‘This is what farming with climate change looks like’

As Britain endures its second-worst harvest on record, Emma Henderson meets the farmers confronting climate chaos and the extreme weather that's transforming our food

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The nation’s harvest is in trouble - again. After months of scorching heat followed by sudden deluges, Britain’s farmers are watching once-reliable crops wither, shrivel or rot in the ground. From Lincolnshire wheat fields to Somerset cider orchards, growers say the weather has turned against them - and it's beginning to show up on the shelves, exposing just how fragile our food system has become in the face of climate chaos.

Scrolling through his phone photos, chef, zero-waste pioneer and keen forager Doug McMaster is desperately trying to find pictures from blackberry picking a few years ago to show the date the bushes were fruiting compared to this year. “I’ve been seeing blackberries five weeks earlier than in the previous four or five years,” he explains as he finds the evidence.

Many blackberries were out in hedgerows in July, and by September were shrivelled, unable to get enough water. It's been the pattern of the year: crops have come early, caused by the unusually dry and sunny weather beginning in March and April, now recorded as the hottest spring in a century. In other words, nature's clock is off - and the knock-on effect is already being felt from wild hedgerows to commercial farms.

Harvest for agricultural, vegetable and fruit producers usually starts from late August and runs into October, and even November for some crops. This rhythm - as old as farming itself - has been thrown off course. This year, across the board, it began two weeks earlier thanks to the hottest summer ever on record, according to the Met Office, with four heatwaves and much of the centre of England suffering from drought.