No harvest this year for first time
FARMER Joe Stanley is facing his first ever year without a harvest and stands to lose roughly £300,000.
His land was drenched by both storms Babet and Henk. From October to March an entire year’s worth of rain fell.
Joe, 39, intends to plant a small area of spring oats this month but most of his farm will have to be “summer fallow”.
He said: “For some, this weather is catastrophic. We would be looking to get maybe £300,000 in income from crops in a year and goodness knows what we will end up with.
“Last year was almost similarly disastrous, not as bad but getting towards where we are now. Goodness knows when it will stop raining. The majority of our farm is just going to be a non-cash crop this year, which is the first time that will have ever happened.
“So a year without a harvest has more or less been realised, unfortunately.”
Joe, an Army veteran who returned to the family farm in Loddington, Leicestershire, in 2009, warned the implications for our food supply were “enormous”. He said: “It is not just crops like wheat and barley. Root vegetables can be badly impacted, too.
“And even the livestock sector, because grass is not growing.
“Fields are too wet to put livestock out and livestock farmers have already used up all of their winter fodder.
“And because of the poor weather conditions, they are not out there making silage for this winter. There is not going to be the straw available from arable crops because no one is planting arable crops for the bedding for those cattle this winter.
“So this is going to have significant knock-on effects.”
Climate change is “becoming an increasingly insuperable problem” for farmers and consumers, Joe warned.
He noted that last spring salads and vegetables were not available.
Joe added: “This is not what we expect – but it is going to become the norm.”