For UK Farmers Worst Year In Living Memory: Drought, Then Floods & Endless Cloud - Guardian

"It's been the worst year in living memory," says Jonathan Lukies, who farms 288 hectares (720 acres) of arable and fruit orchards near Stansted, Essex. "It was horrific."

This year's weather has been a rollercoaster for British farmers that most now just want to forget. With a record drought afflicting most of England in the early spring – one so severe it prompted a series of emergency meetings with government – farmers desperately needed above-average rainfall to replenish the soil for planting. Their prayers for rain were answered – but in the worst possible way, with the wettest early summer ever recorded, followed by a near-sunless summer and torrential downpours in many areas late in the growing season.

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His views are echoed across the farming community. Guy Gagen, crops adviser at the National Farmers' Union (NFU), says: "Speaking to farmers who have been in business for decades, they don't remember anything being as difficult as this year. There have been bad years before, of course, but this has been terrible right across the growing season, from beginning to end. "One of the problems was that it was just so dark – there was too little sunlight for crops to grow. If you think back, some days in June were like November. That really reduced productivity."

Every sector of farming has been hit. Arable farmers have seen yields of wheat fall by 14%, according to the NFU, reducing the UK's wheat crop to levels not seen since the 1980s – before many farmers invested in modern technology such as grain driers. Vegetable growers have suffered, with half the pea crop wiped out across the country. Meat producers, from poultry to pig farming, have seen their overheads soar due to the poor global grain harvest raising feed prices. Salad and fruit growers have also had a dreadful year, with fresh produce being thrown away or fetching abnormally low prices during June and July, as people were simply not buying summery foods because of the miserable weather.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/12/weather-uk-farmers-food-production