Although parts of the West Midlands are at risk of falling back into a state of serious drought, with fields parched, grassland turning brown in places and a Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) announcement that parts of Central England are still suffering drought conditions, in the North and South of the country, extremely wet weather has impacted on the harvest.

In the South and North-East, heavy rainfall has affected farming; the Environment Agency (EA) reported flash floods in Dorset and localised flooding in Bournemouth yesterday. Heavy showers in the north of England yesterday also affected harvesting activity.

Carlisle has had nearly three times its average rainfall for the time of year; farmers have reported receiving 101ml of rain so far in August, compared to 43 ml for the entire month last year. The rain has affected harvesting in the region; Neil Milbourn, who runs an arable and livestock farm near Carlisle said the rain was hampering barley harvesting and straw baling which should be happening this week.

He elaborated on the impact, “our contractor who does our combining has just put dual wheels on his combine, and we have been turning a lot of straw to get it dry for baling. It just makes a lot more work, which we don’t need this time of year.”