Harvest progress report: 11 August 2025
Each Monday during harvest we are sharing the first-hand accounts of farmers across the UK.
Harvest is now well advanced across most of the UK, with many farms having completed their main cereal and oilseed rape harvests. The focus for many has now shifted to spring-sown crops, including beans and oats.
Here’s what we heard on the ground over the past week:
South
In West Sussex, Andrew Huxham, of Up Marden Farms and Hectare Trading co-founder, reports an early finish, having completed barley, OSR and wheat in the last few weeks and just finished cutting his spring beans last week.
In Wiltshire, it’s a similar story for the main harvest crops, the farmer we spoke to having completed his wheat and spring barley harvest by the end of July. After a brief lull he has now started on his spring bean crop.
East
In Cambridgeshire, one farmer also reports having fully finished up harvest, after cutting his G2 wheat, spring beans, spring peas and spring oats. He says that yields have been pretty poor. Another farmer in Cambridgeshire is a third of the way through cutting wheat, having been slowed down by the recent showers.
Midlands
In Staffordshire, Peter Sands, of J B Sands, is approximately 70% complete, with just spring oats and wheat left to cut. He reports that second wheats have yielded poorly, while first wheats have performed better. You can see some pictures from his harvest below.
Some farmers in Shropshire have completed harvests of feed wheat, feed barley, OSR and beans, reporting pretty average yields.
North
In North Yorkshire, farmers we spoke with reported that they are now cutting the last of their wheat fields.
Scotland
In Aberdeenshire, one farmer has completed cutting winter barley and oats and is now in the middle of his spring barley harvest.
Farmers in Dumfries and Galloway report average yields for winter barley and wheat. For those that have now started on spring barley, initial yields are described as below average.
In Perth and Kinross, farmers have completed the wheat harvest and are now harvesting their spring barley.
AHDB Harvest Report
The latest AHDB Harvest Report revealed that farmer-reported yields for winter wheat had improved by 6 August, now averaging 7.66 tonnes per hectare, only 1% down on the five-year average. Average winter barley yields are also 1% below the five-year average at 6.66 t/ha, while winter OSR has hit the highest average yield since 2011 at 3.98 t/ha.
The winter barley and OSR harvests are now complete across the UK, while winter wheat and oats are both 48% complete. At this stage last year, winter wheat was 37% complete while the oat harvest was 22% complete.
