Dry winter is a ‘big threat’ to supply, warns leading grower

A dry winter would be a “big threat” to UK-grown food supply, a leading grower has told The Grocer.

After a hot, dry summer, diminished water supplies across the country could lead to issues with next year’s plantings.

Julian Marks, MD of Barfoots, explained “the recent rain has been useful, but the big threat UK-wide will be a dry winter”.

“Reservoirs have been drained this summer and we’ve all got to replenish them,” something which cannot happen without significant rainfall.

“If storage is not full by the end of winter, we’re going to have to then modify our plantings on the basis that we won’t get those crops to harvest without adequate water,” Marks added.

Last month, the National Drought Group warned the current drought was set to continue despite a wetter August, with the month’s rainfall just 42% of its long-term average.

“While we have seen some recent rain, it is nowhere near enough to reverse the impact of the last seven months, which have been the driest since 1976,” said Alan Lovell, chair of the Environment Agency. “The environment bears the brunt of this lack of rainfall, and this summer we have seen widespread impacts from low river levels, fish needing to be rescued, and wildfires.”

Crops have also finished earlier this year due to an earlier start to the harvest, and this gap has had to be met by foreign imports from places like Spain for items such as courgettes and sweetcorn, said Marks.

Water is likely to continue to be a challenge for the years to come, which is why Barfoots is “investing a load at the moment in just building another reservoir down in West Sussex, so that’s 150,000 cubic meters of more winter storage and more irrigation equipment”.

Marks added that the business had “walked away” from its first unirrigated farms this year as it has “become too high-risk for us”.

That land will likely have to go back to growing cereals, but even those crops will become “more and more marginal, and higher risk”, he warned.

Nodding to the government’s upcoming Land Use Framework, Marks said “these are purely practical actions and we don’t require the government to tell us to move, we’ve just got to move for sustainability reasons”.