Princes forecasts 60 per cent pea yield as growers trial chickpeas

Princes, the food group that owns the only pea cannery in the UK, has forecast yields from this year’s British pea harvest at about 60 per cent, only marginally higher than in 2025 and against more than 100 per cent in 2024, when rainfall and cooler temperatures produced a bumper crop.

The harvest runs for about eight weeks and will finish by mid-August. Growers produce an estimated 160,000 tonnes of peas a year, using viners costing £750,000 apiece.

Last year’s harvest was the earliest in well over a decade. Vining pea growers across Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and East Yorkshire reported a near-third drop in the number of peas picked and processed.

Allen Giles, general manager at the Holbeach Marsh farming co-operative in Lincolnshire, said conditions this season had been comparable. “It’s been tough, really tough. We haven’t had any rain in six weeks,” he said. “Only hindsight will tell, but in five or six years’ time, if this weather continues, then we may not have peas in this area any more.”

The co-operative typically harvests about 10,000 tonnes of peas across 2,200 hectares each year, most of which are frozen. Giles said no grower would make money on the crop this season. “From our point of view as a co-operative, no farmer will make any money on peas this year, and we didn’t last year. We get paid by the tonne, we need tonnes per hectare to make this land profitable. And that’s nobody’s fault, that’s just the weather.”

The co-operative has planted chickpeas for the first time. “We’ve grown some chickpeas this year for the very first time and they look quite good, they’ve enjoyed the hot weather,” Giles said. Lentils are also under consideration, alongside discussions about producing hummus.

Giles said successive heatwaves had accelerated the spread of disease-carrying aphids, and that a rise in ladybird numbers had allowed the co-operative to stop spraying. “So it helps us, but there’s about a year lag. There won’t be so many ladybirds going into the winter and we’ll probably end up with an aphid problem next year.”

The Met Office recorded more days above 30C by 15 July than in the whole of 1976, with the UK mean temperature running 1.8C above the seasonal average. The Environment Agency’s latest bulletin reports 1,353 abstraction licence restrictions in force and says prolonged dry conditions are producing early harvesting and poorer yields.

Peas mature rapidly, and higher temperatures shorten the window processors have to freeze or can them. Peas harvested in Lincolnshire are canned within six hours at Long Sutton, the Princes site that remains the only pea cannery in the UK and produces about 24 million cans and 40 billion peas a year. Drought and disease-resistant varieties can protect yields but often take years to reach the market.

Giuseppe Mastrolia, interim chief executive at Princes, said the pressure extended across the group’s product range. “Climate change is a topic that’s going on across all different areas, in pasta, in tomatoes. Things are changing,” he said. “We need to be prepared and we are already implementing changes. Climate is touching the whole industrial structure.”

Princes, one of Europe’s largest food producers, pushed through emergency price increases earlier this year after the Iran war raised energy and packaging costs and led to global shortages of fertiliser. “We took a hit in March and April. Things have slowed down but there is still an uncertainty around,” Mastrolia said. Cuts to government support and higher employment costs have also affected the food industry.

Mastrolia said he shared Giles’s view on the opportunity in chickpeas, citing rising demand for protein-rich foods, but that the harvest would limit local sourcing. “What we try to do with peas is sell what we produce and pack in the UK, but given the circumstances this year, we won’t be able to fulfill demand. Last year we bought some frozen peas, still in the UK from Scotland, so we are trying to source locally but the best is to produce fresh peas.”

Retailers have already linked hot weather and lower crop yields to rising food prices, while the question of how far the 2026 drought compares with 1976 has become a live one for the farming sector.