Innovation is the key to improved harvests

Overall, the quality of the summer’s harvest is expected to be high thanks to the settled period of good weather over recent months. What has held yields back however is the total area dedicated to sowing wheat was lower than normal.

Torrid weather conditions last year and at the start of 2013 made for tricky drilling conditions, and it limited how much land was given over to the crop.

Brett Askew, the National Farmers’ Union’s regional crops board chairman, said most farmers in Yorkshire and the North East were experiencing lower yields than last year. As a result, he expects the UK to import higher than normal volumes of wheat for the second year running.

“Local farmers worked really hard to get this year’s crop up and running, but the wheat area planted was much reduced – by 19 per cent nationally,” Mr Askew said.

“So while our harvest is better than anticipated earlier in the year, it comes as no surprise that overall our wheat production will be significantly down, given that drilling conditions were so difficult.

“The situation is being made more challenging still given lower world prices, which are currently £50 a tonne down, and the fact that unusually most farmers have not sold a proportion of their crop in advance given the level of uncertainty over what the harvest would deliver.

“This means that over the coming months, most arable farmers in our region will still be facing difficulties in managing their cashflow.”