Climate change to strike UK food prices, claims report
The environmental campaigning organization has released its report, entitled Climate Change, Food, Poverty and the Price of Failure to the UK, as a call to the UN to ensure an agreement to drastically cut emissions at the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. It claims that without emissions cuts of at least 40 per cent by 2020, wheat, rice and maize yields will plummet, affecting trade and consumption patterns.
As a result, it says the price of an average loaf of white bread in the UK could rise from the current 72p (€0.80) to £6.48 (€7.23), and a 500g box of cornflakes would cost £7.20 (€8.03), up from today’s 78p (€0.87). Normal inflation rates would suggest a doubling of the price of food commodities, the report said.
Its author, visiting lecturer at Oxford University’s Institute for the Future of Humanity Ray Hammond, said: “Our global food production is already precarious - and climate change threatens to tip it into disaster.
"£6.50 for a loaf of bread, £7 for a bag of pasta and £18 for a pint of lager - this is what the future looks like in Britain if we don't prevent dangerous climate change.”
Hammond used a model of previous food price rises tracked by the World Bank and projections from the International Food Policy Research Institute to reach the figures.
"Rich countries must take strong and decisive action to propel us towards a strong and fair agreement in Copenhagen in December - otherwise many people in the UK will face a Dickensian struggle to afford food and millions of people in the developing world will be condemned to early deaths," he said.
Friends of the Earth is urging the UK government to step up its efforts to avert climate change by committing to a 40 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020, without promoting carbon offsetting, which it has called “a con which means avoiding real action at home through dodgy accounting.”
The full report can be accessed online here.
