NFU president, Tim Bennett, saw for himself how August's torrential rain has devastated the harvest in North Yorkshire and the North-East.

He visited a farm at Gilling West, near Richmond, before discussing the situation with grain merchants at Farmway, Piercebridge, near Darlington.

Mr Bennett's visit on Thursday of last week came the day after the NFU and Defra began talks on how the Government could help agricultural businesses recover.

Malcolm Metcalfe, who estimated that the continued deluge cost him about £10,000 in lost wheat quality and additional fuel for drying, showed Mr Bennett round his Gillingwood Hall Farm.

Half of Mr Metcalfe's 340 acres of wheat is a milling variety, but the rain and the warm, humid conditions reduced it to feed standard only.

"It was tropical weather, warm and very, very wet, and the wheat literally grew in the ear," said Mr Metcalfe. "We were cutting one day at 26pc moisture. We try to cut at 18pc, preferably less."

A sample of his milling wheat sent to Grainco failed a dough test. As well as losing about £20 a tonne on the wheat, he faces extra fuel costs for running his grain drier.

"I was relatively lucky; my rape was in by the time the rain struck," he said. "But farmers about five miles north of here were really badly hit. Seed was damaged with the weather and it went rancid."

Mr Metcalfe was due to finish cutting his wheat this week and has 34 acres of peas left to harvest. "The peas don't look too bad but the colour is terrible, so they will probably go to stock feed rather than for human consumption, which reduces the price I get," he said.

Mr Bennett said Defra had seemed sympathetic to the problem during initial discussions and Government representatives would visit the area in the next two weeks.

"The perception was that the North-East and North Yorkshire were badly affected, if not the worst-affected region," he said. "We agreed that, once the harvest was out of the way, we would assess the full impact of the exceptional weather on the arable industry."

A case would then be assembled to apply to the EC for early payment of arable cash support, possibly on a regional basis so that the worst-hit areas would benefit most. The Government would also be asked to reconsider fuel duty increases.

Mr Bennett, who had received messages of support for farmers from the Prince of Wales, said: "I would stress that it is not just the cost of getting the harvest in that has increased because of the weather, it is the fact that the quality has gone, the ground has been damaged and the effect of this will last at least 12 months and probably longer.

"If we have a lot of feed wheat, there will be an overload of poor quality grain and we will have to import milling wheat and biscuit wheat."