The rapeseed harvest in England is down 33% this year due to heavy rainfall at the end of 2023 impacting production, according to data published by the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (ECIU) reported by The Guardian.
All the main cereal crops and rapeseed saw reductions in yields this year compared to 2023 excluding oats, which increased by 8.5%. Overall yields were down on the five-year average.
Rapeseed production was estimated to have fallen to 687,000 tonnes in 2024, driven by a 29% decrease in area to 245,000ha and a 7.9% reduction in yield to 2.8 tonnes/ha, the 10 October report said.
According to ECIU estimates, farmers could lose £600M (US$778M) on five key crops – wheat, winter and spring barley, oats and rapeseed – where production was down 15% in total.
“While shoppers have been partly insulated by imports picking up some of the slack, Britain’s farmers have borne the brunt of the second worst harvest on record,” ECIU land, food and farming analyst Tom Lancaster was quoted as saying.
“Climate change is the biggest threat to UK food security. And these impacts are only going to get worse until we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.”
Lancaster urged the UK government to use the budget on 30 October to support more sustainable farming that would build resilience to extreme weather conditions.
“The alternative is to allow the effects of these climate impacts to worsen in the years ahead,” he said.
At the time of the report, data for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland was not available but would be included in final production estimates for the UK in December 2024.