One year’s worth of bread lost in UK to wrecked harvests since 2020, report finds

Two of the worst three UK harvests on record have happened this decade, undermining self-sufficiency in wheat which dropped from 96% to 79% last year. Photograph: Ian Hodgson/Reuters

One year’s worth of bread has been lost in the UK since 2020 due to extreme weather destroying harvests, a report has found.

Droughts and floods, which have been exacerbated by climate breakdown, have created a deficit in wheat production of over 7m tonnes. Experts at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) calculated this is enough wheat to bake more than 4bn loaves of bread – a year’s supply.