Agriculture Under Threat: Climate Change and Food Security

 CLIMATE & FOOD SYSTEMS

Agriculture Under Threat:

Climate Change and Food Security

Neetu Lakhani (Mentee) Dr. Pratima Mishra Associate Professor (mentor) H. G. M Azam College of Education Dr P. A. Inamdar University, Pune, Maharashtra, India

The world produces enough food to feed everyone —

yet 673 million people go hungry. The climate is making this worse.

April 2025 was the second hottest April ever recorded globally. Extreme heat, floods, and droughts are no longer anomalies — they are the new operating conditions for every farmer, every food system, and every nation that depends on stable harvests to feed its people.

The science is unambiguous: climate change has already reduced yields of the world's most important crops. The economics are sobering: by 2050, food commodity prices could rise by 18% under high-emission scenarios. The human cost is already being paid — by 673 million people who faced hunger in 2024, and by 2.3 billion more who couldn't reliably access a healthy diet.

This is not a future problem. It is a present emergency — unfolding in slow motion across every continent, most brutally in the regions least responsible for causing it.

"Climate change has already reduced yields and total factor productivity for the world's most important crops, with far-reaching negative consequences for food security." — IFPRI Global Food Policy Report 2025

The Numbers: A Crisis in Plain Sight

Before examining the mechanisms, the scale must be confronted directly. These are not projections — they are the present-day reality of our global food system.

673M People experiencing hunger in 2024 FAO SOFI Report, July 2025

2.3B People unable to afford a healthy diet in 2024 FAO SOFI Report, 2025

295M People in acute food crisis across 53 countries FAO Global Report on Food Crises, 2025

512M People projected to face chronic hunger by 2030 FAO SOFI 2025 Projection

Alarming trend:  Acute food insecurity has remained above 20% for five consecutive years. 35 countries have appeared in food crisis reports for nine consecutive years. (FAO GRFC 2025)

While the global headline number showed a marginal improvement — down from 8.5% in 2023 to 8.2% in 2024 — the regional picture is starkly uneven. In Africa, more than one in five people (307 million) are chronically undernourished — a rate higher than 20 years ago. Progress is being swallowed whole by population growth, conflict, and extreme weather.

How Climate Change Attacks the Food Supply

The relationship between rising temperatures and falling yields is not theoretical. It has been measured, modelled, and confirmed across four independent methodologies. For every 1°C rise in global mean temperature, crop yields are projected to fall — and the numbers are stark.

Projected yield loss per 1°C of global warming (without adaptation)

Crop	Yield Loss per 1°C	Source
Maize	7.4% per °C (highest heat sensitivity)	PNAS meta-analysis; Scientific Reports 2025
Wheat	6.0% per °C; ~10% already lost	Carbon Brief / PNAS 2025
Soybean	3.1% per °C	PNAS (Zhao et al.)
Rice	3.2% per °C	PNAS (Zhao et al.)

Global wheat yields are already an estimated 10% lower than they would have been without climate change, according to research published in PNAS in 2025. Maize — the world's most widely grown crop — faces the steepest decline, losing roughly 4% of yield per additional degree Celsius.

Under a business-as-usual high-emissions scenario (SSP5-8.5), projections for 2080-2100 show even more severe losses: maize down 22%, wheat down 14%, soy down 15%, and rice down 9%. (Nature Scientific Reports, January 2025)

The four pathways of climate harm to agriculture

Heat stress Crops have an optimal temperature window. Beyond it, cell damage, failed pollination, and accelerated maturation collapse yields rapidly. Maize is particularly vulnerable.

Erratic rainfall and drought Shifting precipitation patterns create feast-or-famine water cycles. Waterlogging alone reduces wheat and maize yields by 25-35%, sorghum by over 40%.

Extreme weather events Flooding, cyclones, and unseasonal frosts destroy harvests in hours. EU soybean producer prices are projected to rise nearly 90% by 2035 due to extreme weather.

Soil and water degradation Rising temperatures accelerate soil moisture loss, salinisation, and erosion. Arid regions face the most severe yield impacts — disproportionately in the Global South.

Who Bears the Burden: Regional Fault Lines

Climate change does not distribute its damage equally. The countries least responsible for historical emissions — low- and middle-income nations in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America — are bearing the heaviest agricultural burden.

Region	Key Climate Risk	Hunger Rate (2024)	Trend
Sub-Saharan Africa	Drought, heat stress, erratic rains	>20% (307M people)	Worsening
Western Asia	Extreme heat, water scarcity	12.7% (39M people)	Worsening
South Asia	Monsoon variability, flooding	11% (improved)	Improving
Latin America	El Nino cycles, deforestation	3.8% (improved)	Improving
Southern Europe	Mediterranean drought, heat	Low, but rising costs	At risk

By 2030, an estimated 512 million people will be chronically undernourished — and nearly 60% of them will live in Africa. (FAO SOFI 2025) Meanwhile, commodity price inflation driven by climate disruption will hit the poorest consumers hardest, as the gap between food prices and household incomes widens.

Price shock warning:  By 2050, climate change could drive global food commodity prices up by as much as 18%, pushing an additional 78 million people into chronic hunger under high-emission scenarios. (IFPRI Global Food Policy Report 2025)

The Compound Threat: Where Climate Meets Conflict and Inequality

Climate change rarely acts alone. In the world's most food-insecure regions, it operates as a threat multiplier — making existing vulnerabilities catastrophically worse. Conflict remains the single largest driver of acute food insecurity, but climate disruption is increasingly the trigger that ignites it.

Water scarcity drives competition between farmers and herders. Failed harvests push rural populations into overcrowded cities. Rising food prices destabilise governments. The 2025 Global Report on Food Crises found that in 2024, more than 295 million people across 53 countries experienced acute hunger — an increase of 13.7 million from 2023 — with conflict, climate shocks, and economic instability as the principal drivers.

Conflict amplification Climate-driven resource scarcity fuels disputes over land and water, which escalate into armed conflict — creating food crises that persist for years.

Gender disparity Gendered gaps in food security widened between 2023 and 2024. Women and girls disproportionately absorb the shock of harvest failures and income loss.

Child malnutrition Acute food insecurity rose for the sixth consecutive year in 2024. Children who experience early undernutrition face elevated lifetime risk of chronic disease.

Funding retreat The dissolution of USAID and shifting aid policies are expected to worsen food security outcomes in future reporting cycles. (SOFI 2025)

Crop-by-Crop: What the Science Says

Crop	Current Estimated Loss	Projected Loss by 2080-2100 (high emissions)	Primary Threat
Wheat	~10% below climate-free baseline	-14% (SSP5-8.5)	Drought, heat stress in key regions
Maize	4% per degree C; highest heat sensitivity	-22% (SSP5-8.5)	Heat stress, waterlogging, variability
Rice	-3.5% projected global reduction	-9% (SSP5-8.5)	Temperature spikes at flowering stage
Soybean	Productivity slowdown documented	-15% (SSP5-8.5)	Heat, moisture stress
Coffee/Cocoa/Olives	Supply challenges and price surges	Severe (unmodelled)	Temperature and rainfall shifts

Sources: PNAS (Zhao et al.); Nature Scientific Reports Jan 2025; Carbon Brief / PNAS 2025; Scientific Reports July 2025

       

Pathways Forward: Adaptation and Resilience

The picture is alarming — but it is not inevitable. Research consistently shows that adaptation measures can dramatically offset projected losses. Crop yield adaptation measures have been shown to increase yields by up to 64% compared to non-adapted scenarios. (PMC10385928) The question is whether the investment, political will, and equity of access can match the scale of the challenge.

Climate-resilient crop varieties Heat-tolerant and drought-resistant seed varieties can maintain productivity under shifting conditions. Investment in crop genetics is among the highest-return interventions available.

Precision irrigation and water management Optimising water use through sensor-based irrigation and rainwater harvesting significantly reduces vulnerability to drought cycles in arid regions.

Agroforestry and soil restoration Integrating trees into farming systems, building organic matter, and reducing soil degradation maintains long-term productivity and sequesters carbon simultaneously.

Agrivoltaics and controlled environments The co-location of solar panels and crops (agrivoltaics) and controlled environment agriculture offer promising new models for food production in extreme climates.

Policy and finance reform Global agricultural spending remains stuck at 2.3% of total expenditures. Redirecting subsidies toward climate adaptation and smallholder support is essential.

Cross-sector food system collaboration Water-energy-food nexus strategies and improved market access for smallholder farmers can build systemic resilience that individual farm adaptation cannot achieve alone.

"All dimensions of food security — availability, accessibility, utilisation, and stability — are expected to be affected by climate change. How farmers respond, mediated by policy and technology, will ultimately determine the outcome." — USDA Economic Research Service

The Clock Is Already Running

The 2025 SOFI report, the Global Food Policy Report, the GRFC — they all say the same thing, in different ways: incremental progress is being outpaced by accelerating risk. The systemic changes needed to manage the food-climate nexus have gained little traction. The political, environmental, and financial conditions required to end hunger are not yet in place.

The world will need to feed approximately 10 billion people by the middle of this century. It will need to do so with less predictable rainfall, higher temperatures, more volatile commodity markets, and increasing water scarcity. That is a solvable problem — but only if agriculture is treated as a climate emergency, not an afterthought.

The fields are telling us something. It is time to listen.

The harvest of tomorrow depends on choices made today Climate-smart agriculture, equitable food systems, and decisive climate action are not separate agendas. They are the same agenda — and the window to act is narrowing.

Sources and References

• FAO — The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI 2025), July 2025

• FAO — Global Report on Food Crises 2025

• IFPRI — Global Food Policy Report 2025

• PNAS — Temperature increase reduces global yields of major crops (Zhao et al.)

• Nature Scientific Reports — Predicting changes in agricultural yields under climate change scenarios, January 2025

• Scientific Reports — Climate change impacts on crop yields across temperature rise thresholds, July 2025

• Carbon Brief — Global wheat yields 10% lower without climate change (PNAS 2025)

• USDA Economic Research Service — Climate Change and Agricultural Adaptation

• PMC10385928 — Crop yield responses to temperature, precipitation, CO2, and adaptation

• WHO / FAO / WFP / UNICEF / IFAD — Joint Food Security Bulletin 2025

• European Parliament Research Service — Climate change impacts on food security in the EU, 2025