Farmers fear early glut of greens caused by mild autumn will lead to January shortage

The mild autumn has caused most of the UK’s green vegetables and potatoes to grow early, meaning a glut causing huge wastage and probably shortages early next year.

Cabbages, cauliflower and broccoli that were supposed to be ready in December or January are ready to harvest now, with some growing to huge sizes.

Farmers say they have never seen anything like this before and they have had to “tear up” sowing and harvesting timelines owing to the unpredictable climate caused by global heating.

Guy Singh-Watson, founder of organic vegetable box company Riverford, told the Guardian he had hundreds of tonnes of surplus vegetables as a result of the “astonishing” weather. He is working with Fareshare, a charity that distributes surplus food to those in poverty, to get the extra brassicas and potatoes to those who need them.

He told the Guardian: “I’ve been growing vegetables for 35 years and have been planning my sowing and harvesting dates every year based on what I’ve learned, so this year I could just have torn it up and thrown it all away. The climate is changing very quickly. This is the first time in 35 years we have been so far adrift, due to the extraordinary weather, I hope that I never see this again.”

The company is dealing with an almost unmanageable glut of vegetables. Singh-Watson said: “We have a lot of savoy cabbages stacking up, 13,000 that will have to be cut next week, a lot of leeks … a lot of cauliflowers coming. They are all huge.

“It’s predominantly the weather. It’s just been so mild. We are picking savoys and purple sprouting that was due in January. We can persuade our customers to have more greens in their boxes but there is a limit.”

He thinks this will cause shortages of these vegetables come the new year. “There will be a problem. We won’t be able to grow them again. That crop is gone. When they come early … we will be short at some point after Christmas.”

But the dire situation could have a silver lining; he is working to give the vegetables to a good home and thinks that if the scheme with Fareshare goes well, they could have a partnership in the future.

“Fareshare do seem to think that even the 42 pallets of savoys, they will find a home for. I personally feel very strongly about poverty in this country and I am hoping our suppliers will want to engage in this.

“Depending on how this all goes we could do this scheme in future, but as our cropping is so carefully planned we have very little wastage. The problem with dealing with this sort of waste is it tends to be a sort of feast or famine situation.”

Many of these surplus vegetables are being thrown away or fed to livestock. Martin Lines, who chairs the Nature Friendly Farming Network, said: “I have heard the same from farmers. When the weather changes and is warmer, the normal demand drops and the supermarkets cancel contracts. There were a lot of potatoes chopped out early this year to make room for this harvest as a supply chain decided they didn’t want them. The value was so low it wasn’t worth a farmer cleaning them.”

Consumer demand is also to blame; the mild weather means people aren’t in the mood for sprouts and cabbages. Supermarkets are also accused of paying low prices for produce or outright rejecting it.