Half the harvest, twice the bills: how drought hit farms

The hottest summer on record, the longest drought, the worst harvest. West Country farmers are counting the cost of a "terrible summer", as one put it.

The wheat harvest on Charles Day's family farm in Gloucestershire was cut in half. "It's just soul-destroying," he says.

Dairy farmers had to rip open silage clamps stored up for the winter to feed the cattle as the grass failed. Sarah Godwin calculates it cost her family's Wiltshire farm "over £100,000". She says "it's shocking".

I spent the summer watching farmers install showers for cows, watch their cauliflowers burn to a crisp in the heat, and search for apples in cider orchards reduced to a tenth of their normal crop.

Buy a loaf of bread and there's a good chance it started in the fields of Charles Day's family farm in north Gloucestershire.

"I love harvest," the fourth generation farmer tells me. "It's a whole year's work coming to fruition."

But 2026 was brutal. The crops were looking "fantastic" in April, he told me. Then in June, the rain stopped and "the sun just stole our yield".

Throughout the crucial weeks of June and July, there was no rain at all. Wheat grains shrivelled instead of fattening, and the yield plummeted.

Official figures estimate the total UK cereal harvest was the lowest on record, external, wheat down about three million tonnes, or 11% according to the Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board (AHDB).

Anthony Hopkins, AHDB director of cereals and oilseeds, says: "At a time of high input costs, arable farmers in the worst-affected areas are really feeling the financial pressure right now."

When the combines went out on Charles Day's family farm, they gathered a harvest "about 50% down, sometimes more".

Across the South West, Tom Collins, who speaks for the NFU in Wiltshire, says most cereal farmers had seen harvests down "at least 30%". Spring barley and beans were more than 50% down, he adds, particularly badly hit by the drought.