English winemakers prosper but veg farms wilt in the drought

Just 50 miles from the thriving Somerset grapevines, Phil Collins shows me a much sadder sight.

“Six and a half thousand cauliflowers here, which have just basically cooked,” he explained.

The leaves are brown and crispy. Inside there are tiny cauliflowers, brown and dried up. We walk on, through a field of potatoes, the plants shrivelled to nothing and lying brown on the soil.

“This is Marfona, which is meant to be a drought resistant variety,” Collins said.

“But this year has just been so dry, it couldn’t cope with it. The plants should be two foot high and green – there’s nothing left there.”

He and his team sell veg through farmers’ markets, but still compete with supermarket prices. If he was to irrigate all his crops to keep them alive, the costs would be so high his cauliflowers, spuds and carrots would be far pricier than supermarket alternatives.

He picks runner beans each morning, and is getting “about a third of the normal crop”.

“I’ve never had an overdraft in thirty years,” he said. “This year has been so bad, we’ve no choice. We will get over it, but it’ll take a while.”