Cumbria farmer 'praying for rain' as dry spell costing £100k
A dairy farmer has said he is "praying for rain" as recent hot and dry weather has so far cost his business £100,000. Robert Craig, who farms near Castle Carrock in Cumbria, has 1,500 cattle across three dairy farms. The 55-year-old said he has been buying in supplementary feed for his cows as the grass "is not growing sufficiently".It comes as the Environment Agency (EA) said it had been a record-breaking start to the year, the driest since 1956 and the sunniest for more than 100 years.
March was also the fourth driest month since 1836, the EA said. Haweswater Reservoir dropped to its second drought "trigger level" on Saturday.Pete Miles, the EA's environment and monitoring manager for Cumbria, said if trigger levels continued possible drought permits could be implemented.
Drought permits and drought orders are management actions that, if granted, can allow more flexibility to manage water resources and the effects of drought on public water supply and the environment.Mr Miles said: "Those trigger levels - when reached - kickstart certain preparations and activities for us and the water companies, so...if we continue to have a dry spell for the next couple of months and we see these levels come down, we will be preparing for possible drought permits coming in."
'Praying for rain'
Mr Craig said his loss equated to about £30,000 per business, and he had had to start buying in animal feed as he could not currently grow it due to the lack of rain on the fells.It was becoming "an acute problem", he said."It's a big herd of cows here and they take an awful lot of feeding and if you are not growing the feed ourselves then we are reliant of bringing it in on a truck and then it starts to cost a huge amount of money," he added."We have got very little, practically nothing, in storage that we can use ourselves, we are praying for rain as soon as possible really."
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