England needs new reservoirs or food supplies will be at risk, warns NFU chief

New reservoirs are needed across England to cope with increasingly severe water shortages that are putting the UK at risk of not being able to grow the food consumers require, a farming leader has warned.

Minette Batters, the president of the National Farmers’ Union of England and Wales, said failure to manage the country’s water adequately was creating problems for farmers and threatening food supplies.

This winter has not alleviated last year’s drought to the extent farmers had hoped. Earlier this week, the National Drought Group said England was “one dry spell away” from a repeat of last summer’s dry conditions.

Batters said farmers were watching anxiously. “We’ve still got East Anglia, Devon and Cornwall that are in drought,” she said. “We’ve got 63% of rivers below the level that they should be.”

“If we’re going to abstract less, we’ve got to store more,” she said, which would mean constructing more reservoirs. “We’ve got to have the ability to store more, that needs to be thought about very urgently. This is a massive issue.”

Acute shortages of salad and vegetables in the UK have led to empty shelves, and driven some supermarkets to ration the sale of items such as peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes. Those problems have been mainly caused by unseasonably cold weather and frosts in key exporting regions of Spain and north Africa.

The empty shelves have focused attention on the UK’s food security. About 40% of the country’s food is imported, and farmers at the NFU conference in Birmingham earlier this week said this left the UK vulnerable to outside supply shocks.

For Batters, food security and the question of water are closely intertwined. There can be none of the former unless the government takes action to secure supplies of the latter, she said.

“Water is a massive issue. I’ve had the line trotted out to me so many times: ‘Oh Minette, we are a wealthy nation, we can import our food.’ I just think that ship has sailed, and we take food for granted … And water security is a massive part of that.”

No new reservoirs have been built in the UK since the water industry was privatised in 1989, and some water companies have added to their profits by selling off existing reservoirs. Water companies have paid out £72bn in dividends since privatisation, borrowing £56bn and increasing bills by 40%.

But the problems are not just down to water companies and the weather. Farmers have also played a part in water shortages, according to Craig Bennett, the chief executive of the Wildlife Trusts. “Our agricultural system has been appalling at encouraging farmers to use water properly,” he said. “There has been an unthinking approach, as if water was a limitless resource.”

Bennett pointed to the amount of land used for growing animal feed that, with a change in diets, could be more efficiently used to grow crops for humans. Farmers also use poor practices, relying on over-abstraction of groundwater to make up for it, he added.

“We need to think about different ways to grow crops – you still see farmers planting and drilling downhill, which lets the water run off,” Bennett said. “Some farmers still don’t want to see the reintroduction of beavers, which do a fantastic job of creating mini-reservoirs – or ponds, as they are otherwise known.”

Many crops – from sugar beet to maize – are thirsty and potentially unnecessary in the UK, as the products could be grown more efficiently elsewhere.

Richard Benwell, the chief executive of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said the management of water must go far beyond reservoirs, and that farmers must play a role. “Rewetting peatlands, rewiggling rivers, regenerating farmland soil structure – these all have a crucial role to play in slowing and storing water in our environment, so that more is available for people and wildlife,” he said.

Farmers and consumers could also use water more efficiently. “Demand management is critical too, with stricter standards for buildings, consistent metering, and incentives for businesses to cut back use,” Benwell added.

The regulator Ofwat is considering the UK’s response to increasingly frequent droughts, and the role of water companies. Benwell said: “There is a real risk that Ofwat will push water companies down an old-fashioned built infrastructure route yet again, without capitalising on the savings and benefits of nature-based solutions. Government should clearly instruct the regulator to prioritise solutions that work with nature.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “We recognise the importance of long-term water planning for the farming sector to improve resilience and business planning. We will be launching the second round of the water management grant this spring to support farmers to improve on-farm water management, such as water reservoirs and new irrigation systems.

“Ofwat has also allocated a £469m fund for water companies to investigate strategic water resources options, including regional water transfers.”