War, tariffs and inflation are not the only things driving up the price of food. Widespread drought is also looming over what people around the world eat.
In Brazil, parched coffee farms have affected latte prices everywhere. In the Midwestern United States, years of poor rains have led ranchers to cull cattle herds and have raised beef prices to their highest levels ever.
In China, one of the nation’s key wheat-producing regions, the Yellow River Basin, is withering under unusually hot, dry conditions. Germany had its driest spring since 1931, though rains in recent weeks have allayed concerns about its wheat and barley crops.
Ukraine and Russia, rivals on the battlefield, are also facing the threat of drought for their wheat crops. Both countries are breadbaskets for millions of people far and wide. Morocco, for instance, now in its sixth year of drought, has relied increasingly on wheat imports from Russia.
Conflicts in Gaza and Yemen, in addition to Ukraine, have also disrupted the food supply chain, including by increasing the costs of shipping. Now there’s new conflict between Israel and Iran.
Droughts are part of the natural weather cycle but are exacerbated in many parts of the world by the burning of fossil fuels, which is warming the world and exacerbating extreme weather. Droughts can be particularly risky as the production of important foods becomes increasingly concentrated. For example, much of the world’s coffee comes from Brazil, cacao from Ivory Coast and Ghana in West Africa, and corn from Brazil, China and the American Midwest.
Around the world, most people get their calories from three staple grains — rice, wheat and corn — which means that weather hazards to places where they are produced can have big repercussions for food security. Bad weather in one or two of those regions can destabilize the global supply.
The wider societal risks of drought are drawing increasing attention.
The European Central Bank estimated in a study published in late May that droughts threatened to wipe out nearly 15 percent of the bloc’s economic output, with the greatest risk to agriculture in Southern Europe, birthplace of the Mediterranean diet. That is not a future risk. Spain’s olive orchards suffered blistering droughts the last couple of years, driving up the price of olive oil, before rains brought relief in 2024.
“Any stress on water resources can have cascading impacts across multiple economic activities,” the study’s authors wrote.
Drought often magnifies problems embedded in the modern global food system. The foods at risk today exemplify those trends.
Coffee: Fewer Types, Greater Concentration
Once there were around 100 species of coffee growing in the wild.
Today, mainly two species of coffee are cultivated: arabica and robusta. Two countries dominate: Brazil and Vietnam.
Brazil plays an especially large role. It accounts for 40 percent of global coffee cultivation, which brings benefits, at least for big coffee companies, because it means large volumes of certain varieties of coffee can be grown on large fields. In short, it offers economies of scale.
But that also magnifies the risks of concentration in the era of climate change.
“When climate disruptions like droughts or excessive rains hit these areas, the global supply chain feels the ripple effects,” said Andrea Illy, the chief executive of Illy, the global coffee company.
Mr. Illy said his company was trying to source varieties of coffee from growers in different regions. But coffee is a finicky plant. Even a little extra heat and a little less rainfall can be devastating.
Brazil has experienced its worst drought in four decades. Last year, hot, dry weather also hit Vietnam, the world’s second-largest coffee producer. Global coffee prices soared.
Wheat: Drought and War
Sandwiches, instant noodles, rotis. Wheat, in all its forms, has become one of the world’s most commonly eaten grains, second only to rice. That makes it one of the most closely watched crops in the era of extreme weather.
Wheat is also often closely guarded. Take India, for instance. Prompted by an intense heat wave in 2022, the Indian government banned wheat exports in order to stockpile it at home.
This year, India expects to produce record wheat yields. Even so, it doesn’t plan to lift the export ban because of concerns about global swings in wheat prices.
Two of the most important wheat producers in the world, Russia and Ukraine, are both facing drought and are expected to see diminished yields, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s global agricultural monitor. Russia’s most critical grain-producing state, Vostok, has declared a state of agricultural emergency in some areas.
The advantage with wheat is that it is not concentrated in just a handful of countries, as coffee is, said Jon Davis, a meteorologist with Everstream Analytics, which follows commodity supply chains. “For this growing season, there are areas we are watching closely, like Europe,” he said. Several parts of northern Europe have had an exceptionally dry spring that could affect the summer growing season.
Beef: Lost Grazing Land
Summer barbecue season is approaching just as the price of beef has topped records. Ground beef in the United States is close to $6 per pound, and steak is nearly twice that.
A few factors are driving the price rise, including soaring insurance costs for farmers and the abiding demand for beef.
But central to the rising cost of beef is a drought that has stretched across the Midwestern United States over the past several years. The conditions have dried up a lot of grazing land. Cattle herd numbers are at their lowest in 70 years.
American taxpayers are helping to pay the costs of the drought, and not just in the rising prices. The federal government has announced $1 billion in payments to livestock farmers hit by drought and wildfire in 2023 and 2024.
Somini Sengupta is the international climate reporter on the Times climate team.
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