All is not safely gathered in

ROSEY Dunn plucks an ear of greying wheat, briskly rubs it between her palms, and blows away the chaff to reveal the bronzed wheat grains. At first they look fine. But at the tip of some grains, tiny new shoots are growing.

This is wheat that is already germinating even as it stands in the waterlogged fields waiting to be harvested.

It is "chitting", in farmers' terminology. "And that ruins it as a crop," Rosey says. "You have to keep the non-sprouted grains away from the good ones. Even the corn that is still standing is now sprouting. I've never known it before."

Nearby is more wheat, this time hammered to the ground by falling rain. Where the ears of wheat touch the soil, the "chitting" process is even more advanced. Individual grains of wheat have each sprouted roots and bright green shoots, leading to a 'mat' of damp green growth. It is a vivid illustration of the catastrophic effect the wet summer is having on the region's arable crops.

The longer crops like this stand here, the more they deteriorate, and the more the value drops. Before long, milling wheat that was planted for human consumption will be good only for animal feed.

Even the value of lower-quality wheat planted as animal feed is steadily being reduced. "The better quality it is, the better the feed value for animals," says Rosey.

The real problem farmers are facing as the wettest August since the 1960s drags on is not that the waterlogged fields are causing the crops to rot, however, or even to chit. It is simply that there have not been enough decent dry spells to get the harvest in.

Now the ground is waterlogged, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get heavy farm machinery such as tractors and combine harvesters on to the land without them becoming bogged down, or causing real damage such as deep rutting or compaction of the soil.

Rosey, the county chairman of the York East branch of the National Farmers' Union, who runs a mixed arable and livestock farm at Stockton- on-the-Forest with her husband Alisdair, shows me the deep ruts in one waterlogged wheat field where a baler was stuck at the weekend. In the next field are even deeper ruts where a combine harvester became stuck and had to be reversed out.

They were lucky. "You just can't afford to get a combine stuck," says Rosey. "They can be very difficult to remove. If it's not in too far in you may be able to pull it out with a couple of tractors. But if it gets really stuck, you're looking at a crane to pull you out, and you're not going to get that for less than £500.

"You're not going to risk getting stuck in that position if you can help it, so you may possibly just be looking at leaving the crop there."

Not only wheat crops have been affected. Paul Temple, chairman of the NFU's North East Combinable Crops Board, who farms near Driffield, says many rape seed crops across the region have become chitted before they could be harvested and have now been abandoned by the farmers who grew them.

"They are ploughing it into the ground," he says. Barley too is affected: it's value, like wheat, falling away the longer it is left standing.

Many farmers are resorting to harvesting what they can, says Rosey. The wheat fields in which we are standing are a patchwork: the edges have been harvested, but wheat in the centre left standing. We squelch towards the standing wheat through the water-logged ruts left by attempts to harvest.

"This is well-drained land," says Rosey. "There are drainage dykes. The water shouldn't be standing like this in winter, let alone in summer."

She casts an eye over the sorry-looking wheat still standing in the centre of the field. "There is no way you're going to be able to clear that unless you have a combine dangling from a helicopter," she says.

Just leaving it there is one option, but even that has knock-on effects. Farmers ideally would like to complete the harvest now so they can get on with preparing the land for the next crop.

Even if they give up on this crop, however, it can't be ploughed straight back into the ground - the wheat is too bulky, says Rosey. So it would have to be chopped into the ground first with a rotivator before ploughing, which costs time and money.

Then the fields would have to be sprayed, to prevent the ploughed-in wheat producing an unwanted "volunteer" crop (springing from the ploughed-in grains) next year.

Farmers who do abandon their crops could also face stiff penalties if they have contracts to deliver a certain weight of wheat and can't meet them, Rosey adds.

And it's not as if they can claim on an insurance policy. Insurers just don't offer cover for the effects of rain, says the NFU's Rachael Gillbank. "They would be deluged with claims," she says.

All in all, says Paul Temple, it is looking like being a grim summer for arable farmers. Even those who can save some of their crop are faced with having to dry it out, adding yet more expense.

"It is going to hit farmers hard," he says. "There were already low crop prices, 40 per cent down on the turn of the year. Then you've got a poor quality crop to sell, and expensive operating conditions. It is not good."

At least the effect of the wet summer may make people sit up and take notice, however, he says.

"You don't expect perfect conditions all the time, and you learn to spend your life dealing with the vagaries of the weather. But for too long this Government has just assumed we can churn crops out like clockwork. Hopefully now at least they will recognise that food production and the environment are linked."

In the absence of insurance pay outs, the NFU is talking to the Government and to Brussels to see if there may be any help available for struggling farmers.

"We're writing to all our local MPs as well, asking them to raise this at national level," says Rachael Gillbank.

Already, however, a fresh problem is looming. In just about a month's time, the British Sugar factory in York is due to start production. There are fields at Rosey's farm full of healthy sugar beet. The only problem is that if the rain doesn't stop soon, the fields will still be too waterlogged to to harvest it.

"It is growing well," says Rosey. "But it is going to be the same problem... getting at it."

Updated: 09:57 Wednesday, August 25, 2004