A farming advisor to Reform UK – which would expand oil and gas drilling and scrap net zero targets – has spoken of the “soul-destroying” impact of extreme weather on his own crops.

As the UK faces its fifth heatwave in four months, farmers have been left reeling from the impact of climate shocks, with stunted vegetables, poor grass growth and lower yields damaging both profit margins and morale.

On 25 July, days before a drought was declared for over half of England and Wales, Staffordshire arable farmer and Reform advisor Clive Bailye gave voice to the predicament facing thousands of farmers across the UK.

“I’ve never seen such good-looking crops yield so badly in my entire farming career,” wrote Bailye in an X post viewed nearly 50,000 times, pointing to an “utter disaster of a harvest”.

“Utterly soul-destroying for everybody involved,” he said, adding that it “gets harder to maintain a pride in your work when it gets destroyed by weather, seemingly every year now.” He concluded by asking: “Is there actually any point planting crops this autumn? I’m seriously beginning to wonder.”

A version of this article was published by The New World.

Bailye, the founder and owner of social media network The Farming Forum, has described himself as an “accidental campaigner”, who helped organise the large-scale 2024 farming protests against inheritance tax on agricultural assets.

In March this year, Bailye revealed that he had also been working with Reform’s chief of staff James Orr, and claimed to have had “significant influence and input” on the party’s agricultural policy being drafted for the next general election.

Bailye was criticised at the time for his suggestion of doubling wheat prices by using trade policy – though he insists that new policies need to be implemented to boost profits for UK farmers. 

While publicly recognising the relentless impact of extreme weather on producers, Bailye fails to link human-caused climate change with the increased severity and frequency of heatwaves afflicting British farms. He also does not appear to acknowledge that the policies of anti-net zero party Reform could make already dire conditions even worse.

Extreme heat, supercharged by human-caused climate change, is driving record poor harvests throughout Europe, with poor soil exacerbated by a winter of heavy flooding. Analysts warned this week that Britain risked its “worst food security crisis in decades”.

“The climate crisis is the single greatest threat to the UK’s food and national security, and it demands a fundamental rethink of how we farm in this country,” Martin Lines, chief executive of the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), a farmer-led movement for sustainable production, told DeSmog.

“Political parties that think abandoning environmental and climate goals will bring us food security and prosperity are completely wrong,” he added. “They will lead us to a very challenging future of food scarcity, rocketing prices, catastrophic harvests and failed rural businesses.”

Reform and its most high-profile politicians have been conspicuously quiet on the drought and wildfires hammering the UK and Europe this summer. 

Meanwhile, in its public statements and 2024 general election manifesto, the party has consistently downplayed the impact of human activity on global heating, and pledged to scrap policies to limit harmful greenhouse gases.

DeSmog reported earlier this year that the party had received £24 million from oil and gas interests, accounting for more than two thirds of its total income.

When challenged on the same X thread about his support for a party that “denies climate change”, Bailye responded: “Yes. I’m backing a party who treats food security as a priority rather than an inconvenience. I’m not aware of any party claiming it can control the weather ?”  

When another social media user then cited Bailye’s own record of underplaying climate science, he responded: “Government policy re climate change IS the problem British farmers face immediately, much more so than the climate itself frankly !”

Bailye clarified to DeSmog that he advises Reform on an unpaid and unofficial basis. “I am a working arable farmer and I give my views on food production and land use to politicians who ask for them.” He added: “Reform have asked. So, at various points, have others.” 

“I am not a climate change denier,” he said, noting that he had “never once claimed that the weather is not causing farmers enormous problems”. Bailye also pointed to his use of regenerative farming methods on his farm, including zero tilling and soil carbon sequestration, as evidence of his commitment to the environment.

However, his own position on climate change appears to align with that of Reform and its most senior policymakers.

Bailye has regularly disputed the reality of manmade climate change on his own farming forum, frequently arguing with other farmers who are urging him to take the subject seriously.

In a post shared in February this year, Bailye claimed that “the word ‘environment’ has been stolen by the climate change nut jobs …….. it’s not the same thing”. In another post, he described global warming as a “perfectly natural long term planetary phenomenon”.

Reform’s leader Nigel Farage, who is standing in Thursday’s Clacton-on-Sea by-election, has said he is unsure whether carbon dioxide results in global warming, but that he thinks it is “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant.

Scientists are clear that human-caused climate change is primarily caused by increased CO2 and methane emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, as well as from the harmful gases linked to intensive agriculture. 

Experts agree that slashing greenhouse gas emissions is critical to ensuring the future resilience of farming and food production, since this will limit the catastrophic impacts of extreme heat on soil and crop growth. New research by the independent research non-profit Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), published last week, indicates that 2026 is set to be the worst harvest in the UK’s record.

If elected to government, Reform would scrap the UK’s main pathway to decarbonisation – the country’s legally binding target to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. 

Reform did not respond to DeSmog’s requests for comment.

“There’s a bitter irony in hearing Reform’s farming adviser talk about the failure of his crops due to extreme weather while his party actively campaigns to weaken climate action,” said Lily Rose Ellis, climate campaigner at Greenpeace UK.

“Farmers are on the frontline of drought, extreme heat, and increasingly unpredictable weather. A more secure and resilient future is within reach, but Reform’s policies would only leave them more exposed. Climate denial won’t save harvests.”

‘Why Live in Purgatory?’

Reform has positioned itself as a party for farmers, but provided little detail on how it will support farmers navigating the dire impacts of climate change on their livelihoods.

The party’s most recently documented agricultural policy is contained in a slim seven-page PDF within its 2024 manifesto. In this it claims to be “the only political party that is serious about supporting farming and fishing communities and promoting food security, whilst still advocating for responsible stewardship of the natural environment”.

It has also pledged to raise farming support to £3 billion a year, and increase domestic food production to 70 percent.

However, the party has not shared any details on how it would do this sustainably, for example by improving water resilience for farmers, supporting a transition to less fossil fuel-reliant farming methods, or bolstering adaptation measures.

According to government data published last month, the UK’s food self-sufficiency in 2025 dropped from 65 to 60 percent – attributed to climate-related commodity shocks. 

Reform has also said it would end subsidies for renewable energies such as solar and wind farms – essential to the UK slashing its use of harmful fossil fuels – and stop them from being installed on agricultural land. Scientists at Lancaster University found that ground-mounted solar currently takes up between just 0.06 and 0.07 percent of total land area in the UK.

On his farming forum, Bailye has falsely claimed that the current climate crisis is not exceptional, but part of a “natural” cycle. Climate change had been a “constant since the Earth was formed”, he wrote in October 2025, adding that “there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop those long-term shifts”. 

There was consequently “no need for net zero”, he said. He argued that it was important to protect our environment, but differentiated this from climate impacts: “We won’t stop or even influence climate change so why live in purgatory meanwhile ?”

Bailye’s line of argument follows a trope often used by climate science deniers – who refer to variations in climate over thousands of years to deny the severity of human-caused climate change in recent decades, and to undermine the urgency of reducing greenhouse gas emissions now. 

Scientists overwhelmingly agree that the extreme weather we are now witnessing is unique in the earth’s history, with the years between 2015 and 2024 found to be the 10 hottest on record. Research has consistently shown that preventing every fraction of a degree of warming is critical to ensuring a liveable planet.

“I am not a climate scientist and I have no intention of pretending to be one,” Bailye told DeSmog, adding that he agreed that the weather was “plainly” making farming more difficult, but that his priority was about understanding “what British policy can actually do about it”.

He added that he stood by his past statements, and that he would not be removing the posts from The Farming Forum. Bailye also noted that, since the UK is responsible for around one percent of global emissions, “no target set in Westminster is going to change the rainfall over Staffordshire”. 

Climate science deniers often use the “one percent argument” to evade responsibility for climate action, despite the urgent need for collective global mitigation. The UK still ranks as the 18th highest global emitter, and is historically the fifth top polluter when taking into account all CO2 emissions produced since the industrial revolution.

Electing a party that would scrap the UK’s existing climate targets would be highly damaging, said Green Party MP Adrian Ramsay.

“Nigel Farage’s party of fossil-fuel-funded climate science deniers would pose the greatest danger to our security if it ever came to power,” he said.

Lines, of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, said it was essential for politicians to support a transition to sustainable farming, and to “urgently reduce carbon emissions across the board”. 

“Without this,” he said, “the extreme conditions which have already caused yields to plummet and farmers to fear for their futures will become much worse.”