One farm boss said harvest yields have fallen by 85% this year due to heavy rain and not enough sunlight.

James Wright runs Whittern Farms in Herefordshire, growing berries, grapes and cider crops.

Mr Wright said he had to constantly adapt harvesting methods to cope with changing weather conditions this year, with heavy rain significantly affecting the grapes.

“The depreciation is running into several thousand pounds, we’re getting a yield of about 15% of what we harvested last year and that was a buffer for a year, but not that much this year,” he said.

BBC figures last month showed fruit and vegetable yields across England had fallen by nearly 5%.

Mr Wright said he had explored different methods to harvest crops and save money, such as a harvester for small fruit, but unpredictable weather still affected the quality of the produce.

“We had a terrible spring that delayed flowering and the rain didn’t stop leading up to harvest.

“It would have been lovely to have had a few weeks (of sunshine) but instead we had that awful long stretch of damp, torrential rain which meant we couldn’t even travel through the fields.

“We have a total area of ​​approximately 30 acres and we have collected more than half of it by machine, but unfortunately the second half will not be of good quality.”

Mr. Wright said he watches the forecast to plan for the weather.

“This is something you can’t predict, the forecasts are constantly changing and these extremes are becoming more extreme, which is a challenge we didn’t foresee,” he said.