“It’s been so dry since April. Some days we only had rain on one end of the farm,” Blenkiron said. The 15mm that fell in July was a third of the usual total. The warm weather meant that winter wheat and barley could be harvested early on the estate’s 2,428 hectares (6,000 acres) of cultivated land. But it also meant lower yields: wheat fell by a quarter and barley by 10%, although higher prices helped soften the blow. The lack of water is critical for crops that remain in the ground – onions, potatoes, sugar beets – and for livestock, including cattle and pigs. The last heat wave made things worse. When the Observer visited on a hot August day, the sun was beating down as pigs sought relief in mud troughs. Cattle in three of the four fields were already being fed straw – three months earlier than usual. “We started feeding them straw three weeks ago when we had these extreme temperatures,” Blenkiron said. “That’s what nailed the grass and completely finished it.” The drought is just the latest challenge for UK food producers, who are also struggling with rising costs for animal feed, tractor fuel and fertiliser, as well as labor shortages. It’s not necessarily about performance – it’s also about quality. If you don’t water potatoes, they get scabs and are unmarketableAndrew Blenkiron In an onion field, Blenkiron let a handful of fine, dusty earth run through his fingers. The farm is located in Breckland, an area on the Suffolk-Norfolk border known for its sandy soil, which sits on a chalk aquifer. This soil is great for root vegetables – including carrots, potatoes and sugar beets – but it’s difficult in times of drought as it doesn’t hold any water. Most crops grown on the estate are sold in supermarkets. the sugar beet travels 11 miles down the road to British Sugar’s Bury St Edmunds factory and can end up in Coca-Cola, Cadbury chocolate or Silver Spoon-branded packaging. The onions are to be harvested at the end of the month. Most have reached supermarket size, but are watered every three days, twice as often as usual, to keep them from drying out. Blackford worries about the sugar beet, which is harvested later. The fields are irrigated with water from one of the farm’s two reservoirs, which cost around £1 million to build, money the business is still paying back. Together, the tanks hold 818m litres. the estate also has permission to take water from the river and has a borehole. However, despite this fact, the farm has used all of its usual annual water quota, plus 25% of that reserved for the following year. The “deep water hazard” signs from its smaller reservoir look comical, as the huge hole currently holds less than 50cm of water, about 5% of its full depth. Blenkiron, who traces his love of the land to the mountain farm run by his grandparents in Nidderdale, North Yorkshire, has run the estate for 11 years. “The big concern is that we have a dry winter,” he said. “If we don’t get a lot of rain, it doesn’t soak into the aquifer and the river doesn’t start flowing.” A lack of rain could force the farm to plant fewer crops next year. “We don’t dare plant a crop if we can’t guarantee we have water to keep it going all summer,” he said. “It’s not necessarily about performance, it’s about quality. If you don’t water the potatoes at the right time, they develop scabs and are not marketable.” Rain is also vital in softening the soil before harvesting, to prevent further damage to the soil and to stop the rapid wear of metal tools and machinery. Blenkiron wants the tires banned in East Anglia, which is home to many food producers and is one of eight areas in England where drought was declared by the Environment Agency last week. Anglian Water, which supplies 7 million people in eastern England, said it was not planning a ban. A spokesman said the company was monitoring the situation, but was resilient for dry weather. Farmers across the country are sharing their concerns with the National Farmers Union, whose president, Minette Batters, has called on Tory leadership candidates to draw up emergency water plans to tackle the waste. Blenkiron wants to see changes to the planning system to speed up the construction of water storage facilities on farms: “We need reservoirs built next summer to fill next winter.”
