Is there going to be a milk shortage in the UK?

What is being shared

“Milk shortage warning as drought puts major strain on supply” ran on 21 September 2026 and was syndicated widely. A second piece described people in England and Wales turning to Scottish producers.

The word doing the work is “warning”. It suggests an official body has told the public to expect shortages. None has.

Who actually said what

The story is built on one producer: Bryce Cunningham, founder of Mossgiel Organic Dairy in Ayrshire, who told reporters that the drought has caused serious supply issues across the industry. He is describing something real, and his own business is seeing demand from further south. But one dairy’s order book is not a national forecast.

The farming bodies have been saying something more specific all summer. Ian Harvey, who chairs the NFU’s dairy board, said in early August that grass had stopped growing about six weeks earlier, and warned milk buyers in July that farmers were already feeding the forage they had set aside for winter. His concern was the cost of getting herds through to spring — not what shoppers will find on the shelf.

What the numbers say

The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, which publishes the official delivery figures, reported in August that daily milk deliveries in July were 3.2 per cent lower than a year earlier, and 4.5 per cent lower in the week to 1 August, after the driest and sunniest July on record. Across April to July the fall was about 2 per cent.

That is a real drop, and the farms producing it are under strain. The price they are paid has started to edge back up — the UK average was 35p a litre in July, up on June but still a fifth below a year earlier, and below what milk costs many farms to produce. The big processors raised what they pay again in September.

The drought itself is not over. In its report for 2 to 8 October 2026 the Environment Agency had 11 of its areas in drought, with Yorkshire added on 9 October, and reservoir storage in England at 54 per cent in the week ending 6 October, 21 per cent below average for the time of year. Separately, its analysis for the National Drought Group on 15 September put the rainfall needed for every area to recover by next April at around 120 per cent of average over seven months. Our drought tracker follows those reports as they are published.

So will the shelves be empty?

On the evidence, no. We could find no retailer rationing milk, no reports of empty shelves, and no statement from a supermarket, a processor or the government suggesting there will be. Processors are talking about tighter supply and higher prices, which is a different thing from running out.

History points the same way. The 2018 drought was as severe in many areas, deliveries fell, farmers bought in feed at painful prices — and shoppers never saw a shortage. A fall of a few per cent in production is absorbed by the system: less goes into cheese, butter and powder, and liquid milk for shops is protected because it is what retailers contract first.

What is likely is that milk gets a little dearer. That is worth knowing; it is not worth queuing for.

What is sensible, short of panic buying

If you like to have a fallback, there are two that cost almost nothing. UHT milk keeps for months unopened in a cupboard. And fresh milk freezes: the Food Standards Agency’s advice is to freeze food before its use-by date, keep the freezer at minus 18C, defrost in the fridge and use it within 24 hours. Frozen milk separates slightly — shake it.

A carton or two of UHT at the back of the cupboard is part of an ordinary store cupboard, and useful in a power cut or a week of snow as much as anything else. It is not a reason to clear a shelf.

What not to do

Don’t buy more fresh milk than you will drink. Shelves empty when everyone buys at once, not when production dips by 3 per cent; the shortage of 2020 was made in the aisle, not on the farm.

And don’t read a rise in price as a sign of scarcity. Milk is getting more expensive to produce. That reaches the shelf as pennies on a pint, slowly, not as a gap where the milk used to be.