Seeds of change: Scotland’s agricultural sector is facing the realities of climate change

It’s a warm, sunny evening, with farmland surrounding both sides of the car as I approach Balerno. The village is bustling with vehicles, driving in and out of the secondary school and sports facilities. A few minutes further down the road I pass tennis courts, full of people enjoying the last of the idyllic late-summer evenings.  

It’s been a record-breaking summer this year, with provisional Met Office statistics showing it will be the warmest on record for the UK. In mid-July, parts of Scotland experienced temperatures of over 30°C, which followed the driest spring since 1964. While it may have been a good summer in terms of weather, water levels in parts of the country have fallen significantly below average.  

The fields around Balerno look dry, some even brown, in sharp contrast to the deep green of the trees that divide them.   

I park at Threipmuir Reservoir, which sits at the foot of the Pentland Hills. According to the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa), by the end of August, this area has been experiencing low flows of water for between 20 and 29 days – the second most severe categorisation of water scarcity the agency can issue.   

Heading down a footpath towards the reservoir, it’s immediately apparent there’s been a lack of water this summer. The water that flows from the Harlaw reservoir into Threipmuir is divided by a causeway. Standing on it, I can see very little water flowing from Harlaw into its neighbouring reservoir. The steps used by maintenance workers over the narrow entry point for the water to flow through are about three to four feet above the stream, and a measuring gauge shows the water is much lower than usual. There’s a heron stalking the entry point, presumably waiting for a brown trout – famed in these waterways – to be pushed by the flow into Threipmuir. But after about five minutes it gives up and flies off to the shoreline in search of fish in more plentiful waters.  

Following its flight further into Threipmuir, there are many signs that not much water has been flowing in recent weeks. There are patches of the reservoir floor exposed where ducks now sit, and the grassy shoreline seems to have receded by the looks of the roughly two to three metres of sodden grass that appears to normally be under the water line.   

I spend about 20 minutes on the causeway, watching how nature is interacting with the environment, thinking I’m here on my own. But as I turn to leave and walk back up the path I see people roughly 200 or 300 metres down on the reservoir banks. A man and a woman in swimming costumes are going for a swim. I stop to watch. They trudge in slowly, watching their footing as they step further in. I now understand just how shallow Threipmuir is. After about 30 metres the water is still below their knees, and they turn back towards the shoreline in defeat. 
I’m a bit taken aback, knowing people often swim and use paddleboards in these reservoirs over the summer months, but it’s clear that it has not been possible in the last few weeks.

Walking back to the car, now having seen the reality of water scarcity over the summer, the idea that Scotland’s water abundance is a guarantee is quickly evaporating.   

This year, the hot summer has resulted in most of the east of Scotland being designated with at least the second most severe water scarcity warning – low water flow for 20-29 days. And on 26 August, Sepa issued water scarcity restrictions in Ythan in Aberdeenshire and north Fife after both areas reached ‘significant scarcity’ – the most severe level.    

These restrictions limited the amount of water that could be extracted from rivers and groundwater for purposes such as agriculture. They will remain in place until rainfall and river levels recover to acceptable levels.  

In the following two days, the same restrictions were placed on farmers in Upper Don, Lower Don, and Lower Tweed, and then in early September the Lower Spey and Berwickshire were also added to the list. 

This is just one of the many examples of extreme weather events this year, which the agriculture sector is dealing with. And each carries the potential for huge financial risks. According to WWF Scotland research, a similar dry period in 2017/18 cost farmers £161m. 

David Michie, senior policy manager for food and farming at the National Farmers Union Scotland (NFU Scotland), explains that the impact of water scarcity in Scotland has been “quite variable”. On the west coast, where there are a lot of cattle and sheep farmers, they “are doing quite well”.   

However, it’s a different picture in parts of the east coast, he says. “The west of Scotland has had quite a good year. It’s been a little bit wetter, but in the east, it’s been really quite difficult, and now our farmers that are under the most pressure are probably the ones that are growing malting barley, followed by vegetable crops, which have been severely affected by climate change and extreme weather,” Michie says.  

An agronomist at a vegetable cooperative that operates across the country from Laurencekirk to Kelso, who asked not to be named, says “the impact of restricting abstraction for the purpose of irrigation could be huge on the area and the crops”.  

“The restriction on irrigation will particularly be felt with flowering brassica crops [such as cauliflower and broccoli],” he says. Whilst all fresh produce crops require water at various stages of their life cycle, by this time of year, most root vegetables such as potatoes have done their growing and water application is adding to yield, the difference with flowering brassica crops being that if they do not get the required water, there will be no yield at all, not a reduction.”  

He explains that this year’s dry conditions mean growers in the area already expect yields of these crops to be down, as farmers “have not been able to keep up with the crop demands”.   

The future of this season’s crops is at risk, he says. “Whilst the growing practices we use enable a plant to start growing in these conditions, there comes a point when it starts to develop to a head, that the requirement for water increases significantly, and if this does not happen, the crop fails.”   

This time of year is the peak of the cooperative’s production. It expects to distribute more than 1,200 tonnes of broccoli and 700,000 heads of cauliflower, along with significant volumes of cabbage and Brussels sprouts per week, equating to more than £250,000 per day. It is a substantial link in the UK’s fresh produce and brassica supply chain. However, if these restrictions become more common and there is no viable solution to water the crops during periods like this, its future is under threat.  

Statistics from the last 10 years show that the weather patterns in Scotland are changing. According to the Met Office, East Lothian, Fife, and the Moray Firth typically receive less than 700mm of rainfall in an average year. But a decade on, the reality is much more volatile. In the last three years, major storms have produced large deposits of rainfall, namely Storm Babet, which saw 235.9mm fall on eastern Scotland, making 2023 the wettest October on record. In contrast, between January and April this year, the same area experienced just 59 per cent of the average rainfall, making it the driest spring in over 60 years.  

While water scarcity may be a concern predominantly for the east of the country, the Scottish Government is forecasting wetter winters for the whole country. This could cause crops to come into season too early, while still at risk of freezing temperatures later in winter, which can kill the crop.  

These factors are contributing to growing uncertainty for farmers. Yields of certain crops are disproportionately affected year-on-year, such as cereals, which saw a near 10 per cent decrease in 2018 on the previous year due to a severe winter and a dry summer, according to  WWF UK. Winter wheat was almost 10 per cent down on the year previous in 2023 due to a wet autumn and winter as well as a late spring, according to NFU Scotland.  

Michie explains that while this year malted barley has been hit the hardest, “in other years it has been other crops”. “In the last few years, potatoes and brassicas have been affected by climate change, which is clearly affecting the weather patterns, and it has huge knock-on effects on these crops. There’s no such thing as a normal year. Each year is completely different.  

“The other issue is that we used to have these weather fronts that would come, it would be raining and then sunny quite quickly after that, but now they just seem to sit. If it’s a wet spring, it’s really wet, and that makes it difficult to sow. And of course, there’s been these long periods of really hot and dry weather, which makes life a lot more challenging.”  

David Harley, Sepa’s water and planning manager, says the body has been witnessing an increase in drier weather in certain parts of the country.  

“Over the last decade we have seen a real increase in drier weather and more sustained drier weather. And that usually plays out more significantly in certain parts of the country. The east, where we are seeing an impact on water resources just now, is the most likely to be affected.

“We’re in a situation where Sepa had to issue [water abstraction] restrictions for the first time ever in 2022 and now this year too, so we really are seeing a change. The climate is changing, and we’re having to adjust to that.”  

Sepa publishes weekly water scarcity reports between May and September. Holyrood has looked at every report since 2019. It’s clear in these reports that the east of the country, rivers such as the Ythan, Don, Deveron, Tweed, and parts of the Tay and Spey, are disproportionately affected, repeatedly appearing in Sepa’s moderate and significant categories in 2019, 2022, and especially between 2023 and 2025.  

Harley says “it’s impossible to predict”, but the evidence suggests that the suspension of water abstraction “is likely to become a normal, routine situation”. Worryingly, he adds that restrictions in the future could be in place “for weeks if not months”. “For irrigators, that is going to be a real challenge,” he says.   

“That will compromise the crop ultimately. Of course, it depends on the location, the farm, and the water environment that it is being taken from.”  

He adds: “Now is the time to think about how we react to this in a more proactive way.” 
It seems undeniable that the sector is fraught with more challenges than ever before. And with that, there is a need for solutions. Scientists at the James Hutton Institute, based in Dundee and Aberdeen, are at the forefront of developing these solutions.   

Professor Ingo Hein, head of potato genetics at the institute, is a researcher of diseases in tubers – something that is becoming increasingly more of a threat as warmer winters allow diseases to survive season to season rather than die from the cold. Since 2011, when the potato genome was first released, he has been working on various tools based on that information which allow breeders to look into any cultivar or breeding clone and say “with really high confidence” if a variety has the right genes to be resistant to a disease.   

“That had never been done before for any major crop,” Hein says. “We share that information with breeders so that when they pick parents to bring traits of the potato together, we can see what they will be resistant to.  

“Having this knowledge and these markers allows breeders to rapidly screen for plants that will have the desired resistance attributes.”  

Dr Susan McCallum, a researcher in soft fruits at the James Hutton Institute, says that the crops she works with need a prolonged period of chill in the winter, but that in the past few years this has not been the case. “We can see one mild day now in January or February, and suddenly the plants start flowering, and that’s no good because there’s still plenty of time for a cold frost. If that happens it will kill the bud, impacting the yield.”  

And she explains that steps have already been made to be resilient against new pathogens in the last decade. “We moved raspberries out of the soil around 10 years ago because there was an issue with root rot, and once that’s in the soil, it is there forever. Now they’re grown in pots, and we have not gone back,” McCallum says.   

While this has been positive, there are benefits from growing in the soil that have been lost, and similar to Hein’s work, researchers at the institute have found a variant of the berry that is resistant to root rot through successive breeding. 

“Now, ideally, I can see the industry returning to growing in the ground with a crop that will be successful for eight to 10 years, whereas at the moment, with potting raspberries, we’re only able to crop them for two seasons,” McCallum adds. “After those two years we need to get rid of everything, and that is simply not economically sustainable.” 

There are other practical solutions. Harley has been engaging with farmers heavily since the summer, advising them on Sepa’s rainfall projections and how they can use water more efficiently, how to use other sources such as groundwater, and starting the conversations of what they may do in the future to secure the water supply.  

“Potentially, farmers could take water from an alternative source. But the most resilient approach, which does require a level of investment, is creating offline storage [private reservoirs] that would fill up during the winter months when you have a surplus of water and could be used in the summer to augment situations like the one that we are facing just now.”  

Andrew Barnes, a professor of rural resource economics at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), says that government support is “focused on mitigation” and suggests that farmers are already feeling the financial pinch caused by other factors.  

“Adaptation is maybe more implicit, and that is a bit more complex than mitigation. And with it being so regional, in terms of what farmers will need to adapt to, we’ll need to see more information and financial support [from the government] to be more resilient.  

“Farmers need this support, because it’s not just adaptation to climate, we’ve seen an impact on trade, rising energy prices. There’s also the issue of inheritance tax. All of these issues are pushing some people over the threshold already, and we are already losing some of the small farms.”  

While the Scottish Government has allocated £36m for environment and climate change schemes in agriculture, as well as increasing the Agricultural Transformation Fund by £4.5m to £20m in this year’s budget, it will leave many farmers, already under financial strain, asking how they will pay for these upgrades on their farms.  

Barnes has hope for the small farms that he describes as being “on the margin”, but suggests that the future does not involve them growing as much food, instead making their money through government-supported nature regeneration schemes.  

“There will be a lot of social good, but I think that could be quite hard for farmers because they will tell you they are there to produce food, and while these smaller farms can produce food, it is not done as efficiently as the larger ones.”  

It also may be a hard pill to swallow for Prime Minister Keir Starmer politically, whose election manifesto stated that “food security is national security”.  In many cases, it seems like the future for farmers will be different from what has been known for generations. 

Back in the east of Scotland, what does the future look like there? Michie says if these farmers get a fair return on their produce, they will invest in resilience measures. But there is a “larger-scale issue” attached to the low yields farmers are faced with, he warns.  

“I think we’ll see less malting barley as a result of what’s happened this year. I think we’ll see a change in the pattern of cropping, and if you are getting much fewer vegetables. However, it’s very difficult to imagine farmers will change what they produce, with them having so much invested in the equipment just to process things like cauliflower and broccoli.  

“The reality is we need to adapt, but the question is who pays for that? Is it the state, the consumer, the multiple retailers?”  

During First Minister’s Questions earlier this month, Alex Rowley, who represents some of the areas that have been affected by water abstraction restrictions, told John Swinney that the result of these measures will mean that “food production will be well down this year”. He asked the first minister what the Scottish Government’s long-term plan is to ensure that future restrictions do not impact Scotland’s food production.   

Swinney described the situation as “acute” and said he has been receiving a weekly water scarcity warning from Sepa since April this year. “Normally, I would begin to receive these warnings probably around August,” he told the chamber.  

“What is part of the solution is the constant improvement to water infrastructure around the country, and a significant upgrade has just been completed in the city of Perth to deal with the issues Alex Rowley raises.” 

He affirmed the need for greater resilience and said, “that obviously has an effect on capital priorities”. He also added that the issue is “very much” on the agenda of the climate change minister Gillian Martin.  

While year-on-year, the types of crops that will struggle are likely to change due to the timing and severity of the weather, there is a certainty amongst NFU Scotland, Sepa, scientists, and academics that climate change is with us already, and it is not slowing down. In the last five years, Scotland has witnessed increasing amounts of wildfires and extreme flooding, one of which breached defences that were supposed to provide protection for hundreds of years, and, of course, warmer winters and drier summers.  

Back at Threipmuir Reservoir, the image of people unable to swim is a clear warning: Scotland’s environment is changing, and the agricultural sector must change with it.