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The harvest of 2025 is one that is likely to be remembered for all the wrong reasons... nevertheless, getting the harvest safely in has always been cause for celebration

Farming rarely hits the headlines, despite being arguably the nation’s most important industry. So when farmers are the lead story on the Ten O’Clock News and pictured on the front pages of the morning newspapers, you know it’s something serious. It happened last winter when tractors blockaded Whitehall as farmers took their protest against the Government’s inheritance tax changes to the heart of Westminster. Now farming is making the news again and this time it’s an issue which is having an immediate effect on everyone, whether they live in urban or rural Britain; we all have to eat, so the state of the harvest has an impact on us all.

This year the desperate lack of rain in many parts of the British Isles, the droughts declared in large areas of the country and the impact of four heatwaves in rapid succession are hitting the industry hard. We all know that farming isn’t easy but I’m usually the first to point out that there’s a great deal to celebrate in agriculture and I’ve said many times that as farmers we can be a little too quick to talk about the difficulties and challenges we face. However this summer there’s no escaping the harsh reality for a great many farming enterprises – yields are down, quality is poor, costs are high and profits are thin.

Here in the north Cotswolds we not only run a flock of 600 commercial sheep but also farm 1,600 acres, growing mainly milling wheat, oats and malting barley. Like so many farms across vast swathes of the country, our combines started rolling earlier than ever thanks to the exceptionally low rainfall since spring and the hot weather since Whitsun.

Breaking records for starting harvest isn’t something to boast about and from the outset we’ve been worried about low yields. Unfortunately our worst fears were realised with grain and straw down significantly and to add insult to injury grain commodity prices are low which will hit our profitability. In fact for our arable enterprise there is no profit this year.

One hundred and forty miles north in Lancashire, it’s a similar story for Oliver Harrison. He contract farms 1,500 acres in an area where drought was declared in May and he started harvesting early on 26th June. He says the thin, parched crops yielded just over half the tonnage he expected, adding up to the worst cereals harvest he’s seen in more than 30 years of farming. ‘We lost a lot of money last year from wet weather,’ he told the BBC recently. ‘This year, ironically, we’re losing it because of dry weather.’

The picture is much the same with other crops; the pea harvest has been described as ‘bitterly disappointing’ and ‘devastating’, broccoli and other brassicas such as cauliflower and cabbage have struggled in bone-dry soils while the weather is shortening the cherry season and producing smaller fruit.

Farming is an industry that’s rich in heritage and even for people who’ve lived in cities all their lives, harvest time symbolises the link between the ‘bounty of the fields’ and the food in the larder.

Harvest Home is an age-old custom to celebrate the gathering in of the crops and it’s something which pre-dates Harvest Festival; long before the creation of a church service of thanksgiving in the 1840s, generations of country people had marked the occasion with a high-spirited shindig on the farm where drinking, dancing and general merry-making went on late into the night.

Cider and ale played a big part in the Harvest Home of yesteryear so you can see precisely why the Victorians wanted to make it ‘respectable’! In recent times Harvest Home has seen a revival and a modern-day makeover. Today some Harvest Homes are music and entertainment events, others are more like a bring-and-share supper. But they all have the rural community at their heart – you won’t find many farm labourers in cotton smocks sleeping off their hangovers under a hedge these days!

One of the biggest Harvest Home events in the country takes place in the village of Wedmore in the Somerset Levels between the rivers Axe and Brue. It’s a day-long affair which is truly impressive with a colourful procession of carnival floats snaking through the pretty streets and country lanes, an all-you-can-eat lunch for hundreds of people in an enormous marquee, a children’s tea, live music and the crowning of the Harvest King and Queen. Everyone has the time of their lives but this year even the huge turn-out and the obvious success of the event couldn’t overshadow the concerns about the state of the crops.

The visual spectacle of Wedmore’s Harvest Home always attracts the media and local farmer Richard Willcox appeared on TV saying he was convinced the months of dry weather had exceeded the notorious drought summer of 1976. He went on to explain that the shortage of decent grass and hay would mean livestock farmers will be forced to sell some of their animals to make ends meet. He’s absolutely right. The lack of good grazing means there must be hundreds of people up and down the country who are already using winter feed stocks to keep their animals fed. When that’s eventually gone, the cost of buying in silage and bales of hay will be painful. I’ve been told that the effects of the dry summer could even roll on into autumn.

In the West Riding of Yorkshire fifth-generation farmers Lucy and Chad Stevens are worried that their pumpkin festival at Havercroft will be spoiled. ‘We planted 10,000 pumpkin seeds and you would hope each seed would grow a couple of pumpkins, but I think we'll be getting them in hundreds rather than the thousands,’ Lucy told BBC News.-

So are there any silver linings to be found in all this? Well grain dryers certainly haven’t been needed this year, saving thousands in energy costs. Farmers in areas with the lightest soil have been hardest hit but happily not everywhere in the UK is so badly affected. In fact some places have done well, particularly where adequate irrigation has been possible. 

In East Anglia a splash of late spring rain followed by early summer sunshine meant that some winter barley was good. While Scottish cereal growers have been concerned about the quality of their spring barley and the knock-on effect for the country’s whisky production, their colleagues further north in Orkney are talking about bumper yields thanks to good soil moisture before the dry weather took hold.

On the whole, oilseed rape has done well and soft fruit growers are happy. Tomatoes, aubergines and courgettes have thrived, I’ve heard about limes and lemons ripening in greenhouses and in Wales one horticulturalist is reporting melons growing outdoors for the first time.

Meanwhile it’s been a brilliant year for lavender farms which in turn have attracted a big increase in important pollinators like bees and butterflies. But perhaps the saving grace for many farming families has been the diversified side of their businesses. Dairy farms with ice cream parlours, arable farms with campsites and old hay barns turned into wedding venues could well have saved some farms from tipping dangerously into the red.

As I’ve said several times this summer, thank goodness we don't have all our eggs in one basket.

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