Farmers are facing a fresh wave of anxiety as new Met Office figures confirm April was the sunniest on record and the third warmest, but once again drier than average—exacerbating fears of another poor harvest.
According to the data, parts of the Midlands and the North received less than 20% of normal rainfall, while the South experienced less than half the typical levels.
This comes on the heels of an equally dry March and follows the deluge of last autumn, when unprecedented rainfall in September and October made it impossible for many farmers to drill crops.
Leicestershire arable farmer Joe Stanley captured the mounting frustration, saying: “Weather and climate related risks are becoming unsustainable for annual cropping.
"We’ve gone from far too wet across much of England in the autumn, to far too dry now. We got 10mm of rain in April, but otherwise we’ve had no rain for more than two months and a heatwave this week.
“If we don’t get some rain soon, we’ll be in a very difficult situation in another week. As a business, we just can’t plan for this sort of volatility, particularly following a shocking harvest last year.”
The long-range forecast offers little comfort, with dry conditions expected to persist in the South of England into mid-May.
This raises the spectre of another failed harvest, following what was already the second worst on record in England last year.
That season was marred by extreme rainfall during the winter, conditions experts say are made more likely by climate change.
The situation is further complicated by policy uncertainty. In March, the government abruptly paused the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI)—a key pillar of Defra’s green farm reform agenda—leaving farmers unsure about future support.
Tom Edmondson, a mixed farmer from Milton Keynes, said some of his neighbours are already seeing spring crop failures.
“Some farmers are really struggling around us with this very dry spring and some spring crops have completely failed," he added.
“It's the unpredictability of it all that is really challenging - you just don't know what the weather is going to do from year to year.
"We need the government to re-open the SFI and fund it properly if more farmers are to be able to build their resilience as climate change takes hold.”
Earlier this week, the Climate Change Committee warned that the UK is unprepared for the impacts of climate change, rating progress on both food security and environmental protection as insufficient.
Tom Lancaster, analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said climate change was having a devastating impact on UK farming and food security.
"For farmers, it’s becoming increasingly hard to farm given increasingly severe impacts we are now seeing," he warned.
"Last year’s harvest was one of the worst on record after 18 months of relentless rain, following a drought and extreme heat in 2022 that left crops baked into the ground.
"Government’s response to this scale of risk is clearly not aligned to the jeopardy it poses, yet we have solutions available now, including the green farming schemes that were unexpectedly pulled.
"Investing in these schemes at the spending review in June will be needed to build the resilience of UK food production."
