Could the recent record rainfall leave our supermarket shelves empty?

• British farmers are struggling to plant crops after numerous storms 
• Other countries are struggling with high temperatures and droughts
• Extreme weather events are increasingly having an impact on food supply

British farmers have long been at the mercy of the weather. A bad season can cause untold damage to a harvest and have devastating financial implications.

The recent rainfall is nothing new, but after years of extreme weather there is now a risk that it could start to significantly disrupt Britain’s supply chains.

And it is not just British farmers that have been affected.

Dangerously high temperatures, droughts and fires are affecting other countries, including those from which Britain imports goods.

Last year there were widespread food shortages in supermarkets, largely due to a drought in the Mediterranean and North Africa.

As Britain reaches a record rainfall in the last 18 months and other countries experience extreme temperatures, could we start to see empty shelves again?

And will Britons have to change the way they shop in the face of extreme weather events and climate change?

‘A lot of crops won’t be planted this year’: How British farmers are affected  by bad weather

The woes of British farmers were thrust into the limelight when Jeremy Clarkson’s TV show, which documented his struggles running his farm in the Cotswolds, aired in 2021.

Extreme weather played a significant role as torrential rain interrupted his planting and cultivation. But these issues have been plaguing farmers for far longer.

Joe Stanley, an arable farmer based in Leicestershire tells This Is Money that since 2018, the weather has ‘dropped off a cliff from a farmer’s point of view.’

About three quarters of the final crop yield is down to the weather, and everything else we do as farmers is really just kind of faffing around the edges Joe Stanley, arable farmer in Leicestershire 

‘Farmers have always said about three quarters of the final crop yield is down to the weather, and everything else we do as farmers is really just kind of faffing around the edges.’

In the last few years, Britain has seen record high temperatures and droughts, as well as extreme rainfall and cold spells.

The recent record rainfall over the past 18 months is merely a continuation of this trend, and it is severely damaging production.

‘Every season has been extreme and that feeds through to really challenging conditions to grow crops – wheat, barley, oats. A lot of crops will not be planted this year so there will not be straw for feed or hay for bedding,’ Stanley says.

‘We don’t have the grass we’d like to have so livestock are indoors longer, using up feed that they would have been saving for next winter.’

Rachel Hallos, vice president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) says she has heard from members that have ‘nothing in the ground and what is in the ground is basically dead.’ 

Stanley says he will only be able to plant around 10 to 15 per cent of the usual crops this season, and it seems to be replicated across the country.

A recent survey by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board found that yields of crops like wheat, winter barley and oilseed rape are likely to be significantly reduced due to the recent wet weather.

Oilseed rape yield is expected to drop 28 per cent, the biggest reduction since the 1980s, while wheat and barley are expected to fall 15 and 22 per cent respectively.

Stanley says: ‘We will be harvesting this summer and it looks like there’s going to be a significant shortage of domestically produced UK wheat.’

The frequency of extreme weather is giving farms little time to recover. The most productive land in the UK is low-lying land, but the volume of rain means that it has not possible.

Once water is in the fields, it is a waiting game until it dries.

Last October, Storm Babet ravaged farms across the country and many farms are still dealing with the consequences.

‘We were looking to plant most of our crops in October but Storm Babet comes along and blows that out of the water,’ says Stanley. 

‘Not only did it mean that after the storm we didn’t get back into the field, and still haven’t got back into the field again since, but the crops that we had planted before the storm were drowned and killed.’

Hallos says plenty of farms have been underwater since last autumn, meaning there is a very short window in the spring to plant barley, wheat and oilseed rape.

Added to that, extreme weather events blur the seasons in which farmers tend to plant their crops, giving them little time to adapt.

‘Up until 2018, you could more or less rely on the seasons doing what they’d always done,’ says Stanley. ‘Almost to the month you knew what the weather was going to do.’

‘We’re seeing extreme events happen across the world’

These issues, while devastating for farmers, don’t necessarily mean there will be widespread shortages though.

In the UK, we import half of the food we consume, according to the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit. Around half of that is made of commodities we do not, or cannot, grow.

Angelina Sanderson Bellamy, professor of food systems at University of the West of England tells This Is Money: ‘There’s not really a direct link between the amount of food that we produce here and what is available on our shelves. 

 We’re impacted by poor weather events in New Zealand more than in the UK. That’s the irony of our globalised food system Angelina Sanderson Bellamy, professor of food systems at UWE

‘Of course there are some knock-on effects but what tends to happen for many products is we look to our international supply chains.’

‘With flooding for example in places like Lincolnshire, where we have a lot of our vegetable production, you’ll see some impact in the supermarket, but the supply chains will look to source more vegetables from abroad which we already do source a lot of fruit and vegetables internationally anyway.’

While livestock farming has suffered, it will have little to no effect on the British consumer. For example, most lamb purchased in the UK comes from New Zealand.

Sanderson Bellamy says: ‘We’re impacted by poor weather events in New Zealand more than in the UK. That’s the irony of our globalised food system.’

However, there are significant shortcomings in the countries that export popular items to the UK too.

Sanderson Bellamy says: ‘When it becomes problematic is when we see extreme events happening in multiple places across the world. Then you start seeing supply chain constraints because there’s lots of other people in the same boat.’

The picture is no more rosy for the places we import from. Unpredictable weather has destroyed crops in west Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia.

Emma Mullins, Fairtrade’s head of sustainable sourcing tells This Is Money: ‘UK supermarket staples such as cocoa, bananas and coffee are amongst the most vulnerable products in global supply chains, and, amongst other things, are also most at risk from our warming planet.’

Fairtrade says 93 per cent of coffee farmers in Kenya have reported erratic rainfall and an increase in pests and diseases. Tea producers in India have reported flooding and high temperatures, while heatwaves in Ghana are threatening the cocoa crop.

 UK supermarket staples are amongst the most vulnerable products in global supply chains Emma Mullins, Fairtrade’s head of sustainable sourcing 

A Christian Aid report published last year also warned that eight of the 25 biggest food exporters to the UK face ‘high climate vulnerability’, including Brazil, South Africa, India and Vietnam.

It means consumers could face a shortage of bananas, grapes, avocados, cashews, cocoa and tea thanks to the changing weather patterns.

Additionally, El Nino, which is a phenomenon in which the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean warms, is contributing to the chaos.

‘Historically El Nino has always wreaked havoc on agriculture, but its combination in more recent times with climate change is proving to be devastating, as both raise global temperatures,’ says the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit. ‘Together, they’re pushing the limits of what crops and livestock can tolerate.’

In particular, it threatens rice and some drinks from Asia, which is being hit by weaker monsoon rains, heatwaves, droughts and water shortages.

The UK imports 29 per cent of its rice from India and the same amount of coffee from Vietnam.

Will there be food shortages?

There have been short periods where supermarkets have been unable to plug the gaps, although these have largely been caused by geopolitical events like the Ukraine invasion.

However, a drought in Spain and Morocco last year led to significant shortages of staples like tomatoes and cucumbers in our supermarkets.

The disruption over the past few months, both domestically and abroad, could have the potential to cause similar disruption to supply chains, albeit not immediately.

Hallos says: ‘I think it’s too early to call… the logical conclusion would be that there are going to be some supply chain issues further down the line. How the retailers deal with that, I don’t know. They will find a way.’

Retailers, and farmers to an extent, have generally been able to plug the gap in other periods of extreme weather, but it could soon become unsustainable.

‘We’re finding that the weather is becoming so extreme that the things we have been developing are no longer sufficient,’ says Stanley. ‘When you get 60-70mm of rain in 12 hours, it’s going to overwhelm any system’

Retail expert Jonathan De Mello thinks food shortages ‘have already played out.. It’s not a new thing’. Rather than climate specific issues, he says it is ‘suppliers playing brinkmanship with the grocers saying they’re going to wholesale prices.’

However farmers warn that unless they are able to increase profits, this risk will only grow.

Stanley says ‘the best thing we can do to help farmers build resilience into their land is to allow farmers to be more profitable.’

Reinvesting profits into more resilient farming systems would help with the issues at play, he says.

Mullins adds: ‘Decades of low income for the farmers means they have not been able to invest in measures to protect their business against the effects of climate change.

‘Without fairer prices, which allow producers to invest in measures to mitigate climate change, it will be harder to tackle the challenges going forward.’

Will we have to change our eating habits?

Changing weather patterns could mean that the UK could start to produce different types of crops.

Sanderson Bellamy says: ‘With climate changes, we’re anticipating that parts of the UK could become more productive. Generally warmer temperatures would overall benefit UK agriculture, but the massive caveat is the climate extreme events.’

The uncertainty will continue to leave farmers at the mercy of the weather, with little ability to plan.

‘You don’t know when they’re going to come, you don’t know the nature of them. Without having a crystal ball you don’t know exactly how that’s going to impact,’ she says.

‘It’s when we start seeing the cascading effects and start to see multiple regions impacted… substituting becomes more difficult because there’s nothing to substitute as there’s so many events happening around the world.’

While supermarkets might be able to plug the gap in domestic production for now, if this extreme weather is replicated across the globe, consumers might be forced to change the way they eat.