Are we really reaching ‘farmaggedon’?

I happened to be walking in the Cambridgeshire fens this morning while listening to the latest instalment of ‘farmageddon’ – the narrative that Britain is facing food shortages due to biblical levels of rain over the winter. There was something of a conflict between the sight before my eyes with what Rachel Hallos, vice president of the National Farmers Union, was telling the Today programme as she begged the government for emergency money. These are some of the lowest-lying fields in England, with large parts lying four or five feet below sea level. They are formed largely of peat, which easily becomes waterlogged. Yet it was a pretty normal spring sight. A tractor was purring as it prepared ground for more crops. Winter crops – be they wheat or barley, I wasn’t close enough to identify – had created a carpet of green. Two vast fields had been planted with potatoes, concealed beneath deep ridges.