How this summer's heat could hit your supermarket shop
Industry leaders say the UK is particularly vulnerable because it imports more than half of its food, with drought and wildfires affecting crops across Britain and Europe.
Sun-baked Britain faces higher food prices and less choice, LBC has been warned, as the extreme heat and widespread droughts take their toll on harvests across Britain and Europe.
Listen to this article
Crops are struggling in parched fields across southern England, while wildfires and heatwaves are damaging growing regions abroad - prompting fears about the supply of bread, vegetables and imported salads.
Industry leaders warn the pressure on the food chain could mean shoppers pay more in the months ahead.
Phil Pluck, Chairman of the Cold Chain Federation, told LBC the UK was particularly vulnerable because it relies heavily on imported food.
"The one guarantee is you're going to pay more for your food - much more for your food this winter," he said.
He warned that climate extremes overseas could affect what ends up on British supermarket shelves.
Read more: England and Wales suffer driest July on record but Tuesday may bring relief for parts of UK
"Europe's a big danger zone for us. We look at it and say, 'Oh, that's terrible.' But actually there is a consequence to those fires and that heat. We import vast amounts of our fresh food, fresh vegetables and salads from Europe."
He said: "The guarantee of that impact is that it almost certainly will reduce the quantity available. We all know from basic economics that if something becomes scarce, it tends to become more expensive.
"There's 70 million of us in this country and we need all of the food that we're currently importing, which is over 50 percent of our supply."
But the impact is already being felt by British farmers.
Caroline Harriott, an arable and livestock farmer on the South Downs in West Sussex, and East Region Board Chair for the National Farmers' Union, said this year's harvest had been badly hit by the lack of rain.
"The yield has been poor because it got too dry too early, and we were combining at the start of July - that's unheard of."
"The ears of grain should be big and fat, whereas they're not. They're a bit shrivelled," she added.
Ms Harriott said the extreme conditions had also created a major fire risk during harvest.
"We've been having to start combining at 2 or 3 in the morning because the crop was a fire risk and it was too hot to combine. We've had to stop at 2 in the afternoon because it's getting too hot."
She warned farmers need better ways of storing water to protect future food supplies.
"We need to be saving that winter rain because supermarkets are soon going to be worrying where to get their lettuce and their tomatoes and their vegetables and fruit from."
Daniel Young, who manages a trout farm in West Sussex, added that water shortages had forced him to cut production.
"We're actually having to fallow parts of the site. So we haven't actually got a full farm anymore. This year we're looking at producing about three-quarters of the product that we normally do."
"Fish are cold-blooded and in this warmer weather the water holds less oxygen, and that's what the animal needs to grow."
Tom Lancaster, Head of Land, Food and Farming at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, which analyses the effects of climate on agriculture, said the disruption could have consequences beyond this year's harvest.
"The most immediate effect is likely to be that it'll make the UK and Europe more dependent on imports. It's really an example of climate change reducing our food security."
He warned that multiple climate shocks around the world could push prices higher.
"You could start to see what a lot of analysts really fear, which is this sort of idea of 'multi-breadbasket failure', which can drive global commodity prices really high. That could then feed through to prices for consumers on the shelves of basic staple products like bread and flour."
Mr Pluck also warned extreme temperatures were putting pressure on the systems that keep food fresh.
"You've got 50 degrees on top of the roof, minus 20 below it, and our industrial refrigeration units have to work twice as hard just to maintain that temperature."
He warned: "If we get temperatures that now go to 40 degrees and stay there for three days or four days, we are at risk of breaking down as a sector."
In response, a Defra spokesperson said: “We recognise how hard extreme weather can be for farmers and are helping the sector build greater resilience to climate shocks through our farming schemes, the new Farming Roadmap and our work with the National Drought Group.
“We are also actively engaging with the sector and considering additional ways to support farmers through the current prolonged dry spell and working to make it easier for farmers to build more on-site irrigation reservoirs.”