Drought severely affecting farms - union chairman

The current dry weather is leaving some farms "severely squeezed", a county farmers' union chairman has said.

A drought has been declared by the Environment Agency (EA) across more than half of England, including in the Thames Valley on Wednesday.

Alex Nelms, county chairman of the Berks, Bucks and Oxon National Farmers' Union (NFU), said farmers "have to make some difficult business decisions" to get through the dry weather.

Graham Adams from Lockey's Farm in Arborfield Cross, Berkshire, told BBC News he had been "extremely worried" about what it would be like for his farm going into the winter.

The EA announcement covers much of central, eastern and southern England.

It said the impacts were already being felt, including low river flows, early harvests and high risk of wildfires. More than 20 million people are already under hosepipe bans.

Nelms, a partner in Kensham Farms in High Wycombe, said the farm this year was 800 tonnes short on what it would normally produce.

"The price at the moment is approaching £200 a tonne so that's £160,000 of lost revenue as a cost of the drought," he said.

"The ground is scorched and farmers rely on their lands to produce food and there isn't very much being produced as a result of the drought.

"There will be livestock farmers who will be dipping into their savings account."

He added: "So it's going to be difficult, and these businesses are going to be severely squeezed."

Farmer Graham Adams said his cattle outside at the moment were "grazing on nothing".

"We're feeding winter rations already, which is quite worrying," he said.

"We feed a lot more than we would in other years. There's literally no grass around at all at the moment."

He added: "We desperately need this rain."

The EA said nearly 80% of England's rivers were seeing flows below normal or lower - the River Thames at Reading has recorded its lowest level on record.