Many horticulture crops have fared poorly this year, growers’ organisations have announced. From increased slug activity causing concern for growers of a range of crops, which looks set to continue into next season, to blight, which has spread freely in the damp conditions and affected varieties of potatoes previously thought to be resistant, the effects of a cool, damp season are being felt throughout most of the UK.

Fruit has also been affected, maturing later and to poorer quality. Conditions at the beginning of the year were also far from ideal for blossoming trees, with cool winter weather followed by a late frost hampering the initial development of apples and pears in particular.

This, in addition to drought in the world’s major cereal growing regions and the wettest spring and second wettest summer on record in the UK, which has resulted in delays, dangerous working conditions and lower yields during harvest, is expected to lead to price rises across the UK this year.

According to data from HGCA, the UK’s wheat harvest is progressing as slowly as in 2008. Yields of a range of crops from oilseed rape to wheat have also been extremely variable this year. However, weather improvements this week could lead mean progress improves in some regions.

Poor outlook for food prices

The news of reduced yields and higher prices will not be welcome, particularly after figures released last month showed inflation has risen at a higher than anticipated rate, easily eclipsing wage rises. The Office of National Statistics’ Consumer Price Index revealed that between June and July inflation rose from 2.4 per cent to 2.6 per cent.

The rise is much higher than last year’s and ONS said food was one of the major upward pressures between July 2011 and this year. The Bank of England has repeatedly overshot its target of 2 per cent inflation.

Last month, food prices were shown to have risen between 6 and 10 per cent worldwide, according to figures from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Bank. Whilst in the UK, food price rises will undoubtedly cause deep concern, on the world stage the implications are extremely serious.

Citing fears that grain rallies sparked in response to drought in the American Midwest, which saw cereal prices reach record highs in July, would lead to a food crisis possibly rivalling that of 2008, UN FAO leader Jose Graziano da Silva has appealed to the United Sates to ease its biofuels mandate, which commits 40 per cent of the country’s maize to bioethanol production, in an attempt to ease pressure and right grain prices.  

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