“YOU just have to sit there and watch your profits fly away.”

Those were the words of a farmer whose livelihood has been hit by torrential rain that has hammered Hampshire this month.

For the past week the elements have battered the county, with rainfall being so severe in Southampton on Wednesday that businesses flooded and cars became stuck in surface water.

But away from the city the effect is just as severe.

Farmers have been left counting the cost after 19.4mm of rain fell on Sunday, 11.6mm on Monday, and 15.2mm on Tuesday.

Across the county agriculture businesses are now facing a major crop crisis. It is the latest blow to hit agriculture in the UK as protests continue over the price farmers receive for milk.

Farmers took the fight to supermarkets earlier in the month, blockading distribution centres and clearing the aisles of milk before giving the product free to shoppers.

And dairy farmers in the south west angry at the low price of milk highlighted their plight by pouring the product over their heads.

Daily Echo:

Gareth Jenkins, of Hatt Farm, Mottisfont, is worried that his business has been affected by the heavy rain which has been ruining his crops

Jack Parsons, who runs Fourjays Farm at Ower, estimated he may have to take a hit of thousands of pounds due to sodden crops.

He told the Daily Echo: “It’s not been this bad for a few years.

“I’d say it’s about 10 years since we've been in this situation, and everybody’s in the exact same boat. If it carries on like this everybody is not going to be able to get in early crops, then everybody’s trying to do everything all at once.

“You’ve not got any choice and you’ve got to grin and bear it because you can’t do anything about it.

“You’ve just got to sit there and watch your profits fly away.”

Cereal crops are being left rotting in fields after one of the wettest Augusts for 15 years.

Farmers need at least two days of sunshine before their machines can process these crops, and once the products have been gathered in they need to be dried.

The extra moisture and longer time in the fields lowers the quality of the crops, meaning they are used for products like animal feed rather than bread.

Alan Cook, of Windwhistle Farms near Sherfield English, admitted the poor weather could lower his profits by 15 to 20 per cent.

He said: “We are going to be harvesting and trying to get the crop out of the ground rather than getting the new stuff into the ground.

“There’s absolutely nothing you can do if the sun doesn’t shine because it's physically too wet to go through the machines.

“It’s frustrating but you can’t do anything about it. That’s farming really.”

Daily Echo:

Sandra Nichols, Hampshire NFU spokesman, said: “It all looked quite promising in late July and early August when the harvest started, then the rain came and the combines can’t get out in the fields to cut the cereal crops.

“Market prices are very low for arable crops at the moment so this is also bad news.

“The weather has been variable over the last couple of weeks and it has been particularly extraordinary with heavy rain this week.”

She added: “We reckon we’ve got about 40 per cent of the wheat left to cut in central southern England and probably about 30 per cent of the barley to combine.

“We need some good weather to dry the crops out.”

Ms Nichols said farmers' main concerns now are the quality of standing crops waiting to be harvested.

“Crops are ripe but very wet. The longer they stand in the fields, the yields will go down.

“We are very concerned about milling wheat which is used to make bread because this is particularly vulnerable to this very wet weather and any that remain in the fields is unlikely to be any good for milling.

“It will end up going for animal feed and its value greatly reduced. Milling wheat prices are £117 per tonne at the moment compared with £140 a tonne this time last year and feed wheat is £102 a tonne.

“The situation has turned critical this week, I can’t quantify how much all this is going to cost farmers at the moment.”

Ms Nichols said: “This just adds to the misery in the agricultural industry at the moment which has seen dire market prices for milk and the dairy industry, and also for the lamb and other sectors of farming.”

Hampshire farmer Gareth Jenkins farms with his brother Tudor at Mottisfont near Romsey.

He said delays to the cereal harvest could also affect planting next year’s crops.

“A lot of our wheat was for milling, but it won’t be now because the quality of the wheat has gone down with all the wet weather.

“We had about 400-acres of cereals and have cut about half so far. We need a couple of days without any rain and we might get it done.”

Gareth said it was impossible to estimate how much money will be lost because of the bad weather conditions.

But he added: “The harvest started off reasonably well, but grain prices are very low. The harvest will be later finishing which means there will be less time for replanting and I am more concerned about that. Oilseed rape should be going in this month but the fields still have crops in them.”

At Mottisfont weather station near Romsey just over 100mm has been recorded so far this month compared to the August average 59mm.

The wettest August at the weather station was in 2011 when 152mm of rain fell.