Country diary: This is how bad the heatwave has got for us arable farmers – I’m going on holiday | Colin Chappell

The calendar says August, but the soil in Lincolnshire is already spent. A British arable farmer taking a holiday in the middle of the season isn't a luxury; it's a red flag nailed to the barn door. When Colin Chappell says he has "very little to do" because the boom-bust climate has hijacked his routine, he is describing a fundamental fracture in our food system. This isn't just about an early harvest. It signals a shift toward a chaotic volatility where drought scorches one region while floods drown another. The "bust" follows the "boom," and this manic-depressive weather is rewriting the rules of agriculture—not for profit, but for survival. This is what an unstable climate looks like: not a gradual change, but a series of shocks that break the rhythm of centuries. When a farmer is forced to abandon the field because the weather has made his expertise obsolete, we must see the alarm in this forced idleness. The holiday is a symptom, not a solution. The quiet fields of August are a warning that our seasons are slipping their moorings. We can't afford to look away, or soon, we'll all be on an unwanted holiday from food security.