Farmers looking at ‘huge losses’ after major incident declared over flooding
Almost every river in England is running exceptionally high, according to Environment Agency data.
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Your support makes all the difference.Farmers are likely to see “huge losses” after a relentless season of storms, one flood-hit grower has said, as the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) said there should be compensation for those holding flood water in their fields.
Nottinghamshire County Council has declared a major incident, and the level of the River Trent has reached some of its highest points since 2000, according to the Environment Agency’s flood director Caroline Douglass.
Farms across England, as well as more than 1,000 homes, have been affected, and the NFU is calling on the Government to make changes to flood defences and support schemes to better protect rural businesses.
Peter Gadd, a farmer in Nottinghamshire and chairman of the NFU’s crops board in the East Midlands, said Storm Babet and Storm Ciaran in the autumn hit within 10 days of him having sown a crop of wheat and barley – 40% of which washed away before emerging from seed.
He believes he has lost about £14,000 to £15,000 in the current floods, though he can only tally the total once the water has cleared, for which he will receive no compensation or insurance payout.
It's going to be quite a while yet before it dries up until we know what we've actually lost
“On the south side of Nottingham there are huge areas of land now under water and some of those areas will have three or four feet of water in them,” he told the PA news agency.
“Now all that water’s got to get away, and many of those ponded areas will have growing crops underneath them at the moment.
“So it’s going to be quite a while yet before it dries up until we know what we’ve actually lost. But as an absolute minimum, there’s going to be huge losses.
“We’ve just got to see what we can retrieve in the spring, but many of the crops that have been sown and those that were unharvested that are now under water will not be retrievable.”
Mr Gadd said that one of the reasons his area floods is that the Environment Agency is not maintaining the rivers properly and is allowing too much silt to build up.
He said officials are generally apathetic about river maintenance, which could end up jeopardising the nation’s food security.
A Defra spokesman said: “We are acutely aware of the impact extreme weather can have on the farming community, who work tirelessly to provide public goods and protect nature.
“Since 2015, we have protected over 700,000 acres of agricultural land from the impacts of flooding and are also investing £5.2 billion to better protect communities from flooding and coastal erosion, including those who live in rural areas.
“Landowners are entitled to compensation for losses and damages as a result of temporary flood storage areas and we encourage farmers to take up new flood mitigation options that are available to them.”
Since September, the start of the storm year, eight named storms have hit the UK, the highest number in a season since the Met Office began naming them in 2015.
They have turned the country into what hydrologist Professor Hannah Cloke of the University of Reading described as a “sopping wet sponge”.
Data from the Environment Agency shows almost every river in England to be exceptionally high, with some rivers reaching their highest flow on record, such as the River Itchen in Southampton, which had a flow double its previous record in December.
Debbie Wilkins, a farmer in Gloucestershire, has decided it is too risky to grow crops in her fields alongside the River Severn.
Instead, she leaves them to work as floodplains, which she said stores water upstream that would otherwise pass through urban areas and put properties at risk, and provides a habitat for wildlife.
Probably about a third of the farm, about 300 acres, is flood plains and that's all under water at the moment
She said: “Probably about a third of the farm, about 300 acres, is flood plains and that’s all under water at the moment.
“But those are flood plain meadows and they do flood regularly. I think it used to be every four or five years and now it’s two or three times a year, so it seems to be increasing.
“They’re species-rich grassland that we cut hay from in the summer and graze cattle in after, so they’re quite resilient because of that.”
Ms Wilkins hopes the new support measures announced by the Government on Thursday, designed to reward farmers for maintaining habitats, will make her method more profitable and said it could encourage other farmers growing crops in flood plains to follow suit.