Photo credit: Md. Hasanuzzaman Himel
As drought spreads across half of England, the National Farmers’ Union has called for changes to abstraction rules and planning to protect food production. Low river flows have driven 1,506 restrictions on abstraction licences, and high irrigation demand is rapidly depleting farm reservoirs, leaving the union warning that growers need secure and reliable access to water to keep producing food for 29 million households.
The asks
The NFU put a package of measures to water and flooding minister Emma Hardy at the latest National Drought Group meeting. It wants faster planning approval for on-farm reservoirs, more flexible abstraction licences that let growers capture water when rain does fall, and clearer local communication about restrictions. It also called for a risk register of water-vulnerable farm businesses, drawn up by government, the Environment Agency and water companies, and for the Water Management Grant to be opened to support on-farm storage. Livestock, poultry and high-value horticulture are seen as especially exposed, since dependable supplies underpin animal welfare and crop production, and the union argues water should be treated as critical national infrastructure.
The pressure on the ground
Deputy president Paul Tompkins said farmers were “seeing first-hand the impact of dry weather and drought”, with more extreme conditions making food harder, riskier and costlier to produce. Only 13 per cent of England’s rivers are at normal levels for the time of year, and irrigation reservoirs are running at around 30 to 50 per cent full where abstractors depend heavily on storage. Some of the union’s proposals aim to ease the immediate squeeze; others, particularly planning reform and more adaptable licences, are directed at longer-term resilience as dry summers become more frequent.
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