Tuesday briefing: How ‘climateflation’ is pushing food prices ever higher – and changing how we eat

In today’s newsletter: Extreme heat, droughts and floods are proving disastrous for farmers on the frontline of climate change, and consumers in the supermarket, too

Good morning. My mum is a livestock farmer in Kent. This year her hay crop was down by 50% because the spring rains never came. She’s not alone – up and down the UK, farmers have watched their fields turn brown and their hay crops collapse.

Hay keeps animals alive over winter (when there is no fresh grass outside) and some farmers are already selling off cows because they can’t guarantee they will be able to feed them. From extreme drought to biblical floods, more than 80% of UK farmers are worried wild swings in weather are affecting their ability to earn a living.

Globally, farmers are on the frontline of climate change and livelihoods are on the line. Last year, heatwaves wiped out onions in India and cocoa in Ivory Coast. Most recently wildfires and heatwaves have driven losses of olives, citrus fruits and vegetables across Europe.

Not only is this bad news for farmers, but supply chains are buckling under the pressure, driving an increase in the cost of food for consumers. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Dr Maximilian Kotz, a Marie Curie postdoctoral research fellow at Barcelona Supercomputing Center, about “climateflation” and how environmental breakdown affects the cost of what we eat. That’s after the headlines.

It has been known for a long time that the amount of food a farmer produces is linked to climate conditions (hence why farmers are usually clued up to the forecast). This is of course natural – weather fluctuates. However, in recent years temperature extremes have become stronger, and records are being broken across the globe. As a result, a new area of research has started to evolve over the past five-ish years: how the climate crisis is affecting the price of food.

“In the last year or two there have been many widespread examples of this phenomenon playing out,” said Maximilian Kotz. “It’s something that people are really noticing – not just researchers who look at the data in detail, but people in the industry, and even consumers, are starting to see these things directly for themselves.”

What are the effects of wildfires and heatwaves across Europe?

We’ve all read about wildfires and heatwaves ravaging southern Europe. Not only has this had a devastating impact on people’s lives but it has also having an concerning impact on food, with farmers struggling to grow crops that their forebears did for hundreds of years.

This means the price of traditional Mediterranean produce such as olives, citrus fruits, vegetables and wine are likely to rise. In the UK, long dry spells have also affected the production of cereals, potatoes, carrots and broccoli. Britain’s largest retailers are warning food prices are already being driven up by hot weather.

This is not an isolated year, and crop losses are only set to increase in the coming years as the climate crisis gets worse. In the EU, the average annual loss is expected to increase by up to two-thirds by 2050, according to analysis by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Commission.

And it’s not just in Europe where agriculture is being hit. Shrivelled cacao pods and failed harvests caused by extreme temperatures in west Africa have caused an increase in the price of chocolate. Even bananas are not safe – rising temperatures, extreme weather and climate-related pests are pummelling Guatemala, Costa Rica and Colombia, where the world’s most popular fruit is grown.

What are some examples of price spikes in recent years?

Kotz and his team looked at data from 18 countries to find examples of price spikes associated with extreme weather events.

They found that in 2022, vegetable prices spiked by 80% in Arizona and California after extreme summer drought. In the same year, a drought in the Horn of Africa – the worst there in 40 years – resulted in food prices being 40% higher in March the following year.

In 2024, global cocoa prices were 280% higher in April after a heatwave two months prior in Ivory Coast and Ghana (together, these two countries account for 60% of global cacao production). A heatwave in May of the same year caused a 80% increase in the price of onions and potatoes in India.

At its most basic level, this is an issue of supply and demand: if droughts and heat stress destroy crop yields, then prices of that crop go up.

Kotz said: “It is quite striking that very often the products that are most affected are fresh fruit and vegetable produce. There are obvious reasons why that could be the case – essentially those are products that are harder to store, and normally they have a shorter time span between production and going to the market.” The impact on the market is amplified as you can’t stockpile perishable produce, whereas grains and rice can be stored to buffer disruption.

How ‘climateflation’ will change the way we eat

The term ‘climateflation’ refers to the rising cost of living caused by the climate crisis. Fundamentally, disruptions to agriculture have an impact on how much people have to fork out for food. Extreme weather causes short-term price shocks, but hotter average temperatures cause food inflation spikes that can last up to 12 months, according to Kotz’s research from last year. “We were able to see that we really are going to be expecting persistently higher food prices under future temperature increases,” he said.

A report from the Autonomy Institute thinktank found that increasingly extreme weather could drive up food prices by more than a third by 2050 for British consumers.

The cost of living crisis is already squeezing UK household budgets with high food, energy and housing costs, while wages remain stagnant. Food makes up a large share of household spending – especially in emerging economies. Typically, healthy food (such as fresh fruit and vegetables) is twice as expensive per calorie as less healthy food. Research from the Food Foundation has shown that spending on healthy products is usually where people cut back in times of food price increases, particularly in low-income households.

This could exacerbate a range of health issues, from malnutrition to chronic diet-related conditions including coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancers. Poor diets have also been linked to poor mental health, according to the Food Foundation. “We expect this kind of food price inflation induced by climate change would most of all affect the poorest households,” said Kotz. “That then has many implications long-term for wider societal health.”

The trend with rising food prices is structural, so it will keep building as long as temperatures increase. “It’s clear that the main thing that we can do to reduce these impacts is just to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions,” said Kotz. “Even though it’s very obvious, I think it’s always important to bring people’s awareness back to the underlying driver.”

Cover photo:  The study found that 87% of farmers have experienced reduced productivity in the face of recent extreme weather, 84% had suffered a fall in crop yields. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images