Year’s worth of British bread lost since 2020 amid extreme weather – analysis

Wheat production is down by the equivalent of more than one year’s supply of British bread in recent years amid increasingly extreme weather, an analysis of UK harvest data suggests.

The UK has seen a total deficit in wheat production of more than seven million tonnes between 2020 to 2024, according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).

This is enough to bake more than four billion loaves of bread when considering the proportion of UK wheat then used for milling flour, the researchers found, equating to 64 loaves of bread for every person in the UK.

The ECIU also warned that 2025 will likely see another poor harvest after a record-breaking hot and dry spring and summer, meaning this deficit is set to grow further, and therefore leaving the UK more dependent on imports.

Tom Lancaster, ECIU land, food and farming analyst, said: “This decade has already seen some of the worst harvests on record after extreme rainfall made it impossible for farmers to drill and manage crops.

“And this year we’ve seen the opposite as crops suffered in the hottest and one of the driest springs and summers on record.

“This is what farming in a changing climate looks like. Extreme weather is making our bread less British, as millers have to turn to imports due to shortfalls in UK production, costing British farmers billions in lost income and reducing our self-sufficiency in our main, staple crop.

“Although we can do more to support our farmers to adapt to these extremes, only reducing planet warming emissions to net zero can prevent these losses to extreme weather escalating in the years to come.”

It comes after two of the three worst harvests on record occurred this decade following extreme wet weather.

The worst was seen in 2020 and third worst in 2024.

Experts have said that wetter, warmer winters are consistent with climate projections while the extreme rainfall seen during 2023 and 2024 was made 10 times more likely by climate change.

This wet weather disrupted farmers’ ability to drill crops and hit yields last year.

In order to make up the shortfall in UK production, millers have had to import record levels of wheat to mill flour for bread, cakes and biscuits, the ECIU said.

In autumn last year, imports of wheat were double the five-year average as UK self-sufficiency in wheat collapsed from 96% in 2023 to 79% in 2024, according to its analysis.

The ECIU also found that volatility in this decade has become increasingly unmanageable as good harvest years are no longer offsetting the poor ones over the long-term.

Based on current yield estimates from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) and crop area estimates, the UK wheat harvest could be down by nearly two million tonnes compared to the 20-year average for 2005-2024, it found.

If around two fifths of this go to milling, it would equate to enough wheat to have baked 18 loaves of bread for everyone in the UK, the ECIU added.