Hot temperatures that are wiping out crops and also threatening the health of farm workers could threaten large swaths of global food production by 2045 as the world warms, an industry analysis warned Thursday.
Climate change is already fueling heatwaves and other extreme weather events around the world, with hot spells from India to Europe expected to impact crop yields this year.
Temperature spikes are a growing health concern, particularly for those who work outdoors in muggy conditions, which are particularly dangerous when humidity levels are high.
The latest assessment by venture firm Verisk Maplecroft brings these two threats together to calculate that heat stress is already an “extreme risk” for agriculture in 20 countries, including agribusiness giant India.
But in coming decades, the threat is expected to expand to 64 nations by 2045 — accounting for 71 percent of current global food production — including the major economies of China, India, Brazil and the United States.
“As global temperatures rise and global heat stress rises, so will crops in more temperate countries,” said Will Nichols, Verisk Maplecroft’s head of climate and resilience.
Rice is particularly at risk, the assessment said, with other crops such as cocoa and even tomatoes also raising concerns.
– Growing risk –
Maplecroft’s new heat stress dataset, which uses global temperature data from the UK Met Office, feeds into its broader risk assessments of countries around the world.
It is based on a worst-case emissions scenario that will result in warming of around 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels as early as 2045.
However, the authors emphasize that in forecasts up to mid-century, even scenarios assuming higher levels of carbon-saving measures could still result in temperatures close to 2°C.
India — responsible for 12 percent of global food production in 2020 and heavily dependent on outdoor labor productivity — is already classified as extremely vulnerable, the only major agricultural nation in that category at current temperatures.
“There’s a very real concern that people in rural areas, who obviously rely heavily on agriculture, will be much more vulnerable to these types of heat events in the future,” Nichols told AFP.
That could affect productivity and thus exports — and potentially have “cascading” knock-on effects on issues like the country’s creditworthiness and even political stability, he said.
By 2045 the list will be much longer.
Nine of the ten worst-hit countries in 2045 are in Africa, with Ghana, the world’s second largest cocoa producer, and Togo and the Central African Republic receiving the worst possible risk assessments.
The top 20 countries most at risk in the coming decades include top Southeast Asian rice exporters Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, the authors said, noting that rice farmers in central Vietnam have already begun working at night to avoid the high temperatures.
The assessment highlights that even large economies like the US and China could see extreme risk for agriculture in 2045, although the impact in these large countries varies by region.
Meanwhile, Europe accounts for seven of the 10 countries that will see the largest increase in risk by 2045.
“I think what it reinforces is that while a lot of us sit in sort of western countries where we might think we’re a little more insulated against some of these threats, we actually aren’t necessarily,” Nichols said.
“Both in terms of the type of physical risks we face and in terms of supply chain impacts.”
