Made in England ResearchDataset
How weather has changed England's harvest: 30 years of crop yields
Wet autumns have cost English wheat growers more than heatwaves have. Defra crop yields since 1990 set against Met Office weather records, with the standout years from the 2012 washout to the record-hot summer of 2026.
England grows most of the UK's wheat: 89% of the 2025 crop by weight, on Defra's figures. This page sets 36 years of Defra crop yields, from the 1990 harvest to 2025, against the Met Office's weather records for England, and adds Defra's first estimate for 2026. The question is a simple one. When the harvest has a bad year, was it the weather, and if so, what kind?
The short answer is that wet ground at sowing time has done more damage to English wheat than heat has. Summer heatwaves have barely dented wheat yields. In 2026, the hottest English summer on record, the wheat yield went up, though it stayed below the five-year average. Sugar beet, which grows through the summer, is a different story.
Key figures
- 5.4%below trend: the average UK wheat yield in the harvests that followed the seven wettest autumns of the 36 from 1989 to 2024. After the seven hottest summers, wheat was 0.4% below trend, which is next to nothing.
- 23.7°CEngland's average daily maximum temperature in summer 2026, the highest in Met Office records back to 1884. July had 6.5mm of rain, the driest July since 1836. Defra's first estimate still puts England's wheat yield up 2.7% on 2025.
- 5.6%the rise in the average UK wheat yield between the 1990s (7.46 t/ha) and the last ten harvests (7.87 t/ha). Sugar beet yields rose 49% over the same span.
- 68%the fall in the area of oilseed rape grown in the UK between 2012 and 2025. Fewer fields, not worse weather, is the main reason the crop has shrunk.
Crop yields since 1990
UK crop yields, tonnes per hectare, 1990 to 2025. Dashed lines mark the standout years discussed below.
WheatBarleyOilseed rape
Source: Defra, cereal and oilseed rape production, UK cereal yields summary, updated 8 October 2026.
Download the figures, 1990 to 2026 (CSV)
UK wheat yields climbed through the 1990s and then more or less stopped. The best harvest in the series was 2015, at 8.97 tonnes a hectare, with 2019 close behind at 8.94. No year since has matched either. A straight line through all 36 years rises by just 0.017 tonnes a hectare a year. For England on its own, where Defra's regional figures start in 1999, the line is flat.
Barley has crept up a little faster, 10% between the 1990s and the last decade. Around those slow trends the swings from year to year are large. Wheat's best year was 35% above its worst, and the worst was 2012.
Which weather hurts the harvest
Average UK yield against trend in the seven most extreme years for each kind of weather, harvests 1990 to 2025. Weather is for England.
WheatOilseed rape
Sources: Defra, cereal and oilseed rape production (yields); Met Office, HadUK-Grid England series (rainfall, maximum temperature). Our analysis.
To see which weather lines up with poor harvests, we compared each year's yield with its long-run trend. We then ranked the 36 harvests by each kind of weather and took the seven most extreme, roughly the top fifth, for each.
The clearest signal is rain in the autumn before harvest, when winter wheat and oilseed rape go in. After the seven wettest autumns, UK wheat yields averaged 5.4% below trend. In the other 29 years they averaged 1.3% above it. Oilseed rape, which has to get established before winter, did worse: 9.0% below trend.
Dry springs came next for wheat, at 3.8% below trend, though oilseed rape did better than usual in those years. Summer heat hardly shows up at all. The seven hottest summers left wheat 0.4% below trend and oilseed rape 1.4% above it.
The link is real but loose. Two of the seven wettest autumns, in 1998 and 2022, were followed by wheat harvests above trend. Timing matters as much as the total. Autumn 2025 was wetter than average (324.7mm against a 1991 to 2020 average of 250.8mm), but its wettest month was November, and Defra describes drilling conditions that autumn as good.
Sugar beet is the exception. It grows through the summer and is lifted in autumn and winter, and its bad years line up with heat and drought. In the seven driest summers it averaged 6.7% below its trend, and in the seven hottest 5.4% below.
Year by year
Crop yields against the weather, every harvest since 1990. Wheat years 5% or more away from trend are in bold. Linked years are covered below.
| Harvest | Wheat | Wheat vs trend | Barley | Oilseed rape | Sugar beet | Potatoes | Autumn rain before (mm) | Spring rain (mm) | Summer rain (mm) | Summer max temp (°C) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | 6.97 | −6.3% | 5.22 | 3.10 | 40.7 | – | 174.7 | 80.0 | 141.8 | 20.7 |
| 1991 | 7.25 | −2.8% | 5.47 | 2.92 | 44.4 | – | 198.8 | 141.3 | 181.3 | 19.6 |
| 1992 | 6.82 | −8.7% | 5.67 | 2.88 | 51.5 | – | 209.0 | 190.8 | 232.2 | 19.9 |
| 1993 | 7.33 | −2.1% | 5.18 | 2.60 | 49.1 | – | 292.8 | 193.8 | 186.8 | 19.1 |
| 1994 | 7.35 | −2.1% | 5.37 | 2.53 | 44.7 | – | 266.5 | 204.1 | 142.3 | 20.5 |
| 1995 | 7.70 | +2.3% | 5.73 | 2.81 | 43.0 | – | 264.1 | 131.0 | 65.8 | 22.0 |
| 1996 | 8.15 | +8.1% | 6.14 | 3.41 | 52.4 | – | 230.1 | 130.2 | 142.6 | 20.4 |
| 1997 | 7.38 | −2.3% | 5.76 | 3.23 | 56.5 | – | 221.3 | 117.8 | 256.5 | 20.6 |
| 1998 | 7.56 | −0.2% | 5.29 | 2.94 | 53.0 | – | 194.2 | 234.7 | 217.5 | 19.1 |
| 1999 | 8.05 | +6.1% | 5.58 | 3.23 | 58.0 | – | 308.5 | 191.0 | 207.0 | 20.2 |
| 2000 | 8.01 | +5.3% | 5.76 | 2.88 | 52.5 | – | 237.9 | 249.0 | 164.0 | 19.7 |
| 2001 | 7.08 | −7.1% | 5.35 | 2.56 | 47.0 | – | 443.7 | 218.8 | 188.0 | 20.3 |
| 2002 | 8.00 | +4.7% | 5.57 | 3.40 | 56.5 | – | 255.9 | 178.2 | 204.9 | 19.8 |
| 2003 | 7.78 | +1.6% | 5.91 | 3.27 | 56.6 | – | 299.3 | 139.0 | 150.6 | 21.7 |
| 2004 | 7.77 | +1.2% | 5.76 | 2.90 | 58.7 | – | 177.8 | 169.0 | 270.0 | 20.4 |
| 2005 | 7.96 | +3.5% | 5.86 | 3.19 | 58.6 | – | 230.4 | 161.3 | 174.5 | 20.5 |
| 2006 | 8.04 | +4.3% | 5.94 | 3.29 | 56.9 | – | 243.7 | 224.3 | 152.9 | 22.0 |
| 2007 | 7.23 | −6.3% | 5.66 | 3.09 | 53.9 | – | 275.4 | 173.9 | 324.3 | 19.4 |
| 2008 | 8.28 | +7.0% | 5.95 | 3.30 | 63.9 | – | 159.2 | 218.1 | 265.6 | 19.6 |
| 2009 | 7.93 | +2.2% | 5.83 | 3.35 | 74.0 | – | 272.2 | 135.0 | 242.9 | 20.3 |
| 2010 | 7.70 | −1.0% | 5.70 | 3.50 | 53.6 | – | 268.5 | 112.9 | 194.7 | 20.5 |
| 2011 | 7.70 | −1.2% | 5.70 | 3.94 | 75.5 | 47.5 | 243.1 | 79.1 | 207.5 | 19.4 |
| 2012 | 6.66 | −14.7% | 5.51 | 3.39 | 62.1 | 38.0 | 165.8 | 216.9 | 351.2 | 19.1 |
| 2013 | 7.38 | −5.6% | 5.85 | 2.98 | 69.9 | 45.6 | 315.0 | 168.4 | 149.5 | 21.1 |
| 2014 | 8.58 | +9.4% | 6.40 | 3.65 | 79.8 | 47.4 | 256.2 | 197.8 | 205.3 | 20.6 |
| 2015 | 8.97 | +14.2% | 6.69 | 3.90 | 74.1 | 49.2 | 222.1 | 153.8 | 206.7 | 19.9 |
| 2016 | 7.89 | +0.2% | 5.93 | 3.06 | 71.2 | 44.9 | 228.8 | 192.1 | 199.6 | 20.5 |
| 2017 | 8.28 | +4.9% | 6.09 | 3.85 | 83.4 | 49.1 | 199.0 | 144.7 | 245.3 | 20.4 |
| 2018 | 7.76 | −1.9% | 5.72 | 3.45 | 69.1 | 41.6 | 212.6 | 226.2 | 116.9 | 22.4 |
| 2019 | 8.94 | +12.7% | 6.92 | 3.31 | 77.7 | 45.4 | 213.9 | 165.8 | 261.5 | 20.9 |
| 2020 | 6.96 | −12.3% | 5.85 | 2.73 | 56.6 | 46.1 | 361.1 | 89.0 | 271.8 | 20.4 |
| 2021 | 7.81 | −1.8% | 6.05 | 3.19 | 81.1 | 45.8 | 256.2 | 175.2 | 178.1 | 20.6 |
| 2022 | 8.57 | +7.5% | 6.62 | 3.73 | 63.9 | 45.9 | 228.8 | 120.3 | 104.7 | 22.5 |
| 2023 | 8.10 | +1.3% | 6.10 | 3.10 | 78.2 | 47.5 | 328.5 | 230.3 | 236.9 | 21.0 |
| 2024 | 7.28 | −9.1% | 5.94 | 2.81 | 76.3 | 46.2 | 348.4 | 265.9 | 160.8 | 20.4 |
| 2025 | 7.16 | −10.8% | 5.90 | 3.70 | 77.6 | 47.6 | 307.7 | 75.6 | 142.3 | 22.4 |
| 2026 | – | – | – | – | – | – | 324.7 | 112.0 | 132.9 | 23.7 |
The standout years
1995: the driest summer on record, and a decent wheat crop
England had 65.8mm of rain between June and August 1995, the lowest summer total in the Met Office series that starts in 1836. Wheat still came in at 7.70 t/ha, 2.3% above trend. Sugar beet did not cope so well: 43.0 t/ha, 12.9% below its trend.
2001: the wettest autumn on record
Autumn 2000 brought 443.7mm of rain to England, the most for any autumn since 1836. The UK wheat area for the 2001 harvest fell 21.6% to 1,635 thousand hectares, and the yield on what was planted was 7.08 t/ha, 7.1% below trend. Oilseed rape was 17.2% below its trend.
2012: the wet, dull year
Summer 2012 was the third wettest in England since 1836, with 351.2mm, and one of the dullest: 440.4 hours of sunshine, the fifth lowest since the sunshine series starts in 1910. UK wheat fell to 6.66 t/ha, the lowest since 1988 and 14.7% below trend, the furthest below trend of any year here. Defra's Agriculture in the United Kingdom 2012 put it down to "high disease pressure throughout the spring and summer and poor sunlight levels during grain fill".
Potatoes had their worst year in the current series: 38.0 t/ha and 4.66 million tonnes harvested. Defra said production was the lowest in 30 years. Sugar beet fell 17.7% from 2011's record.
2018: heatwave and drought
On the Met Office's current figures, England's mean summer temperature in 2018 was 17.11°C, the highest in the series back to 1884 at the time, ahead of 1976 (16.95°C) and 2006 (16.94°C). It has since been equalled by 2022 and passed by 2025 and 2026. For the UK as a whole, 2018 (15.76°C) edged 2006 (15.75°C) by a hundredth of a degree and 2003 (15.74°C) by two hundredths. Rounded to one decimal place, 2018 and 2006 are both 15.8°C.
It was dry and sunny too. England had 116.9mm of summer rain, 57% of the 1991 to 2020 average, and 680.8 hours of sunshine against an average of 565.0. May to July brought 95.5mm, 51% of average and the third driest May to July since 1836.
The cereals got off lightly. UK wheat yielded 7.76 t/ha, 6.3% down on 2017 but only 1.9% below trend. Defra said the hot, dry spell from July to mid-August affected grain fill "to some extent", and that heavier clay soils held enough moisture to carry crops through. The root crops took the bigger hit. Potatoes fell 15.2% to 41.6 t/ha, and sugar beet 17.2% to 69.1 t/ha.
2020: a wet autumn, then a dry spring
Autumn 2019 was the fifth wettest in England since 1836, at 361.1mm. Then spring 2020 was the sunniest in the series (692.4 hours) and the ninth driest, with 89.0mm. Farmers could not get winter wheat in: the UK wheat area fell 23.6% to 1,387 thousand hectares. The yield fell 22.1% to 6.96 t/ha, so production dropped 40.5% to 9.66 million tonnes. Defra called it the smallest UK wheat harvest since 1981.
Oilseed rape was 19.6% below trend. Sugar beet fell to 56.6 t/ha, 23.6% below trend, but the weather was only part of that: Defra's report for 2020 says the crop was grown without neonicotinoid seed treatment and suffered heavy aphid attack, which spreads virus yellows, on top of the dry spring.
2022: the heat that did not hurt wheat
Summer 2022 was England's third hottest by average maximum temperature (22.51°C) and the seventh driest since 1836, with 104.7mm. July had just 23.4mm. UK wheat yielded 8.57 t/ha, 7.5% above trend and the fourth best year in the series. Defra noted that winter crops had gone in on schedule in good conditions the previous autumn.
Sugar beet was the casualty. Its yield fell 21.3% to 63.9 t/ha. Defra reported a severe drought in August and the first beet moth infestations seen in the UK. Potatoes held level at 45.9 t/ha.
2024: the wettest September to May on record
From September 2023 to May 2024, 981.9mm of rain fell on England, more than in any September to May since 1836. Defra's report describes waterlogged fields and late sowing. The UK wheat area fell 11.0%, the yield came in at 7.28 t/ha (9.1% below trend), and production fell 20.3% to 11.15 million tonnes. Oilseed rape yielded 2.81 t/ha, 18.9% below trend.
2025: a dry spring after a good autumn
Spring 2025 was the second driest in England since 1836, with 75.6mm, and the summer was the fourth hottest by average maximum. UK wheat fell to 7.16 t/ha, 10.8% below trend and the lowest since 2020. This is the plainest case in the series of drought, rather than wet, costing wheat yield, and it came in spring. Defra said winter planting conditions were much better than the year before. Oilseed rape, helped by good establishment and less pressure from cabbage stem flea beetle according to Defra, came in at 3.70 t/ha, 6.4% above trend.
2026: the hottest summer on record
England's average maximum temperature in summer 2026 was 23.66°C, the highest since 1884, and July had 6.5mm of rain, the least for any July since 1836. Defra's first estimate, from 8 October, has England's wheat yield at 7.19 t/ha, up 2.7% on 2025. That is still 6.9% below the five-year average. Spring barley fell 8.0% to 4.59 t/ha, and oilseed rape rose to 3.76 t/ha. Defra says the hot weather and limited rain "hampered" the harvest even though drilling conditions the autumn before had been good. UK figures follow on 10 December 2026.
When it is not the weather
UK oilseed rape area, thousand hectares, 2008 to 2025.
Source: Defra, cereal and oilseed rape production, regional oilseed rape table, updated 8 October 2026.
Yield is only half of a harvest. How much land farmers plant decides the rest, and that depends on prices and pests as much as on the weather. Oilseed rape is the clearest case. The UK area peaked at 756 thousand hectares in 2012 and was down to 241 thousand in 2025, while production fell from 2.56 million tonnes to 0.89 million. Yields have wobbled, but 2025's 3.70 t/ha was a good year. Defra's reports tie the shrinking area to the withdrawal of neonicotinoid insecticides used against cabbage stem flea beetle.
Prices move plantings too. Defra's report on 2025 says lower prices and smaller premiums for milling wheat and malting barley affected what farmers chose to plant. The average UK price for feed wheat was £261 a tonne in 2022 and £176 in 2025, on Defra's figures.
Disease can look like weather. Sugar beet in 2020 is the example above, and Defra's 2024 report says a predicted 83% incidence of virus yellows led to emergency approval of a neonicotinoid seed treatment that year.
Plant breeding is the part we could not measure. Sugar beet yields have risen by about half since the 1990s while wheat has gained only 5.6%. Defra's 2024 report mentions work on sugar beet varieties that resist virus yellows. We looked for a public, year-by-year measure of what new varieties add to UK yields and did not find one, so this page does not try to separate breeding from farming practice or weather.
How we did this
The crop figures
Cereal and oilseed rape yields come from Defra's cereal and oilseed rape production dataset, updated on 8 October 2026, which has UK yields back to 1885 and England figures from 1999. We used UK yields for 1990 to 2025 because they run back furthest; England produced 89% of UK wheat in 2025. The 2026 figures are Defra's provisional estimates for England only. Sugar beet and potato yields come from the Agriculture in the United Kingdom 2025 dataset, published 9 July 2026, where 2025 is provisional. Defra revised its potato method in 2017 and back to 2011, so we use potato yields per hectare harvested from 2011 only. Defra also notes that AHDB stopped publishing potato yield data in 2021 and that later figures come from other industry sources.
The weather figures
Weather is the Met Office's HadUK-Grid areal series for England, last updated on 1 November 2026. Rainfall goes back to 1836 and temperature to 1884. The sunshine series is shorter, starting in 1910. Seasons are the Met Office's own: winter is December to February, and the winter figure for a harvest year runs from the December before. Averages are for 1991 to 2020. Rankings are within each full series.
How we compared them
For each crop we fitted a straight-line trend to UK yields for 1990 to 2025 and measured each year against it, so the slow gains from better farming do not hide the bad years. For each kind of weather we took the seven most extreme of the 36 harvest years and averaged their yields against trend. Autumn rain is the September to November before the harvest, when winter crops are sown. Nothing here is modelled or estimated; every figure is calculated from the published tables.
What this cannot show
Seasonal totals for the whole of England blur timing and place. A wet October falls while winter crops are being sown and a wet November mostly after, but a seasonal total treats them the same. An England-wide figure cannot tell a dry east from a wet north-west either. Seven years is a small group, so the averages show which way the weather pushes yields, not by exactly how much. The crop figures are UK-wide and the weather is England's, though England grows most of the UK's wheat. Recent years can change: Defra revises them when new survey data arrives, and its latest release corrected the 2024 oilseed rape figure for England.
Sources: Defra, cereal and oilseed rape production, data set updated 8 October 2026, and provisional estimates for England 2026; Defra, Agriculture in the United Kingdom data sets, chapter 7, crops, tables 7.2, 7.5, 7.6 and 7.10; Defra, Agriculture in the United Kingdom, chapter 7 text for 2025, 2024 and 2022, and the full reports for 2020, 2018 and 2012; Met Office, HadUK-Grid England series for rainfall, maximum temperature, mean temperature and sunshine, and the UK mean temperature series. All accessed 10 November 2026.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Met Office data © Crown copyright.
Related research
How much of its own food does the UK produce? tracks Defra's self-sufficiency figures, including cereals and oilseed rape. Who Feeds Britain? shows where the UK imports its food from.
Next update
Defra publishes final UK harvest figures for 2026 on 10 December 2026. We will add them, and the Met Office's autumn figures, when they are out.
Related research
Suggested citation
Made in England Research, How weather has changed England's harvest: 30 years of crop yields, data to 2026, analysis of Defra cereal and oilseed rape production, Defra Agriculture in the United Kingdom 2025 and Met Office HadUK-Grid England climate series. https://madeinengland.com/pages/english-harvest-weather-crop-yields