One year’s worth of bread has been lost in the UK since 2020 due to extreme weather destroying harvests, a report has found.
Droughts and floods, which have been exacerbated by climate breakdown, have created a deficit in wheat production of over 7m tonnes. Experts at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) calculated this is enough wheat to bake more than 4bn loaves of bread – a year’s supply.
Due to the drought this year, 2025 is expected to be another poor year for harvest. Farmers battled record hot and dry weather and irrigation bans, and struggled to plant their crops.
Two of the worst three harvests on record have happened this decade, and the conditions are expected to continue to worsen as climate breakdown brings longer periods of dry weather coupled with heavier, more extreme rain which can cause floods. The worst year was 2020 and third worst 2024.
The climate crisis is creating uncertainty for farmers, with different types of growers experiencing boom and bust years. Winegrowers said 2025 will be a vintage year due to the number of sunny days, and apple orchards have seen a bumper crop.
Tom Lancaster, the ECIU’s land, food and farming analyst, said: “This decade has already seen some of the worst harvests on record after extreme rainfall made it impossible for farmers to drill and manage crops. And this year we’ve seen the opposite as crops suffered in the hottest and one of the driest springs and summers on record.
“This is what farming in a changing climate looks like. Extreme weather is making our bread less British, as millers have to turn to imports due to shortfalls in UK production, costing British farmers billions in lost income and reducing our self-sufficiency in our main, staple crop. Although we can do more to support our farmers to adapt to these extremes, only reducing planet-warming emissions to net zero can prevent these losses to extreme weather escalating in the years to come.”
The lack of wheat is putting pressure on supplies abroad. Other countries are having their own problems with war and extreme weather shrinking their yields. Millers are importing record levels of wheat to mill flour for bread, cakes and biscuits. In autumn last year imports of wheat were double the five-year average and UK self-sufficiency in wheat dropped from 96% in 2023 to 79% in 2024.
Colin Chappell, an arable farmer from Lincolnshire, said: “I have never known a more challenging time to farm. As a farmer, I am used to managing the worst the weather has to throw at me, but recent years have become impossible. Months of rainfall are followed by months of drought, seemingly without a break, and I am now facing a second terrible harvest in succession.
“I need more support to be able to adapt to these extremes and build the resilience of my business, but with the green farming schemes here in England closed, that support isn’t open to me. Getting them open has to be a priority if farmers are to be able to continue to grow wheat and other key crops for the Great British public.”
