Global wheat shortage puts 10p on a loaf of bread Mike Holling, chairman of the NAMB, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he had "never known" the situation to be as bad as it is now. "It's not been good at all," he said. Unfortunately, when you have the weather we have had - early in the year very dry conditions and then as the year progressed we came to the very wet weather - this really reduced the total yield of British wheat production. Mr Holling said the impact of the poor crop was now being felt in increased prices for the flour bakers use to produce bread, cakes, pies and savoury snacks. At this moment we are seeing increases come through. We saw an increase come through in September. We are just about to take another increase. We have taken a flour increase of £50 a ton, and that is roughly 13 per cent. At the end of the day, the manufacturer can't sustain that kind of increase. As the end user, we try to pass a small amount of the percentage on to the consumer and absorb the rest, but this is very volatile. Mr Holling said he had never known a situation like it in the baking industry, adding: "People are very concerned. What we are seeing at the moment, even in the supermarkets, is a 400g loaf having to go up by 5p and an 800g can go up by 10p. And flour is not only used in bread, it is pastry, cream cakes, savoury products. It is right across the board. The problem is the shortfall in wheat production in the UK. It has been reported that we are having to take an extra two million tons from Germany just to bring it back.