Food Supply: Weather

(asked on 18th July 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the impact that the July 2022 heatwave will have on the UK's food supply.


Answered by
Victoria Prentis Portrait
Victoria Prentis
Attorney General
This question was answered on 1st August 2022

The UK has a highly resilient food supply chain, as demonstrated throughout the Covid-19 response. Our high degree of food security is built on supply from diverse sources; strong domestic production as well as imports through stable trade routes. We produce 60% of all the food we need, and 74% of food which we can grow or rear in the UK for all or part of the year. Through international trade, UK consumers have access to food products that cannot be produced here, or at least not on a year-round basis. This supplements domestic production, and also ensures that any disruption from risks such as adverse weather or disease does not affect the UK's overall security of supply.

This year, early season grass growth has generally been sufficient for good cutting and grazing, with some regional variation. Whilst growth in some areas is now being impacted by the hot dry conditions, this is not unusual at this point in the summer and livestock farmers have a range of options available to them when grass growth declines. Some farmers will need to supplement livestock diets with additional conserved forage or cereals based feeds, but good early silage cuts and the current strong prices for the dairy, beef and sheep sectors should help support this. Promising forage maize crops across the majority of the UK should further bolster winter forage stocks when the maize harvest commences in the coming months.

The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board’s first harvest report of the 2022/23 season reports that the dry weather has enabled farmers to make a good start on the winter barley and oilseed rape harvest, particularly in southern and eastern regions of England, and where possible on winter wheat. To overcome the high temperatures, farmers have been working late at night and early in the morning and grain cooling has been required. It is still too early to understand whether the hot weather has impacted yields or crop conditions.

Defra has well established ways of working with the industry and across Government to monitor risks that may arise. This includes extensive, regular and ongoing engagement in preparedness for, and response to, issues with the potential to cause disruption to food supply chains.

We continue to keep the weather situation and any subsequent impact on grass growth and the arable harvest under close review, including through the UK Agriculture Market Monitoring Group, which Defra and the Devolved Administrations set up to monitor the UK market situation across all key agricultural commodities. We have also increased engagement with the industry to supplement Government analysis with real-time intelligence. This provides the Government with the best possible intelligence on how the sector is performing.

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