Carrot growers in Yorkshire are facing “material losses” following heavy flooding in the region on the back of a year of already “disappointing” yields.
Chairman of the Carrot Growers’ Association and Yorkshire carrot grower, Rodger Hobson, said it is the second-worst flooding he has seen on his land: “We have lost material amounts of carrots, but we can’t quantify it until the water goes down,” he noted.
“I’ve not had fields go completely under, though I know people who have. For us, it’s major waterlogging or ponding – or more like ‘lakeing’ – in the middle of the field.”
Hobson said so far the flooding hasn’t interrupted any customer orders, as his workers are still able to pick out of the remaining dry fields. “I’m a bit nervous – we need it to dry up pretty quickly,” he said.
“We’re already short on a national basis for this season, after a disappointing summer last year, so this comes on top of that,” he said, adding that carrot sales are “as buoyant as ever” despite tight supplies.
Yorkshire grower Guy Poskitt, of MH Poskitt, said there are “no serious issues”, but added that he has a couple of carrot fields under water, while others are too wet to harvest with machinery. One flooded field is in Scotland and the other is in Yorkshire, Poskitt said. “Yields are a bit disappointing this year – there is definitely no oversupply in carrots,” he told FPJ.
“We are running around two weeks early. We would usually plan to finish in England by the end of May, but this year it will be the end of April.”
Poskitt said low yields are down to a “miserable summer” and poor August last year, but noted that the season could still pick up towards the end.
Carrot growers have been particularly affected by waterlogging due to crops being stored in the ground under straw, whereas potatoes are stored in sheds at this time of year.
Following the floods at the end of last year, which devastated agricultural land and communities across northern England, Defra released a Farming Recovery Fund (FRF) to help growers and farms clear up flood damage.
To apply for the grants, which range from £500 to £20,000, farms must have been hit by floods between either 4-9 December, or 25-26 December, and be based in Cumbria, Lancashire, Yorkshire or Northumberland.
As FPJ went to press, Defra warned that groundwater level is still high in many areas, while the Met Office forecasted heavy showery rain across the UK.
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