Record rainfall has battered wheat crops in the UK and France, Europe’s largest producer, and is expected to drive up prices significantly this year.
Heavy downpours since last autumn prevented farmers from planting and damaged yields in both countries, pushing milling-wheat futures on the Euronext exchange to their highest levels in a year.
“After the UK’s record-breaking wet winter hit crops here, farmers in France are now contending with the impacts of ceaseless rains this spring,” said Tom Lancaster, land, food and farming analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), a think-tank.
“France is Europe’s biggest grower of wheat, and with harvests in the UK anticipated to be down by up to a fifth due to heavy rains here that were made worse by climate change, there is a real risk that a poor harvest in France could drive up prices.”
Rainfall throughout last autumn and winter in the UK and Ireland was around 20 per cent heavier as a result of human-induced climate change, a recent study by the World Weather Attribution academic research collaboration has concluded.
This heavier rainfall had become around 10 times more likely as a result of climate change, the researchers estimated.
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