‘On a knife edge’: How climate change is pushing farmers to the brink

In England, farmers experienced the second-worst harvest on record because of heavy rain made worse by climate change, while in Scotland some farmers described this year’s growing season and harvest as ‘the toughest in 30 years’

Ahead of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Professor Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, wrote an article for The Scotsman in which he warned the effects of climate change were creeping up on us – and we were failing to notice.

“Politicians focus on immediate threats like Covid-19. But they won’t prioritise the global measures needed to deal with climate change because its worst impact stretches beyond the time-horizon of most political and investment decisions... I fear our current stance resembles the proverbial boiling frog, content in a warming tank until it’s too late,” he wrote.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

For a long time, I had thought that some extraordinary event – a Christmas Day heatwave, a mega-flood or a particularly devastating wildfire – would finally wake up the world to what is happening. Now, I’m not so sure.

Warning signs

December 2023 was the world’s warmest December on record, averaging 13.51 degrees Celsius – 0.85C above the average recorded between 1991 and 2020, yet the political dial hardly shifted. In 2022, a third of an entire country – Pakistan – was submerged by floods, affecting 33 million people. A world preoccupied by Covid sent aid and moved on.

Long before that, in 2016, a wildfire caused billions of pounds of damage as it ripped through the Canadian town of Fort McMurray. John Vaillant, who wrote a book about the fire, told Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper he had stood alongside people as they looked at “the hole where their house used to be... I saw a lot of grown men cry, and I cried myself. It’s terribly, terribly sad to see the things that we depend on most, that we trust the most, our homes and our neighbourhoods, undermined in such a violent and violating way.”

All this may seem rather distant. But these were largely missed warnings of a problem that is increasingly coming home to roost. And Britain’s farmers are already feeling the effects.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad
Heavy rain in England last month saw farmland flooded as rivers burst their banks (Picture: Dan Kitwood)Heavy rain in England last month saw farmland flooded as rivers burst their banks (Picture: Dan Kitwood)
Heavy rain in England last month saw farmland flooded as rivers burst their banks (Picture: Dan Kitwood) | Getty Images

Farmers nervous and uncertain

England has just experienced its second-worst harvest on record after heavy rainfall and flooding. Some areas received more than 300 per cent of the average rainfall in September. The wheat harvest was down an estimated 22 per cent on last year with oilseed rape down 33 per cent. According to scientists at World Weather Attribution, average rainfall on stormy days in the UK during winter and autumn has “increased by about 20 per cent due to human-induced climate change”.

Colin Chappell, an arable farmer in Lincolnshire, told the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit: "We are now on a knife edge... Some farms in southern England have lost their crops for the second year in a row... We're getting into a situation where autumn planting is becoming unviable due to flooding and spring planting is risky because of drought. It is causing a lot of nervousness and uncertainty.”

North of the Border, a survey by NFU Scotland found a “very mixed picture” with some farmers describing this year’s growing season and harvest as “the toughest in 30 years”, while others fared much better.

Loss of ‘stable, predictable weather’

Amy Geddes, a fourth-generation farmer near Arbroath, told me that climate change was affecting agriculture. “In the past five years, certainly, to my mind, it’s become very noticeable, the extremes of what we’re having to deal with from season to season... We’ve lost that stable, predictable weather that we may have expected in a season,” she said.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Heavy rain last winter saw some nearby farmers lose crops worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. “I’ve never been so glad to farm on a slight incline,” she said.

She added that she thought there should be a response to climate change on a par with the efforts to tackle the Covid pandemic: “I don’t think we’re doing enough, fast enough. There’s a lot of distractions, pressure on government from different angles. We’re walking into a situation where we will be importing more and more of our food.”

Despite this, she stressed that “farmers are resilient”, with many positive, hopeful signs. “I think we need to get a move on, but it’s not all doom and gloom.”

The UK’s reliance on imported food has been increasing, with a Health Security Agency report from last year reporting that nearly half of the total comes from overseas, including 78 per cent of fruit and vegetables. It estimated that, by 2050, about half of fruit and legumes would be imported from “climate-vulnerable countries”, adding: “Supply of vegetables, fruit and legumes is projected to fall short of what would be needed to meet UK dietary recommendations.” A chilling line.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

An appetite for risk

While much of Britain struggles with heavy rain, in other parts of the world, it is becoming too hot and humid to work outside for long periods, with an obvious effect on farming. A study published in the journal Global Change Biology concluded that labour productivity could fall as low as 40 per cent of the current level in places like Pakistan and India and 70 per cent in parts of Asia, Africa and South America by 2100. So areas that once exported food may instead send increasing numbers of climate refugees.

I suppose people’s reaction to all this depends partly on their attitude towards scientists, experts and risk. Thinking “oh, everything will be fine, I’m sure” is one way to mentally deal with threats that are seemingly too large to confront. However, it is not a way to actually deal with them.

My own attitude towards risk is that I don’t like taking them. I’ve never been on a rollercoaster, for example (call me feart if you like). However, I would have thought that, when climate change is affecting the production of food upon which our lives depend, this would be a sufficiently serious wake-up call to prompt loud calls for greater action.

Instead, I suspect that, like the frog, too many are content to settle back in their pans, soaking up the heat and entranced by the small bubbles that are starting to form in the water.

Comments

 0 comments

Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.

Dare to be Honest
Follow us
©National World Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.Cookie SettingsTerms and ConditionsPrivacy notice