The UK farmers who switched en masse to barley this year have suffered sharply reduced yields, with the national harvest barely rising despite jump in sowings.

Britain's barley harvest rose 2% to 6.3m tonnes this year, the best for six years, a survey by the National Farmers' Union showed.

However, the rise was far lower than the 11.9% rise in plantings, particularly for spring barley, revealed on Thursday by the UK government, which has highlighted the difficulty farmers faced with autumn plantings as well as low wheat prices.

The NFU reported lower yields for both spring and winter crops, with their report implying an average of about 5.4 tonnes per hectare, the lowest since 2001.

'Difficult growing conditions'

Ian Blackhouse, the NFU's chairman combinable crops, highlighted "a difficult autumn planting in 2008 after one of the wettest summers on record, a very dry spring and delays to ripening and harvest by yet more abnormal summer rains in 2009".

Yields on cereal crops had been hurt by "difficult growing conditions during the season", and a reluctance by farmers to fork out for nutrients given weaker grain prices.

Rapeseed 'resilience' 

However, the UK oilseed rape crop would come in at about 2m tonnes, in line with last year's, despite a slide in plantings estimated by official data at 4.4%.

"The crop has shown a remarkable resilience," Mr Blackhouse said.

"Oilseed rape was very difficult to establish in the autumn of2008 and a certain amount was ploughed in with some replaced using spring varieties."