Ingredients at risk: Overview
- Climate change, disease outbreaks, geopolitical disruption and concentrated sourcing are increasing supply risks across key ingredients
- Demand for natural colours is rising faster than agricultural production can scale
- Heavy reliance on single regions such as Madagascar for vanilla and California for almonds leaves supply chains vulnerable to shocks
- Food makers can reduce risk through supplier diversification, reformulation strategies and securing alternative ingredient sources early
Think your ingredient supply is secure? Think again. A handful of ingredients may not be those grabbing headlines today – but trouble could be brewing beneath the surface.
Cocoa, coffee, sugar, and pistachios are already keeping procurement teams on their toes – with pressure looking different from commodity to commodity, it can mean soaring costs for one ingredient, uncertain availability for another, and quality problems for a third.
And the world is hardly short of ways to disrupt an ingredient supply chain: a blocked Strait of Hormuz, a strengthening El Niño or a drought-stricken Panama Canal can all turn a routine procurement plan into a scramble.
Supply disruptions do not always arrive with a bang. Cocoa’s vulnerability has been building through years of climate and production pressures. Others can explode into a crisis almost overnight – as the Philippines’ sudden export ban on fresh ube showed.
Here are five ingredients that could become the food industry’s next supply-chain headaches and how food makers can prepare.
1) Natural colours – when demand outruns nature
The food industry increasingly wants more natural colours. The problem is that nature does not necessarily want to supply them at industrial scale.
Forecasts differ on just how fast the natural food colours market will grow, but they agree on the direction. Estimates put the market at roughly $2.3bn-$2.7bn (€2.05bn to €2.40bn) in 2025 and at around $3.4bn-$3.7bn by 2030 – meaning manufacturers could be sourcing natural colours from a market roughly 25-50% larger within five years.
But nature has limits. You cannot simply order 30% more paprika, turmeric or spirulina and expect farmers to deliver in one or two seasons.
That constraint is already showing up in the numbers. A 2026 study by US non-profit research institute RTI International, modelling the impact of a US shift away from synthetic colours, found that accelerated demand could require average price increases of 516% across the natural colourants studied, with annatto, butterfly pea, lutein and chlorophyll among the most exposed.
For food makers, RTI International’s suggestion is that the safest strategy is to get ahead of the squeeze: secure growers early, diversify sourcing and build alternative colour systems before the market tightens.
2) Vanilla – the next supply crunch could start with a glut
Vanilla is cheap and plentiful today, but the global food market remembers how violently its supply can turn.
In 2017, Cyclone Enawo wiped out an estimated 90–100% of vanilla production in parts of Madagascar, helping push prices to $600/kg (€534/kg) — roughly six times their 2015 level.
The biggest problem is concentration: Madagascar supplies around 80% of the world’s natural vanilla, with most of it coming from the single SAVA region. And multiple reports indicated that shifting production elsewhere is not straightforward. Vanilla needs specific tropical conditions and is exceptionally labour-intensive.
The immediate problem for Madagascar’s vanilla is too much supply. As of July 2026, green vanilla was selling for less than €5/kg at farm level, reportedly below production costs, because huge accumulated stocks are depressing the market.
In the long run, however, the picture could look very different. Rapid urbanisation and climate change are putting additional pressure on Madagascar’s agricultural base, while climate models also point to a risk of more intense tropical cyclones. With farmers already operating on thin margins and limited capacity to invest in adaptation, the sector has little room to absorb repeated shocks.
The good news is that risk mitigation options are here. Manufacturers can reduce their exposure by using less bean-derived vanilla: natural vanillin, vanilla flavour systems and extract extenders can deliver much of the same sensory profile without relying entirely on Madagascar’s crop.
3) Olive oil – the ancient ingredient facing a very modern threat
Olive oil has survived empires, wars and thousands of years of changing agriculture.
But the 2026 European summer heatwave – the worst in decades – showed that the climate that made the Mediterranean the world’s olive-oil heartland is changing fast. And with the region producing around 95% of the world’s olive oil, there is little room for the industry to look elsewhere.
The warning signs are already visible. In 2023, Europe almost ran out of local olive oil supplies, after extreme weather severely damaged harvests. At one point, the continent even had to import supplies from South America to keep up with demand.
There are also concerns on the quality side. A 2026 study analysing 1,564 Italian extra virgin olive oils found that rising temperatures were associated with lower levels of oleic acid and higher levels of some other fatty acids. That matters because fatty-acid composition is a key marker of olive-oil quality and stability.
Olive oil is notoriously difficult to replace. In theory, high-oleic sunflower and rapeseed oils could provide a ready substitute where olive oil’s distinctive flavour is not essential, but such a switch will come with disadvantages.
4) Almonds – the climate time bomb hiding in California’s orchards
California, which supplies about 80% of the world’s almonds, is another region where climate risks are no longer theoretical.
A 2025 study in Earth’s Future projects that climate change could cut California almond yields by 17% by 2100 under moderate warming and by 49% under high warming. But 2100 is hardly the only concern: the study projects increasingly frequent yield losses in the coming years, suggesting that production volatility could become a problem much sooner.
And there are already signs of pressure on the ground. Land IQ’s 2026 acreage survey, commissioned by the Almond Board of California, found that California’s bearing almond acreage fell for the first time since 1995, with 47,588 acres of orchards removed during the latest crop year.
Escape routes exist, but none is a clean swap: hazelnut and sunflower-seed ingredients can replace almonds in some bakery applications, while oat or soy can take their place in some plant-based drinks – with flavour, texture, and nutritional profiles inevitably changing.
5) Cassava starch – a virus could put global supplies in jeopardy
Thailand is already discovering how quickly cassava disease can become a supply-chain problem: cassava mosaic disease has triggered a collapse in the country’s cassava harvest this year.
Now a potentially bigger threat is building in Africa. Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) is spreading across sub-Saharan Africa. A 2026 Scientific Reports study modelled CBSD’s spread across 32 major African cassava-producing countries, discovering that the disease could reach Nigeria, the world’s largest cassava producer within the next 25 years.
If introduced directly into West Africa, the model projects spread to most West African countries within 10 years.
The threat is more than real. Africa produces roughly two-thirds of the world’s cassava: CBSD can be devastating. In susceptible varieties, it has been associated with yield losses of up to 100%, while infected roots can become unfit for consumption or processing.
There are alternatives – potato and corn starches can replace cassava in some applications – but reformulation may require changes to texture, processing and finished-product performance.
