‘Completely dependent on Mother Nature’: UK drought raises concerns about water security

London, UK – In a wheat field near High Wycombe in the rolling English countryside, Alex Nelms watched as his farm’s crops died in a matter of days.

His crop looked strong until the first heat wave arrived in May, when temperatures topped 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), just as his milling wheat entered the grain-filling phase, the critical weeks when the plant puts on fat.

“It just killed everything to death,” he told Al Jazeera. “It was all over very early, and just when we were full of optimism and hope, everything was destroyed almost overnight.”

Nelms farms just over 2,000 acres (809 hectares) of arable land in south Buckinghamshire in the business his grandparents founded in 1955. His uncle, who had farmed for over 40 years, had just had the worst harvest of his career.

Last month, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) reported that almost three-quarters of England, 71.3 percent, were still suffering from drought. Defra said rainfall in August reached just 34 percent of what would normally be expected by this point in the month, and reservoir levels were 18.2 percentage points below what they should be for this time of year.

“We rely entirely on Mother Nature,” Nelms said, and nature didn’t deliver this year.

After a historically dry spring and a series of summer heat waves, the average farm yield was down by about 1,000 tons, representing a revenue shortfall of about $270,000.

The farm, nestled in the Chiltern Hills, a steep, long ridge of white limestone rock, has no, and never will have, irrigation.

“This will have a major impact on our cash flow,” he said. A third difficult year in a row will mean tough negotiations with his bank and landlord, as well as farming to minimize risk rather than maximize productivity, “hence probably producing less food.”

“Financial Crisis Point”

The National Farmers Union (NFU) says farmers are at “financial crisis point” following the worst drought in 50 years, with historically low yields, stunted grass growth, rising fuel and fertilizer prices, and a serious outbreak of bluetongue disease among livestock.

The union estimates the lost value of gross wheat production at approximately $499 million and the cost of filling the forage shortfall at approximately $45 million.

NFU president Tom Bradshaw said farmers now lacked “respite” and were “increasingly exposed to geopolitical upheaval, as well as recurring extreme weather, animal disease and global wars”.

He believes action is needed now to secure the future of British farming “and enable the next generation to continue producing food for the nation.”

To cope with the risk, Nelms is diversifying by replanting canola on about 350 acres (142 hectares) for the first time in 20 years. He says the usual crop protection from insecticides, seed treatments with neonicotinoids, is now banned, leaving it exposed to cabbage stem flea beetles and game birds that can “completely chew, eat and destroy the crop.”

Growing this plant also means disrupting the continuous wheat crop rotation, which allows a soil disease called Take It All to persist.

Tax breaks will make it worthwhile to invest in grain storage and income diversification, as well as government-backed bridge loans modeled after COVID-era support to weather a bad year without permanent damage, he said.

This is the kind of assistance that the NFU requires the government to provide at the national level.

The union wants an interest-free UK Growth loan linked to drought losses, help with the cost of disposing of livestock killed by bluetongue, faster approval for on-farm tanks and clearer rules to allow farmers to access water as soon as levels allow, echoing Nelms’ argument about storing water on his farm.

“Drought conditions will continue to worsen until we get sustained rainfall across the country, and we still have a role to play in conserving precious water supplies,” Philip Duffy, chief executive of the Environment Agency, said in a statement released by Defra.

The Environment Agency has applied for an order to limit water withdrawals from the River Severn due to drought, and now 10 water companies serving 30 million customers have introduced restrictions.

“A few days or even weeks of wetter weather will not reverse the effects of several months of exceptionally dry conditions,” Duffy added.

Defra said the first significant rain had fallen since June, but it had been patchy, so reservoir and groundwater levels were still falling, although several rivers were seeing short-term increases in flows.

Despite the losses, Nelms hopes farmers will band together – sharing labor, equipment and market routes. He points to the Central Chiltern farming cluster, where producers meet to discuss their problems and work together to find solutions.

“We work together, not compete with each other,” he said.

For a farm like Nelms’s, where there is no irrigation or water storage, this heterogeneity is a problem. Soil parched by months without rain must absorb prolonged rainfall before groundwater can begin to replenish, let alone replenish reservoirs on which future crops may depend.

“Our climate has changed,” said Water Minister Emma Hardy, who chairs the National Drought Task Force, late last month, “and we will continue to take whatever action is necessary.”