Farmers in East Anglia facing 'nightmare' as wet weather delays harvest and input costs rise
Farmers across the East of England told ITV News Anglia of the problems they have faced
The damp summer has delayed harvests for farmers across East Anglia, who say they are facing a "nightmare" to get crops in on time.
Some are already as much as a month behind, and facing having to pay out extra on gas or electricity costs to dry the harvest - eating into any profit they were expecting, and driving up food prices.
July 2023 was the sixth wettest on record for the UK, and the wettest for a decade in the East of England, with more than 50% more rain than the average.
Cattle farmer Karl Graves was expecting to be harvesting grain and straw for his cattle - but the rain has held back his plans, and he has had to bring food in from elsewhere.
"I have never seen it this bad before, ever," he told ITV News Anglia. "They say every four years is damp but I have never known it as damp in my time.
"Every day is a challenge. You just don't know what things are going to cost to get your straw in... it is a complete nightmare."
ITV News Anglia meteorologist Aisling Creevey said the wet July was down to the jet stream bringing cool air across the Atlantic.
"To the south of the jet stream there's warm air and to the north there's cool air. We are in that cool air but, on top of that, the jet stream is like a magnet for other weather systems - and it's been dragging all of these other systems across the Atlantic.
Day-to-day we've just had very changeable cool weather and at times quite windy as well as wet."
George Hurrell, who farms near Cambridge, has been checking daily to monitor the moisture content of his wheat, so that he can get it to the required quality.
"If we put the the crop into the shed, let's say 18, 19% we have to use electricity or gas or both to dry the crop down to the 15% moisture we require," he said.
"We started [harvesting] three weeks ago and we're probably only 10 to 15% of the way through.
"We're now beginning to lose quality in the in the wheat. Not only that, we're we're being pushed to combine them when they're not quite dry.
"That's having a knock on effect with having to dry the crop in our stores. So that's high electricity usage, high gas usage, ultimately all coming off the bottom line of any profit that we thought was there."
Mr Hurrell has also struggled to recruit enough seasonal labour to help on the farm - even when offering up to £15 an hour.
Those additional costs are likely to filter through to shoppers already struggling with the rising cost of living, the food and farming organisation Sustain has warned.
"We are facing additional prices in the supermarket because farmers are having to pay more for fuel, water and labour," said head of farming Vicki Hird.
"As the weather gets more and more unstable because of climate change we will see prices rising. "When to harvest is a real problem for arable farmers - they have got to get to grips with that and maybe change their practices to be able to cope."
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