NORTH Essex farmers who survived “extraordinary” ups and downs in this year’s crop prices are hoping for more stability next year.

Chris Butler, who runs his farm, farm shop and cafe from Greenstead Green said prices of wheat, barley and oil seed rape had rocketed and dropped like never before.

A year ago wheat was £85 per tonne, then in July it rose to £185 before dropping to £80, so farmers are now getting less for their crops than 12 months ago.

This left many farmers unsure of what price they would sell for, he said.

“We have never seen the fluctuations and the range of them like this year. My father has been farming for 70 odd years. In all that time they have never seen that price range.”

Mr Butler who runs the business with his wife, Tania, said other crops followed wheat prices, because of world crop shortages.

Brian Finnerty, National Farmers Union spokesman, said the difficulty was that other costs, such as fuel and fertiliser, remained high.

He said: “Crop protection products that we buy in, that’s quite high. Fuel has been quite high and slow to fall back. It hasn’t fallen anyway near as fast as crop prices have.

“The big question mark is what’s going to happen next year. There’s real volatility out there and some concerns about what’s going to happen, but farmers are very resilient and people are going to need food however difficult the situation is.”