Polski
Issue 5/2026, Business and economics
Extreme heat could shake up global food supplies
May
Can famine be born of heat? A joint report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) summarizes current scientific knowledge and operational experience to assess how extreme heat affects food security worldwide.
High temperatures as a growing threat
FAO data shows that by 2024, more than 8 percent of the global population was suffering from hunger, and nearly a third could not afford a healthy diet. The fight against food shortages is made more difficult by climate change, including extreme heat, which affects both land and water-based production systems.
Meteorological events that are closely related to the phenomenon of rising average temperatures, and which significantly affect food production, are primarily:
- extreme heat – episodes in which temperatures so exceed multi-year averages that they cause physiological stress in plants and animals;
- Heat waves – longer periods of temperature anomalies lasting days or even weeks, while also including tropical nights – are very often associated with marine heat waves that extend for thousands of kilometers and reach up to several hundred meters into the ocean;
- complex events – include heat waves and droughts, the effects of which are much more destructive than the sum of the negative effects of individual events occurring independently.
The report’s authors emphasize that complex events involving heat waves and droughts have become more frequent worldwide over the past century, and that climate change increases the likelihood of their further intensification. Projections for 2081-2100 indicate a possible increase in their number compared to the 1986-2005 period by up to 200-300 percent over most land areas. This includes. most of Europe, the Middle East, Western and Central Asia, Australia, South America, western and southern Africa, and large areas of North America.
How does extreme heat affect food production?
The range of impacts of high temperatures on agriculture is very wide, and includes not only crop failure and poorer crop quality, but also higher livestock mortality, lower productivity of forests, fisheries and aquaculture, and higher risk of wildfires. The negative impact of hot weather on the health and productivity of agricultural workers is also not insignificant.
Extreme heat also has an indirect effect on agriculture through phenomena such as changes in the number of pollinators and pests, the spread of disease-causing pathogens, reduced forage and water availability, and loss of moisture in the soil and vegetation.
The authors of the report stress that food production industries that depend on natural populations, such as fishing, are particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of rising temperatures. In this context, they recall the movement of species out of their current range, which has been observed for years, and changes in the species composition of pasture and forest ecosystems. As an example, they cite the marine heat wave in the eastern Bering Sea, which in 2018-2019 led to the extinction of more than 90 percent of the snow crab population, resulting in the closure of one of the Arctic’s most valuable fisheries.
Black predictions for the future
Experts from the FAO have analyzed the potential impact of rising global temperatures on food production in the coming decades. As for grain crops, they calculated that a 1°C rise in temperature could cause yields of corn to fall by 4-10 percent, rice by 1.1-5.6 percent, soybeans by 2.9-5.4 percent, and wheat by 3.8-10 percent. It is worth noting, however, that crops in northern latitudes, where seasonal temperatures are often lower than optimal, show potential for yield increases, while in lower latitudes production clearly declines as the climate warms.
The impact of extreme heat on livestock production is more difficult to estimate, but it has been suggested that by the end of the 21st century, cattle in temperate regions could be exposed to 180 or more days of heat stress per year. One study also points to the potential loss of 0.4 million lambs in Australia as a result of a 1°C temperature rise, while pork production in China could fall by as much as 5-10 percent. Assuming a high emissions scenario, global losses in milk and beef production are also expected to reach $40 billion by the end of the century, equivalent to 9.8 percent of the value of current production.
Scenarios regarding the profitability of maintaining tree crops are also pessimistic. By 2050. Heat waves will negatively affect banana, cocoa, coffee and tea production, affecting up to 1.6 million small farmers in tropical regions. Some crops (such as bananas) could lose half of their current range.
How can agriculture adapt to extreme heat?
To reduce the vulnerability of crops to the threat of high temperatures, a whole range of technical adaptations are proposed, which fall into three categories:
- The use of genetics, such as the cultivation of plant varieties with shorter or longer maturation periods, the modification of plant varieties or species, and breeds and species of livestock;
- Modification of the production environment, such as shade structures and irrigation systems;
- Decisions based on agrometeorological knowledge, such as changing sowing schedules or adjusting animal feeding times to cooler times of day.
Of particular importance are anticipatory measures, i.e. disaster risk reduction measures that have been based on risk analysis and launched in advance. As an example, the report’s authors point to the development of small-scale water infrastructure and the storage of animal feed in advance of forecasted heat waves and droughts. Such proactive management reduces the need to implement socially damaging reactive strategies, such as selling productive assets or skipping meals to compensate for lost income.
According to FAO experts, the main obstacle to implementing adaptation measures is fragmented institutional responsibility. It is crucial today to integrate agricultural resilience to climate change into national adaptation plans and to move away from a one-size-fits-all solution to differentiated strategies tailored to the needs of agricultural producers, especially smaller ones. Investment in water management infrastructure, improving access to reliable climate information and implementing social protection systems for farmers are identified as priority interventions.
Close cooperation between agricultural ministries, meteorological services and hydrological services is needed to ensure food security for local communities around the world. The UN report calls extreme heat a silent killer and a systemic risk – without sufficiently broad horizontal and vertical coordination, it can make it much more difficult or even impossible to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger.
In writing the article, I used:
FAO and WMO. 2026. Extreme heat and agriculture – FAO-WMO joint report. Rome and Geneva. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd9394en
