Western Daily Press (Saturday)
It’s time we were fully prepared for drought
The last few weeks’ rain has come as a relief to nervous farmers – but the UK is still woefully unprepared for prolonged drought, Bridgwater and West Somerset Conservative MP Ian Liddell-Grainger warns Farming Minister George Eustice
DEAR George To the sound of a stable door being slammed and the receding clatter of hooves, I have received a weighty document from the NFU about the lessons that have been learned from the 2018 drought.
I am, as always, grateful to have been included on the mailing list, despite the fact the last organisation I should look to for lessons about anything is the NFU – other, perhaps, than a lesson in how not to run a truly democratic, effectively campaigning organisation that is universally recognised as the clear, authoritative voice of British farming.
But let us not detour down that particular byway, alluringly attractive as it might seem.
I think there is only one fundamental, over-riding lesson to be learned from the 2018 drought and that is that British agriculture is woefully underprepared for what happens when there isn’t enough rain.
Shortage of rain is not, of course, usually a problem in this country. We often have too much of it. Precipitation can be alarmingly intense and even violent in nature – indeed, surveying the Somerset Levels in the last few days I get the distinct impression that we might have been experiencing the familiar difficulties caused by an excess of rain had we not held the Environment Agency’s feet to the fire and restarted dredging four years ago.
But while the problem is generally one of rather too much, than too little, rain, we are not that well equipped to store it – I don’t know what the precise up-to-date figure is, but last time I checked we could only capture about eight per cent of what we receive.
And here we get to the nub of the problem. The scientists have been banging on for a couple of decades now about climate change, high temperatures and creeping desertification. And the fact that farmers in some parts of southern Europe are receiving drought aid even at this time of the year should be an ominous warning to be heeded by all.
But here we haven’t done enough about increasing our storage capacity – or crucially, our ability to move water around. When we had the last big drought scare back in the late ’80s and ’90s, farmers were advised to think about installing large-scale storage facilities to get them through exceptionally dry summers, but a run of sodden Julys and Augusts pretty smartly struck that one off the to-do list.
Nationally, of course, there was all that talk around the same time of a national water grid so we could pump the stuff from areas where they have too much of it to the bits where they’re short, using interconnected rivers, canals and pipelines. All shelved because it was too expensive. Short-termism strikes again, in other words.
The fact is that had we devoted the same amount of funding to this project as has been expended on getting rail travellers from London to Birmingham (or at least near Birmingham) half an hour more rapidly we could now be facing the almost inevitable prospect of more droughts to come with rather less trepidation.
As it is, we are still no better prepared to deal with a drought than we were a year ago, though at least the rain we have had locally in the last few weeks has helped ease the rather alarming soil moisture deficit we had round here.
On the other hand, the reduced yields, and hence incomes, that farmers and growers have experienced across the country – and which will be reflected in the price of your carrots for the Christmas dinner table – do appear (from what I can glean from the document) to have roused the NFU from its somnolence and persuaded it that Something Must Be Done.
And I sincerely hope, once we get this accursed Brexit mess behind us, that HM Government will decide likewise. Yours ever,
Ian