Price of bread is set to rise after worst wheat harvest in 40 years due to extreme weather
- Volatile extremes of rainfall followed by intense heat has destroyed wheat crops
- Farmers say their grain silos are nearly empty where they should be full by now
- Some millers have already started charging up to 10 per cent more for flour
The price of bread is set to rise after the worst wheat harvest in 40 years was caused by a volatile year of weather.
Extreme weather since last autumn could mean wheat yields fall by up to 40 per cent – pushing up the price of bread and other baked products.
Some millers have already started charging 10 per cent more for flour and it is feared a no deal Brexit will cause prices to rise further.
‘We’re looking at a 30% reduction in our good fields, in some of our poor fields it’s is even more’, Matt Culley, an arable farmer from Hampshire who is chair of the NFU’s crop board, told the BBC.
Extreme weather since last autumn could mean wheat yields fall by up to 40 per cent – pushing up the price of bread and other baked products (file image)
Extremely wet weather followed by intense drought-causing heat is to blame for the poor harvest, according to the UK’s Met Office.
The National Farmers’ Union said farmers were hit by a triple-whammy of severe weather starting with heavy rainfall last autumn when the crops were planted.
More intense rain continued into February, the wettest ever recorded, with storms Ciara, Dennis and Jorge ravaging fields.
Crops struggled to grow in the water-clogged soil but in the following months an intense few weeks of heat brought with it a drought that further stunted growth.
Another heavy bout of rain in August delayed the harvest and grain silos are almost empty where they should be full, according to one farmer.
Of what remains in the fields, most of it is only suitable for cattle feed, said another.
Some millers have already started charging 10 per cent more for flour and it is feared a no deal Brexit will cause prices to rise further. Pictured, a French farmer drove a tractor over wheat stubble on Tuesday
A spokesperson for the Met Office explained: ‘UK climate projections show a trend towards hotter and drier summers and warmer, wetter winters.’
Alex Waugh, who runs the National Association of British and Irish Millers, said the price of wheat has been increasing steadily since the summer, meaning the price of flour will rise.
‘It’s reached the point where we can’t afford to keep selling flour at the price that we are,’ Paul Munsey of Wessex Mill in Oxfordshire told BBC News.
He has already increased the price of his flour by 12 per cent.
Some 85 per cent of wheat used for flour is grown in the UK, meaning imports will have to make up the shortfall.
In the event of a no-deal Brexit, wheat imports could be liable for a £79 per tonne tariff, said the National Association of British and Irish Millers.
It would mean another 40 per cent rise in wheat prices.
Mr Waugh said wheat prices are up by £40 a tonne – an increase of more than 20 per cent. Millers work at tight margins so the brunt of the price rise will be passed on to customers.
Agata Towpik, who runs Marcopolo Bakery in Wantage, is considering rising prices for only the second time since she and her husband Peter started the business a decade ago.
‘Flour is our main ingredient and all the prices are increasing at the moment, so that will probably force us to put our prices up,’ she told the BBC.