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Record-breaking rain over the past few months has left fields of crops under water and livestock’s health at risk, adding to pressures on food producers.
The flooding and extreme weather linked to climate change will undermine UK food production unless farmers get more help, the National Farmers Union said.
The NFU is calling on the government to do more to compensate flooded farmers and support domestic food production.
The government said it was looking to expand a new compensation scheme.
The NFU has warned of “substantially reduced output” and “potential hits” to the quality of crops in this year’s harvest thanks to weeks of rain since the autumn.
NFU vice president Rachel Hallos said UK farmers were “on the front line of climate change – one of the biggest threats to UK food security”.
“These extremes could soon become the norm,” she told the BBC. “We need a clear plan from government to prepare, adapt and recover from our changing climate in the short and long term so that we can continue to produce food and care for the countryside.”
Debbie Wilkins is a mixed dairy, beef and arable farmer, with much of her 900 acres of land at Norton Court Farm, near Gloucester, lying in the floodplain.
Debbie, whose family have farmed there since 1936, said the land used to flood every six years when she was young, but had flooded three times last year and six times already this year.
By Malcolm Prior and Lucy Vladev, BBC News rural affairs
