Giant dust clouds rose from a green-red combine harvester as it crawled across a parched field, a sign that something was awry with UK farmer John Pawsey’s land.
“It suddenly, completely dried out,” Pawsey said. For weeks the drought “just seems to have gone on for ever” on his farm in the eastern county of Suffolk.
English farmers have been contending with the driest July ever recorded by the Met Office weather agency — unwelcome news for those like Pawsey who have only seen paltry yields of crops such as oats, wheat and vetch.
Concern over food security has gripped Britain’s headlines amid a series of heatwaves this year.
“All of our fears were realised when we got our combines into the field and realised that actually the yield was … between 25 and 30 percent down,” Pawsey said.
