Drought, falling yields and weak commodity prices have left some Dorset farms facing a hard calculation – can they afford to put another crop in the ground?
After a punishing summer of drought, falling yields and stubbornly weak commodity prices, some Dorset farmers are confronting an uncomfortable question: does it make financial sense to put another crop in the ground?
Farm businesses across the county are entering the autumn under serious pressure, says Tim Gelfs, chair of Dorset NFU, with arable and dairy farms among those being hit hardest: ‘There are a lot of people, particularly the dairy and arable boys, who are severely struggling and losing money,’ he told Dorset Life.
For arable farms, the arithmetic has become increasingly difficult. Most production costs have already been incurred before a crop is harvested. This year, after months of exceptionally dry weather, many farmers have then brought in considerably less grain than expected.
‘They’ve had all the costs in fertiliser and seed, sprays and fuel, and they’re massively down on yields,’ said Tim. ‘In some instances they’re 30 per cent down. And the price isn’t – it has turned a little bit, but it’s still not that hot.’
Leave them in the shed?
The problem is not simply a bad 2026 harvest in isolation. Across British agriculture, several difficult seasons have followed one another, steadily eating into the reserves farms use to absorb a poor year.
The Central Association of Agricultural Valuers (CAAV) says the combination of high input costs, difficult weather and low commodity values over the past four years has taken a toll on arable businesses not seen since at least the late 1980s.
‘Many parts of farming face serious problems of cash flow and liquidity as they look into the autumn,’ said CAAV secretary and adviser Jeremy Moody. ‘The challenges we face are moving faster than policy is responding.’
The organisation has backed the farming industry’s call for a government-supported, interest-free ‘Keep Britain Growing Loan’ to help businesses through the immediate cashflow crisis.
In Dorset, the pressure extends beyond arable farms.
Dairy farmers have been hit by significant falls in the farmgate milk prices just as the drought has reduced grass growth and pushed some into feeding livestock with forage that would normally have been kept for winter.
‘They’ve had severe milk price cuts, and now they’re having to use their winter feed,’ Tim said.
That creates a second problem. Feed being eaten now will have to be replaced before the colder months, adding another cost to businesses whose margins have already been squeezed.
For both dairy and arable sectors, however, the most troubling question is what happens next?
With an unprecedented El Niño developing and 2027 forecast to bring another significant pulse of global heat, farmers are already looking nervously towards next summer. An arable farmer preparing to drill this autumn must commit to another round of seed, fertiliser, sprays, fuel and machinery costs – months before knowing either the size of the harvest or the price the crop will eventually command.
After a year in which some crops have produced substantially less than expected, the calculation becomes harder.
‘If you’re an arable farmer and you’ve just lost a load of money, you’d be questioning your next move. If we are going to have a similar hot year in 2027, you have to ask whether you’re better off just leaving the machines in the shed,’ said Tim.
A loan buys time
It is not an entirely theoretical question. Farmers across Dorset are already weighing the cost of putting another crop in the ground after a harvest that has failed to cover expectations. Paying the considerable cost of producing a crop only to see drought reduce both yield and earning potential, simply planting again can begin to look like an increasingly large financial gamble.
That is why the debate over an interest-free government loan matters beyond simply providing farmers with cheaper borrowing. Tim says such a scheme would offer something farmers feel has been conspicuously lacking: a visible commitment from government to domestic agriculture.
‘It would help,’ he said. ‘Almost irrespective of the money and the loan and the interest, even better is the fact it would be a visible commitment from the government to agriculture. It would send a strong message that they are not just words.’
The CAAV argues that emergency financial help alone will not solve the deeper problem.
Jeremy Moody says farming increasingly needs to find business models capable of producing a worthwhile margin despite greater climatic and financial volatility, potentially through different crops and varieties, lower-cost production systems and new routes to market.
Government, he argues, should concentrate less on directing farmers and more on creating the conditions in which businesses can adapt. That could include changes to planning and capital allowances, alongside greater support for investment in soil health and water collection and storage, allowing farms to become more resilient to increasingly extreme weather.
‘It is also for government policies to create the supportive policy framework for farm businesses to manage this process; not guiding but enabling, removing the problems,’ he said.
British farmers have always worked with variable weather and volatile markets. But repeated difficult seasons are becoming harder to absorb when production costs climb ever higher and the value of the crop or milk leaving the farm does not rise with them.
A poor harvest can be survived. Several poor years in succession begin to change businesses.
For Dorset’s farmers, therefore, the immediate concern is cashflow after an exceptionally difficult summer. Behind it sits a considerably larger question.
If producing food repeatedly costs more than farmers can reasonably expect to earn from it, how long before leaving the machinery in the shed stops being a frustrated thought and starts becoming a rational business decision?
