of the milk, with "people travelling from far and wide".

He added that regular testing for pathogens was undertaken and there had never been an issue.

However, the brothers reduced their dairy herd from 170 to 25 earlier this year to focus more on beef farming.

Colson Smith and Steve Jones
BBC Yorkshire

Image source, Abigail Jayeola/BBC

What does it take to turn a humble spud into a multipack ready for supermarkets, lunchboxes and snack trays?

About 2.5 million potatoes have been planted on a field near York - the size of 17 football pitches. Each one is enough to be turned into a bag of crisps.

A potato can be picked from the ground and turned into crisps within 24 hours.

There is also one other key ingredient: rain, which has been harder to come by recently.

Once the potatoes have been harvested, they are washed, peeled and sliced into a crinkle shape before they are fried then sent on to be seasoned in a drum while they are still hot.

Once in the processing facility, turning a potato into a crisp takes about 40 minutes, according to Peter Bacon, preparation manager at Seabrook.

"It's a very fast process," he says. "A day we are talking one to two million packets."

You can find out more about the journey of a crisp here.

Harriet Cowan, a Derbyshire-based farmer and former nurse best-known for her appearances on the TV programme Clarkson's Farm, is due to co-present this evening's Farmwatch show across all BBC local radio stations, along with Yorkshire-based beef and arable farmer Joe Seels.

The show will feature a specially-written episode of The Archers in the first-ever simulcast for the BBC Radio 4 show.

Harriet said: "I'm so excited to be back as part of Farmwatch this year. It's a project that's really close to my heart and I love being able to shine a light on the incredible people, stories and hard work that keep British farming moving.

"Having grown up on a farm myself, it's something I feel genuinely passionate about, so being able to share that with listeners is really special.

"I also can’t wait to be presenting the radio show again. It's such a great opportunity to connect with the farming community, hear from inspiring guests and celebrate everything that's happening across the country."

People can tune in between 19:00 BST and 22:00 to be part of the conversation.

BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

Image source, Getty Images

We're following the process of picking and packing vegetables at Bedlam Farms, focusing on everyone's favourite: tenderstem broccoli.

Tobias Martin, director of the farm, says it's quite a process.

Tenderstem is planted as seed and sent to a local nursery in Wilmington to grow into small plants, before being robotically transplanted into fields. Plants are irrigated and kept clean with a robotic hoe, while a team manually picks out all the big weeds.

When the crop is ready, field workers walk behind a harvesting rig to pick directly into trays, which are then unloaded onto a trailer, and taken to a pack house.

It's a long day for the workers, who are in the field by 07:00 and clock off at 19:00.

Then it's into the packing house - hands scrubbed, PPE donned and, if you have a beard, snood on.

"You can't have any foreign bodies in you packing facility. We're very strict on personal hygiene and what everyone wears," Martin says.

Everything that comes off the field is weighed and checked before going into a high-humidity cooler to preserve shelf life. It's then sent to an intermediary for final packing on refrigerated lorries.

The aim is to get the broccoli from the field to the supermarket shelf within 72 hours, but it can be a bit of a race.

"If you don't pick the crop when its ready, then it won't be any good the next morning," Martin says.

Jack Maclean
BBC News, BBC Radio Norfolk

More than 170 years after Green Farm was established in Wicklewood, owner Nicola Goodings is proud that the family tradition will continue.

The farm's native Red Poll cattle are raised on a 100% grass-fed diet, without additives or concentrate feed.

The farm works with Archers Butchers in Norwich, and Nicola says she believes supporting family-run businesses is important because they care about the product.

Jamie Archer says the beef from Green Farm is comparable to Wagyu.

"The Red Pole are native to Norfolk and it's just lovely to work with a local farmer and how well they look after their animals. You can tell from how well marbled it is," he said.

Looking to the future, Nicola said of her children: "They will take over and I feel very proud that they will take it on to the next stage."

BBC Jersey

For farm shop owner Paul Conway, everyone in the industry faces the same struggle.

"We're competing with supermarkets that have everything under one roof," said Conway, who runs Homefields Farm Shop in Jersey.

"In the last six years or so, we have seen that customers want more convenience. They want a wider selection of produce."

Since 2019, half of the Channel Island's long-running farm shops have closed their doors, according to a Genuine Jersey report, external.

Despite the headwinds, those in the industry insist there is still demand for farm shops but the way they are being used is changing.

In June, Holme Grown Jersey closed, with its owners saying they had been "swimming against a tide" after operating for nearly half a century.

Conway says customers lack time but still appreciate fresh produce.

"People want to buy fresh produce but really buy some other essential ingredients along with those things."

The shop has submitted plans to extend to create a larger floor space to accommodate a butchery, outdoor area and wider local food range.

You can read more about this here.

Lauren Woodhead
England Data Unit

Data suggests there are still many households across the UK struggling to get the food they need.

There isn’t a single agreed upon definition of food insecurity. However, a survey released last week, external by the Food Foundation, a food poverty charity, estimated one in eight (12.5%) UK households are facing food insecurity.

The survey was conducted in July by YouGov, and the charity defined the term as meaning a household facing reduced quality, variety and desirability in their diet. It can even mean household members reducing their food intake due to a lack of money and resources.

A House of Commons research briefing published last year, external said that the rising cost of living “seemed to be increasing household food insecurity”.

The Food Foundation data echoes this concern, with one in three households reporting that it is more difficult to afford food compared to a year ago.

BBC CWR

This time last year, Paul Rowland told BBC Radio Coventry and Warwickshire he had invested £300,000 in robotic milking technology - a price he said was worth paying to secure the future of his business.

He expected to make his money back within seven years. But, a year on and a new baby later, he's no longer making a profit. A global slump in milk prices has left him earning just £100 a week, he says.

"There's a massive uptake in the global supply of milk so the prices has crashed," he tells BBC CWR's Dan Sambell.

Milk prices have dropped sharply since Christmas, driven by what Rowland called a global over-supply.

Europe and the US have increased production, processors are "flooded", and his own buyer has capped how much milk he can send each month.

That cap has forced him to hold back production, even though robotic milking typically helps cows produce more milk.

"We'd have made the money back if milk prices stayed good," he said. "But now we're producing milk we can't sell.

"Some days we're literally tipping milk down the drain."

Paul is still committed to robotic milking, and to farming.

"It's bad at the minute. But this time last year it was good. You've just got to keep going."

Arable farmer Clive Bailye describes farming as the "best job in the world that financially is really tough".

He says he sees less than 1p of profit per loaf of bread, and wants supermarkets to do more to support British farming, saying he is worried for the future of the industry.

He said: "If a loaf of bread is £1.50 from a supermarket, around 0.9p of that is our profit margin - less than a penny.

"Imagine if you were to increase it by 1p, if the supermarkets were to pass that back to the farm gate, that would double our profit margins.

"Right now, that's the difference between being in profit and at a loss."

Read the full story here or listen on the link below.

Ema Sabljak
England Data Unit

The UK inflation rate, a measure of how the price of goods is increasing, stood at 2.8% in the year to May.

But how does that translate to the fields?

This morning, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) published an update on price changes for UK farmers.

While costs are rising faster, income from farms dropped in the 12 months to May.

Farmers have continued to see rises to the cost of their fertiliser, energy and fuel - or their input - in recent months.

In the 12 months to May, fertiliser prices rose by 31%, while motor fuel was up by 48%.

The costs of these key farming products is largely associated with tensions around the Strait of Hormuz.

Despite that, farmers were also receiving less for their products.

The price index for milk is down 21% in the year to April, while the income from pigs was down by 51%.

Ashleigh Ellwood
Head of Arable, Farmers Guardian

There has been one key thought at the forefront of most farmers' minds this season – moisture – or the lack of it.

Harvest is well under way across the country, with southern areas nearing completion, thanks to one of the earliest starts on record. The prolonged summer heat has accelerated crop maturity by several weeks in some areas, allowing combines to roll earlier than normal.

In early spring, the season was filled with promise: crops looked flush, rainfall right when it was needed, and growers rightly thinking they might be in for bumper crops.

However, we have been quickly reminded of how determining the weather is on crop success. Many crops have still fared impressively, maintaining average yields as growers have chased moisture in the early hours, long before the already-early alarm clocks sound.

Across much of England, reports suggest that grain quality has generally been encouraging, even where yields have disappointed. Oilseed rape has proved a particular bright spot, with some growers hailing it the "crop of the year", as confidence has seemingly returned with a much larger national crop than last year.

Attention will soon turn to cultivations, seedbed preparation and variety selection. With many farms facing a longer gap between harvest and drilling this year, they may use the extra time to rethink variety choices – or perhaps just stick with what they know.

Image source, Farmers Guardian