How is climate change reshaping global food security? Summary
- Climate change intensifies global crop losses through floods droughts and cyclones
- Extreme weather caused fifty billion dollars economic losses during 2025
- Drying rivers severely disrupt food logistics causing delays and capacity cuts
- Climate volatility widens yield outcomes increasing risks for commodity markets
- Real time monitoring enables faster sourcing decisions reducing climate driven disruptions
Climate change is tightening its grip on the food system.
Floods are destroying crops and endangering livestock, while droughts and extreme high temperatures are turning previously fertile land into no‑grow zones.
On top of this, devastating storms are wiping out entire ecosystems.
“The most serious disruptor is tropical cyclones – hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones,” says Jon Davis, chief meteorologist for supply chain risk management firm Everstream Analytics. These, he says, can lead to widespread crop destruction, particularly if they hit an area of mature crops ready for harvesting.
And most, if not all, essential and non-essential crops are under threat – that means everything from wheat, potatoes and rice to sugar, coffee and cocoa.
Financial cost
According to Everstream Analytics, extreme weather during the summer of 2025 cost the global economy $50bn (€41.9bn) in losses.
Since 2000, the predominant driver of global economic loss has been extreme wind from tropical cyclones with non-tropical cyclones taking the second spot. Monetary loss stemming from flooding events has also increased by a staggering 27%.
Logistics
It’s not only the direct threat of climate change on crops that’s threatening the food system. The movement of food is becoming a major issue for suppliers and manufacturers, with Everstream Analytics’ Davis saying dry weather is the biggest disruptor across the entire industry. “Dry weather in the central US (Mississippi River) and Europe (Rhine River) has impacted movement of commodities as barges are not able to navigate the rivers due to low water levels.”
He and his team have witnessed “rapid acceleration” in drying riverbeds this decade.
And those low water levels have knock‑on effects far beyond the river itself:
- Reduced barge capacity as barges must lighten loads to avoid grounding
- Long delays, with barges backing up along the river
- Shift to more expensive transport modes like rail and trucking
- Factory slowdowns and stock shortages in regions dependent on river freight
Price volatility
Price volatility in agricultural commodities is already a huge challenge for manufacturers, leading to increased production costs. This, says Everstream Analytics’ Davis is likely to persist, and even intensify as extreme weather events increase in frequency and severity.
This escalation widens the “tails of the distribution”, meaning that highly beneficial and highly damaging seasons are becoming more common, making outcomes more unpredictable for producers, traders, and markets.
“During a particular growing season, if the patterns feature dry conditions during planting, wet conditions during the mid crop development, and dry conditions at harvest, this scenario can be very beneficial for yields,” says Davis. “If, on the other hand, wet conditions delay planting, hot/dry weather stresses the crop during mid development stages, and wet conditions impede the harvest, this is the recipe for a very poor crop.”
Worse still is the reality that even when farmers adapt, global yields are still projected to decline significantly as warming progresses, with analysis suggesting that increasing temperatures will reduce calorie yields from staple crops even after accounting for real‑world adaptation efforts.
The result is a system in which agricultural markets face greater uncertainty. On one end of the spectrum, certain regions may temporarily benefit from climate shifts, such as extended growing seasons in higher latitudes, but these benefits coexist with widespread yield declines in traditional breadbasket regions, especially under high‑warming scenarios.
On the other end, recurring crop failures, combined with unstable global supply chains, propagate price spikes. Broad reviews of climate impacts consistently highlight how extreme weather accelerates this volatility by disrupting planting windows, degrading soils, increasing pest pressures, and damaging infrastructure.
In essence, climate change acts as a volatility multiplier. It increases the probability of both bumper crops and crop failures, stretches the variance of outcomes across seasons, and ultimately pushes commodity markets toward more pronounced booms and busts. As the tails of the distribution widen, risk management becomes more complex, and the stakes for global food security grow higher.
Mitigating risk
The most effective strategy to mitigate risk is undoubtedly investment in regenerative agriculture. By improving soil health, enhancing biodiversity, and building climate resilience, regenerative practices create more stable supply chains and long‑term productivity. This approach not only reduces environmental impact but also strengthens the economic and operational foundations of the entire agricultural ecosystem.
Beyond this, technologies which provide early, accurate information, to manufacturers will also help businesses to plan ahead.
The period while crops are actively growing is the only window that truly matters for risk management – once a crop is harvested, the opportunity to adjust sourcing, hedging, or inventory positions has largely passed. In other words continuous, real‑time monitoring of agricultural regions is essential.
Modern crop‑monitoring systems combine satellite imagery, weather data, soil‑moisture readings, field‑level IoT sensors, and predictive yield modeling to detect early signs of stress or strength in a crop.
When companies receive early visibility into production trends, whether favourable or unfavourable, they gain crucial lead time to make informed decisions. If mid‑season indicators show yields will fall short due to drought stress, heat waves, disease pressure, or logistics disruptions, buyers can secure alternative suppliers, diversify origins, or lock in contracts before prices rise. Conversely, if data shows the potential for a bumper crop, companies can adjust purchase timing, renegotiate contracts, or reduce hedge exposure to avoid overpaying.
A system under pressure
Climate change is no longer a distant threat to the global food system, but a present‑day force reshaping every link in the chain, from the fields where crops are grown to the waterways and roads that carry them to market.
The industry now faces a defining moment. The challenges are growing, but so too is the opportunity to rethink how food systems function, invest in regenerative agriculture, diversify sourcing, and modernise infrastructure.
Ultimately, safeguarding the global food supply will require collaboration between farmers, manufacturers, governments to anticipate risks before they escalate and to build supply chains capable of withstanding a more volatile climate.
