Climate change and its impact on UK agriculture

Agriculture is becoming more vulnerable to the UK’s changing climate and increasingly unpredictable seasons.

Our Climate Change Adaptation report has found warmer, drier weather, more extreme rainfall and increased flooding means farming must start adapting to climate change now to lessen its impact as well as benefit from any opportunities it presents.

Raising awareness of this within the agriculture sector is crucial, as well as providing the evidence, analysis, guidance and tools to help with decision making.

Farmers are being urged to assess their businesses now to identify actions they can take to tackle the effects of climate change.

Our report sets out in detail the impacts and opportunities presented by these changes across a range of temperature increase scenarios, identifies key industry actions and gives resources and information for farmers and growers to help their businesses. It has been submitted as part of the Government’s Adaptation Reporting Power programme. 

The areas identified as most at threat right now are: 

• Farm assets – For example, increased flooding leading to waterlogging and soil erosion, and damage to farm buildings and equipment
• Productivity – Extreme weather events such as heatwaves, extended periods of drought, high rainfall, and flooding impacting livestock and crops

These are critical now and could have a chronic impact on food production.

The report also highlights opportunities that the changing weather could present for UK agriculture.

These include:

• Different legumes for home-grown proteins
• Lower winter feed and energy costs from livestock housing due to warmer winters
• New crops such as soya, sunflower and grain maize could become viable

As well as these high-priority areas that present an immediate threat, the report also identifies medium- and low-priority risks and opportunities that could become more important if temperature rises remain unchecked.

We have outlined some of the risks, opportunities and actions identified in the report for you to consider in relation to your farming business.

We believe it is imperative that we support our levy payers to be competitive and sustainable during the current changes and in the future, but also collaboration is needed to ensure resilience across the industry.

We are already carrying out a number of related activities and projects, but we will look to work in partnerships with industry, governments and research to find the best way to support our levy payers.