Prices Rise As Food Production is Threatened by Drought, Topsoil Loss, and Overheated Earth

Draft script:

Not surprisingly, abrupt, irreversible climate change is driving up food prices around the world. An excellent series of charts from Carbon Brief tells the tale in an article published 23 August 2024. The article is titled Five charts: How climate change is driving up food prices around the world. The subhead: “Global food prices have seen huge fluctuations in recent years, soaring to record highs in 2022 before dropping in 2023 and rising again slowly this year.” Here’s the lede: “Extreme weather events, geopolitical conflict, high input costs and increased demand all contributed to these spikes, experts told Carbon Brief in June. I will present and briefly describe each of the five charts.

The first graphic is from Europe and is titled “Extreme heat pushes up food inflation.” Red areas indicate food inflation, with darker red indicating greater inflation. Greenland is indicated in blue, the only region where food prices declined in 2022.

The second graphic comes from the United Kingdom, where the description is the opposite of that in Europe: “Heavy rainfall soaks soils and delays crop planting.” The graphic is described with a caption: “UK monthly rainfall anomalies from January 2021 to July 2024. Figures above the baseline indicate higher-than-average rainfall levels (dark blue shading) and those below the baseline indicate less rain (yellow shading), compared to average levels from 1991-2020. The thick blue line represents the average rainfall across the UK, and the dotted light blue lines indicate figures for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Credit: Carbon Brief, based on data from the Met Office.

The third of five examples is found in the United States, where “Orange production falls due to disease and extreme weather.” Specifically, production of oranges declined “by more than 40% between 2020 and 2024.” Hurricanes Irma and Ian affected orange production in Florida, as shown with the orange line. The  Associated Press indicated this year’s harvest in Brazil is forecast to be the “worst in 36 years, due to flooding and drought.” Flooding and drought are among the ongoing and expected outcomes of abrupt, irreversible climate change.

The fourth example comes from the Mediterranean region, where “olive oil production declined by about one-third between 2021 and 2024.” As illustrated in the graphic, global olive production declined with extreme weather, pests, extreme heat, and drought. The article in Carbon Brief indicates that “global olive production has dropped significantly since 2021. Production dropped by approximately one-third between 2021 and 2024.

As a result, the price of olive oil has soared in different parts of the world. In January 2024, the cost had risen by almost 70% in Portugal compared to January 2024. … Prices were up by 50% in the EU, on average, during this time period.

Olive oil is now the ‘most stolen product in supermarkets across Spain’ due to the price tag, the Guardian reported in March.”

China rounds out the list of locations with increasing food prices. “Extreme rainfall cut China’s rice yield by around 8% from 1999 to 2012.” China was also plagued by extreme heat, drought, extreme cold, and unnamed other factors. China is a huge country, so it’s no surprise that extreme rainfall and drought are items number one and number three on the list of factors contributing to reduced food production.

Let’s take a closer look at factors contributing to declining food production. A story in the Guardian is titled Nearly all of US states are facing droughts, an unprecedented number. The article was published 5 November 2024. The subhead indicates “More than 150 million people and 318 m[illion] acres of crops are affected by droughts after summer of record heat.” Here’s the lede: “Every US state except Alaska and Kentucky is facing drought, an unprecedented number, according to the US Drought Monitor.”

The story in the Guardian includes mention of the importance of California to global food production: “California, which relies heavily on the agricultural industry to support its economy, lost $1.7bn in crop revenue in 2022 due to the ongoing drought.

Dry conditions can also result in low water levels on rivers and other waterways. Ports and other water-borne transportation may become limited due to a reduction in available routes and cargo-carrying capacity, which increases transportation costs.

That cost increase is ultimately transferred to consumers, who see it in the form of higher-priced products, groceries and other commodities.

The story in the Guardian concludes with a quote from a Professor of Environmental Science at Michigan State University: “Droughts affect water resources, agriculture, transportation, which can overall impact the economy. To have a broad relief, we need regular precipitation, and there’s no simple answer to getting that.”

Adding to the misery is a story from Copernicus, the European Union’s Climate Change Service. Published on 7 November 2024, the story is titled Copernicus: 2024 virtually certain to be the warmest year and first year above 1.5^oC. It’s unclear where Copernicus obtained the figure of Earth’s first year above 1.5 C. After all, governments of the world concluded we had passed the 2 C Rubicon in October of 2023. However, the conclusion about 2024 being the warmest on record is bad enough.

An indication of the source of the 1.5 C figure comes later in the article in Copernicus. Under the subheading Europe and other regions comes this bullet point: “The average temperature over European land for October 2024 was 10.83°C, 1.23°C above the 1991-2020 average for October.” If the baseline is 1991-2020, then it’s no surprise that we’ve yet to cross the 1.5 C mark. For those of us dealing in reality, Earth is at least 2 C above the 1750 baseline.

The American Geophysical Union has a bulletin, Eos. From the 11 June 2024 version of Eos comes a story headlined Agricultural Lands Are Losing Topsoil—Here’s How Bad It Could Get. The subhead refers to a peer-reviewed paper: “A new study says topsoil erosion is likely to increase under climate change, though policy changes now could help stem loss.” I have my doubts about positive policy changes in the country of my birth, especially in light of the forthcoming presidential administration.

The first paragraph of the article in Eos indicates the importance of topsoil: “Good topsoil does not accumulate quickly. Less than a tenth of a millimeter of soil forms per year in some places, though the amount can vary depending on the environment. Compare that to the rate of topsoil erosion in agricultural regions of the United States: around half a millimeter per year, or 5 times as much, according to a recent study in the [peer-reviewed] journal Catena. That imbalance is imperiling our ability to grow food in large swaths of America’s breadbasket.”

The peer-reviewed, open-access paper in Catena refers to a future we are unlikely to witness: 2050. A soil scientist at Iowa State University who was not involved in the peer-reviewed research sounds like me when he responds to the research and its findings: “I’m optimistic it can be done. I’m not optimistic that it will be done.”

If you prefer a humorous version of this story, you can find Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon Prime. It’s been running for three seasons so far.