British barley crops have suffered a poor harvest due to destructive weather patterns, according to the BBC.
What's happening?
Early government data is showing that 2025 barley harvests in England have decreased by 14% versus 2024, and spring barley yields dropped by 23%. Several farmers in the Newbury region west of London did not mince words about how dire the situation was.
"Probably the worst I've recorded in my career, over 40 years," said farmer Dan Willis, per the BBC. "The weather has played its part horrifically. We had an extremely wet autumn, an extremely wet winter, followed by an extremely dry spring and summer. It really did impact the yields. Something in the order of between 50 and 70% in places."
Similar trends have been seen in the United States, India, Korea, Japan, and elsewhere in the world.
Why are farming yields important?
There are immediate economic impacts on farmers unable to achieve sufficient harvests.
"If you look, there's a huge amount of farm auctions, farm dispersal sales going on constantly at the moment," said local farmer George Brown, per the BBC. "There's a lot of land for sale. People don't have the confidence to carry on. I absolutely want to keep farming, it gets to the point where if there's no money in it then you've got to take a change of tack."
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For end consumers, these challenges regularly translate into increased prices at the grocery store.
The primary driving factor to the floods, heat waves, and droughts upending agriculture is atmospheric pollution.
What's being done about farming yields?
Addressing this root cause of destructive weather trends will require dramatically lowering pollution. Some of the most effective ways to do so at an individual level include switching to an EV, upgrading to a heat pump, relying on renewable energy, and having a more plant-leaning diet.
Until pollution drops and the effects are reflected in weather patterns, one expert suggests farmers will need to get used to poor yields.
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"We need to come to terms with and tackle and make sure we prepared to fight it. To control it, to mitigate it," said crop scientist Paola Tosi, per the BBC. "At the University of Reading there is research going back to 1990 saying that this was going to happen and that crops were going to suffer."
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