The UK is known for the beauty of its countryside; the deep, lively greens of its fields, made all the more verdant by the rains that reliably dye its summer skies a slate grey.
Yet this summer was different. Skies across the country remained relentlessly blue, the air relentlessly hot, and in many places the grasses lost their green and subsided into a dusty yellow.
This lack of rain has been felt not just in the UK but across Europe. And grass is far from its only victim; multitudes of crops, from corn to wheat to sunflower, have seen yields pushed down by growing conditions, with almost no major crop left untouched.
The corresponding heatwaves have driven farmers to work at night to escape the temperatures, and crop losses due to the heatwaves are projected to cost Europe nearly €2bn.
While ash choked out the sun in Spain and France, headlines around the world reported that Europe was on fire. Yet the crisis in the food system, while less visible, is no less profound.
A global problem
But the crisis did not, of course, begin this year.
Around the world, key crop commodities have for some time been put under strain by heat, drought and the growing unpredictability of weather patterns. Crop pests have proliferated in the heat, gnawing away at yields even as lack of water stunts their growth. Farmers have felt the strain as livelihoods become less reliable, their crops not always rewarding them for hard work.
This has been felt most keenly in cocoa. The beloved bean has experienced successive crises since 2024, when prices skyrocketed. They dipped briefly back to former levels earlier this year, before beginning to rise again.
Coffee is another commodity whose price shot up in 2024, and while it has declined somewhat from those heights, it remains well above previous lows.
It is clear that this strain on commodities is not a regional problem. Corn in Europe, cocoa in Africa, and coffee in South America are all impacted by the weather. Climate change is not a localised issue that the food sector can solve by diversifying into more adequate climes.
Crop productivity globally is now 21% lower than it could have been without climate change, according to Rabobank, with more than seven years of improvements to agricultural productivity wiped out. And it will only get worse.
An existential threat
It is not only individual crops or commodities under threat. It is not only individual sectors, like confectionery or coffee. It is not even only the food industry. Climate change is a threat to food production itself.
This has been clear for a long time. But it has never been clearer than it is today. No food company, no matter how large or small, will remain unaffected.
