The climate crisis is making the farming business unsustainable – and without support for us, food security will suffer too, says Riverford founder Guy Singh-Watson
‘This last year has been about grabbing rare, good weather windows’: flooded fields near Newark, Nottinghamshire on 5 January 2024.‘This last year has been about grabbing rare, good weather windows’: flooded fields near Newark, Nottinghamshire on 5 January 2024.arming has always been a risky business. To the chaos of Brexit and the relentless squeezing of the supermarkets, we can add the rapidly escalating threats associated with climate change.
Around the world, farming practice evolves in response to past success. Over 30 years, I’ve recorded planting and harvest dates, temperatures and yields, using data to guide my decisions, just like generations of farmers before me. But over the past decade, as the pace of change in weather patterns has accelerated, the value of that accumulated experience has become increasingly irrelevant.
In horticulture, the biggest problem has been delayed spring plantings, pushed back to late April. For lettuce, this six-to-eight-week delay in planting will shorten the season by up to three weeks as well as disrupting sales and work patterns . Even assuming that the rest of the summer is favourable, this loss of time from a 20-week season is catastrophic for a grower operating on the tightest of margins: any chance of a profit gone before we sow the first seedling.
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