England has had its second-worst harvest on record, analysis of latest government data has revealed.
New analysis from the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit has shown the scale of impact the warmest spring and summer and driest spring in over 100 years has had on cereal harvests.
The Defra data revealed that the majority of main cereal crops saw reductions in yields in 2025 compared with the previous year, with winter barley the exception.
Overall yields fell below the five-year average, with variability between regions, the government added.
The English barley harvest was estimated to be 14% lower than in 2024, down to 4.2 million tonnes. Meanwhile, oat production dropped by 2.3% despite a 9.4% increase in area.
Straw production also varied and while wheat straw remained steady, barley straw fell by 27% in 2025.
“This harvest is even worse than expected, and marks a second successive poor harvest, following on from one of the worst harvests on record last year after incredibly heavy rainfall, made worse by climate change,” said Tom Lancaster, land, food and farming analyst at the ECIU. “We have now seen three of the five worst harvests on record this decade after extreme weather, telling a story of escalating climate impacts that farmers are unable to cope with.”
Lancaster added that it should now be “an urgent priority for government and business to support farmers to adapt to these extremes”.
The ECIU said that the data from Defra suggested a much worse harvest than estimates so far had predicted.
In response to the analysis, Greenpeace has called on the government to “send the climate bill to fossil fuel companies, and protect British farmers”.
“The droughts and heavy rainfall of recent years that have decimated crop yields are fuelled by emissions from big polluters, like oil and gas companies,” said Philip Evans, senior campaigner for Greenpeace UK. “They’re the ones causing the climate crisis, yet it’s farmers and ordinary people paying the price.”
This builds on analysis published earlier this week by ECIU that suggested extreme weather so far in the 2020s had played a major role in creating a total deficit in wheat production of over seven million tonnes.
The organisation said that when considering the proportion of UK production used for milling flour, this was the equivalent to losing a year’s worth of bread for British households.
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