“It looks like this year’s harvest will be catastrophic. That should be a worry for anyone who eats food. If a disaster on this scale had befallen any other industry, there would be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth.” – Jeremy Clarkson
“Worst harvest of my life to date.” – Ally Hunter Blair
Two farmers. Two blunt assessments. One reality: Britain’s food supply is in trouble.
Jeremy Clarkson’s warning may sound like his usual barn-door bluntness, but it’s a red flag. Ally Hunter Blair’s words are starker still. This isn’t a bad season – it’s the worst he’s ever seen. And it’s not an isolated problem. Climate change is already reshaping the cost and availability of our food.
Climate change’s first real bite
We often talk about climate change in the future tense. But the first tangible impact is here and on our plates. The Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) calls it Climateflation: rising food prices driven by climate shocks.
Extreme weather has added £361 to the average UK household food bill in just two years.
Climate-fuelled floods in Pakistan in 2022 drove rice prices up by a third.
The UK imports £8 billion of food from nations highly vulnerable to climate disruption.
This isn’t abstract science. It’s what we’re eating for tea tonight.
Farmers are the canaries in the coal mine
When harvests fail, farmers feel it first. The rest of us feel it later – at the till. Clarkson’s point is telling: if a catastrophe of this scale hit manufacturing, it would trigger emergency meetings in Whitehall. With farming, it’s treated as background noise until the bill arrives.
The ECIU warns that climate-driven migration and collapsing harvests abroad will make UK food supplies more fragile. Our dependence on imports from vulnerable regions turns every overseas drought or flood into a price shock at home.
The receipts tell the story: climate change is already costing us. Clarkson and Hunter Blair aren’t sounding off for effect – they’re describing a new normal. Without urgent investment in climate-resilient farming at home and abroad, Britain will face a future where every meal is more expensive – if it’s available at all.