Source: BBC Radio 5 Live: Radio 5 Live Drive
URL: N/A
Date: 10/06/2011
Event: BBC Radio 5 Live Drive: Drought Special
People:
Peter Allen: Good afternoon and welcome to Drive, with Aasmah Mir and Peter Allen. Today I'm on a farm in Royston, on the border of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire. I'm here because of the news that large parts of eastern England are now officially in drought. Now it's not just this part of the country - several other parts of the country, the south-west, the south-east, the Midlands, Wales, are all on the edge of getting the same status. There is a real problem, in particular on farms but in general on water supplies right across the country.
So what we're going to try and do, in the next couple of hours, is find out what the drought measures really mean for households, for farmers and indeed for business, and what in the long run this country will have to do to look after our dwindling supplies of water. I'm at a place called Thrift Farm in Royston - Royston is apparently one of the driest places in the UK. It's grey - it always seems to be grey out this part of the world, but it's not raining, never rains. I'm in a barn, just in case it does rain, because we thought it was almost inevitable that having come out here to report on a drought we'd get soaked, but it's not raining. I've got some lambs just behind me, I've got a black and white cat - which, believe it or not, is called Jess - which is just below the table, and I've got the farm's owner Robert Law opposite me. Robert, good afternoon to you.
Robert Law: Hello.
Peter Allen: Right, so what impact has the weather had on you, so far? I had a look around the farm with one of your lads, earlier on, and some of the stuff is just not growing, is it?
Robert Law: It's certainly not, and we've got sugar beet which was sown two, three months ago and it's only partially emerged.
Peter Allen: Some of it just hasn't germinated at all.
Robert Law: No it hasn't.
Peter Allen: What about the wheat?
Robert Law: The wheat has struggled all summer, really, and although we've had a bit of rain last week, ten days, we are expecting quite a reduction in yield this year - I expect it may be down 30, 40%.
Peter Allen: Now I've just looked at these lambs behind us, and you've got a lot of straw in there. And of course it's straw and hay as well, which suddenly you can't get hold of, I imagine.
Robert Law: Well, the livestock are almost more worry than the cropping side is, because we've had very little grazing available and we came into the spring this year with our hay and straw stocks exhausted. And there's been so little grass growth, we're all starting to wonder where the hay will come from for next winter.
Peter Allen: Okay, what I'm going to do is just pause and come back to you in a second, because I wanted to go across to Roger Harrabin. You'll be aware, if you've been listening to the news, that there are meetings going on today about this problem - they call it the "Drought Summit", but it's the Environment Agency, and Roger's outside the Agency. Good afternoon to you, Roger.
Roger Harrabin: Yeah, hello Peter, I'm not there but I'm across what's been going on. The meeting has actually finished, Peter, with ministers saying that it was a constructive meeting, and they've come to some sort of a deal about flexibility of abstraction of water, because you'll know from where you are, the real issue for farmers is whether or not they can get water. And if they are next to a river, they've been pumping those rivers pretty heavily and the Environment Agency has a duty to protect wildlife in the rivers, so it's been asking farmers in the drought areas to stop pumping so hard. And some of the farmers have been saying "Yeah, well, couldn't we come to some deal? Say, if I pump hard and my neighbour's not using his quota, can we come to that sort of deal?" And that's the sort of thing that's been talked about this afternoon. A way of trying to keep wildlife alive in the rivers, but still allowing those farmers who use the rivers to use them as much as they feasibly can.
Peter Allen: And what sort of area are we talking about? I mean, I know East Anglia stretches across a wide area, but there's a lot of the country which is affected, there have been parts of the north-west saying "What's the problem?" but there is a problem in much of the country.
Roger Harrabin: Yeah, you can actually draw a line, pretty much, across southern Britain, and north of it is fine. South of it, you have Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire - both completely are now in official drought. Parts of Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and West Norfolk. And then you have the south-west, the south-east, the Midlands, all nearing a drought, with the Environment Agency saying to farmers in particular "Look, just go easy on stuff. Voluntary measures, of course, but at the moment, just go easy." Most of Wales is okay, but parts of South Wales, the rivers are also extremely low, so it's pretty far-reaching. And we're getting criticism from environmentalists, who are saying "Look, why are we here again? Why are we having another Drought Summit? Why are we just not getting smarter about conserving water? Because there are so many things we could do, that we're not doing." And they're quite critical of the government. I think we'll hear a bit more about that later on.
Peter Allen: Right, and the impact of all this - it's no good thinking "Oh, it's just the farmers", because industry, of course, relies on water, households rely on water, you need new water if you're going to build new homes. There are 101 implications, aren't there.
Roger Harrabin: Yeah, well, there are and there aren't. At the moment, Peter, we've got a bit of a split, because the water companies are saying that their supplies of water from the ground - ground water that's actually in rocks, stored in rock - people don't think of it that way but the rocks are - porous rocks are a store of water, which we suck water out of - and the stores of water in reservoirs, they are lower than usual but they are still pretty healthy. Now that's what supplies industry, and that's what supplies households. And that's why there is no hosepipe ban at the moment - even in places of East Anglia, where they've got official drought, there's still no hosepipe ban. The big issue at the moment is the surface water - when it rains, whether the rivers are full enough to support wildlife or not. Now if it continues with this drought situation - and it has been exceptionally dry, as you know, through the spring - if it continues with this, then we'll be looking at much wider-spread action. At the moment, it really is farmers who are being restricted.
Peter Allen: Okay, thank you very much indeed for that, Roger. And let's come back to Robert - if it carries on like this, Robert - and as I say, the skies are grey but you must be sick of looking up at grey skies, nothing comes out of them, does it? I mean, if it carries on like this for another month or two, what's going to happen to your farm?
Robert Law: At the moment, we've being saved a little by the small amount of rain we had last week. And the fact it is, as you say, quite grey at the moment, and the temperatures are quite cool. Everyone keeps talking about 1976, when we were in quite a similar situation, but at the end of June, we had nine days of temperatures in the 90s. If we had that now, that would be absolutely fatal. We are going to experience a severely reduced harvest, because the crops are running on virtually nothing at the moment, but the bigger worry is trying to provide fodder to get the livestock through this winter.
Peter Allen: So you're hanging on?
Robert Law: We're hanging on, at the moment.
Peter Allen: And hoping.
Robert Law: And hoping.
Peter Allen: Hoping for a bit of rain. Right, thank you very much indeed for your hospitality, we'll have another chat to you later in the afternoon. And we thought we should also talk - before we hand back to normal procedures at the programme - to Andrew Opie, Director of Food and Sustainability at the British Retail Consortium. Andrew, when friends like Robert Law here, the farmer, talks [sic] about the impact on the crops, that's going to feed through to food prices if it carries on, isn't it?
Andrew Opie: Well, it's worrying. I mean, it's another unwelcome upward pressure, really, on food prices, and we're already coping with high commodity prices, high oil prices at the moment, which are - have fed into higher food inflation than in recent years. So yeah, it's a worry. I mean, we're yet to see really the full impact of the problems in the east of England at the moment, and we won't really pick that up until we know exactly what the yields are going to be.
Peter Allen: Yeah, talking and thinking about the implications of all this, I mean when they were talking, they were looking just at bales of hay and straw and saying they're double the price this year, and that feeds through every time you've got a stable, you've got places, there's so many places which use these things. These are commodity prices which in the end feed through to all of us, don't they, I expect.
Andrew Opie: Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you look at the moment, I mean the wheat price is double what it was last year, and that has certainly fed into the increase in food prices at the moment. So these kinds of issues at the moment are very important, going forward. But I think we do need to keep it in proportion, that we're talking about one part of England and that's set in a context of global commodities such as wheat, you know, so the price for things like wheat and sugar is set globally, really, rather than one part of England.
Peter Allen: Yeah, indeed. And also, I hear, no rain but actually we've had a terrific raspberry crop, and asparagus as well?
Andrew Opie: Well, that's right. I mean, obviously the weather's been quite strange in some ways this year. So we've had earlier crops and some bumper crops in things like raspberries, so it's been very good for some parts of farming and horticulture. But obviously for those, kind of, main crops like wheat and barley, at the moment, over in the east of England, it is a worry. But yeah, I mean, it's been quite strange in some ways. Yeah...
Peter Allen: Andrew, thanks very much indeed. During the course of the afternoon, Aasmah will try to examine some of the implications of all this - in the long term, clearly we're going to have to learn to use water rather differently, in particular this part of the country, but probably right across the country. Learn to conserve it, learn to use it more carefully -
Aasmah Mir: It's interesting, because -
Peter Allen: That black and white cat really - sorry, go on.
Aasmah Mir: - really is called Jess.
Peter Allen: Yeah - I know you wouldn't believe me, but -
Aasmah Mir: I do believe you, I do believe you... What I was going to say is the minute that we start saying that we have to conserve water, you get some very angry texts from people. Read some of that a bit later, but some of them blaming the water companies, other people saying that the farmers should irrigate their crops at certain times of the day, so there is a bit of, kind of, blame culture that exists whenever you start hinting that people should use water a bit more carefully, I'm sure you're aware of that.
Peter Allen: Well, and it's also true, as we were just hearing, as Roger said, because there are underground supplies in this part of the area, there's no hosepipe ban, so most households would say "Well, there's no problem, we'll just water the lawn" - and probably they still are watering the lawn. Which seems pretty odd, when it's officially a drought.
Aasmah Mir: Yeah. Well, more from you later, Peter, thank you, it's 4:16.
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Peter Allen: Thank you very much. You're listening to Five Live Drive, with Aasmah Mir and Peter Allen. I'm on a farm in Royston, on the Hertfordshire-Cambridgeshire border. It's the area which I think is the fourth driest part of the UK, and the large part of the region spreading out into East Anglia and now officially declared a drought zone. And plenty of other areas, including the Midlands, are also causing serious concern. On the farm around me you can see some immediate effects - I've just looked at a field of beet planted in the spring. Some of the seeds haven't even germinated yet, and the field just isn't really growing at all. There's also an impact on the sheep here because they're just not getting the grass they need. The impact on animals in general is widespread. It's not just farmers, though, there are all sorts of people who do need water, including industry. Including the brewing industry. Who else would you find at Adnams Brewery in Southwold but Stephen Chittenden. Stephen.
Stephen Chittenden: Hi Peter - who else? I'll tell you who else - Fergus Fitzgerald, he's the head brewer here. Hi Fergus.
Fergus Fitzgerald: Hello.
Stephen Chittenden: This is the fermenting room, the room with the big tin, where it does exactly what it says on the tin - it's where the fermenting is going on.
Fergus Fitzgerald: Yes.
Stephen Chittenden: Rows of stainless steel tins - and that amazing smell. What's that smell?
Fergus Fitzgerald: That's the smell of the by-products of the yeast fermenting, so turning the sugars that we take from the barley, turning that into alcohol and CO2 and lots of others of those flavours that we want in our beer.
Stephen Chittenden: So here you brew 23 million pints of beer every year. You use 60 million pints of water in that. Are you worried about your water supply? Is there a threat, with the drought?
Fergus Fitzgerald: I don't think there's any immediate threat to our water supply. And I think we've done quite a lot of work over the last few years about reducing our water use anyway. So, in terms of the industry, we're quite well off - we're one of the, kind of, leaders, in terms of our ratio of water to beer. So I don't think there's any immediate concern over the water supply.
Stephen Chittenden: But your recipe for beer insists that your barley comes from East Anglia, comes from places like Cambridgeshire, like Norfolk, like the sort of places which today have had a drought order slapped on them. Well, how silly is that?