Food security: Is the climate change food crisis even worse than we imagined?

You have probably already noticed that the price of many of the foods in your grocery basket has risen – a lot. In the UK, the cost of white potatoes is up 20 per cent in the past year, with carrots up 38 per cent and olive oil up 40 per cent. And while that means the expense of putting together a roast dinner is soaring, specialty items are suffering even bigger hikes – you will now pay nearly double for some bars of chocolate.

What is driving prices up is complex, but one of the biggest factors is climate change. In the short term, extreme weather caused by a warming climate has had devastating consequences for growers. In northern Europe, for instance, torrential rains in spring 2024 left fields too sodden to harvest vegetables or plant new crops. Meanwhile, a drought in Morocco, which typically exports a lot of vegetables to Europe, meant there wasn’t enough water for irrigation. The result was soaring prices for potatoes and carrots.

As the average global temperature zooms past 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in the coming years, heatwaves, droughts and extreme storms are going to become even more common and severe, causing greater disruption to food production. But current efforts to compensate for the impact of poor harvests – such as clearing forests to grow more crops – make many other problems worse, from biodiversity loss to increasing carbon dioxide levels. With such big impacts on so many foods already happening, have we underestimated how bad the effect will be? And what can we do about it if we have?