UK: Drought Could Cost British Potato Growers £80–169 Million, ECIU Analysis Estimates
The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit projects a loss of more than 500,000 tonnes in Great Britain, with processing potatoes trading above £300 a tonne against £180 in February.
British potato growers could lose between £80 million and £169 million because of this summer’s drought, according to an analysis published on 17 September by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), a UK climate think tank.
The ECIU projects that Great Britain will lose more than 500,000 tonnes of potatoes, with yields about 11% below the 2021–2025 average. It says processing potatoes are now fetching over £300 per tonne, up from £180 in February.
The analysis notes that the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) stopped publishing harvest and yield estimates in 2021, leaving no official national crop figure. For Great Britain, the ECIU based its estimate on World Potato Markets’ analysis of the comparable 2018 drought and labelled the result “lower confidence”.
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The trade press, including FarmingUK and Grocery Gazette, reported the findings on 17 and 18 September. All of those reports rely on the same ECIU analysis, so the figures should be read as a single estimate rather than as independently confirmed numbers.
The same ECIU study put the combined loss in the UK and continental Europe at more than 3 million tonnes. potatoes.news has examined its German estimates in detail (read the German analysis) and reported on the wider European shortfall (here).
The British numbers carry more uncertainty than the continental ones, as the ECIU itself acknowledges. The range of £80–169 million reflects that: the upper end is more than double the lower.
How the loss is shared will depend on contracts. Growers with free-buy potatoes may recover part of it through higher prices, while contract growers who cannot deliver full volumes are more exposed. The ECIU analysis does not break the estimate down by type of grower.
Why it matters
Without an official crop estimate, this analysis is the only published figure for British losses. It points to higher costs for chip shops, processors and retailers, and it revives the question of whether the industry needs an independent annual harvest survey again.
Photo: A two-row potato harvester on show at LAMMA in Lincolnshire, England (illustrative). BulldozerD11 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
