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Global food prices have seen huge fluctuations in recent years, soaring to record highs in 2022 before dropping in 2023 and rising again slowly this year.
Extreme weather events, geopolitical conflict, high input costs and increased demand all contributed to these spikes, experts told Carbon Brief in June.
The impact of these events varies depending on the type of food – olive oil, orange juice and other common supermarket items are now more expensive, for example, whereas grains have dropped in price compared to the start of this year.
This price volatility is “likely to be an increasingly common feature of our highly integrated global food systems”, Prof Elizabeth Robinson, director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, told Carbon Brief earlier this year.
Food inflation has even featured in the US presidential election campaign, with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris proposing to ban “price gouging” on groceries by corporations.
Carbon Brief has produced five charts – each focused on a specific area – to show how climate change can impact food production and price.
The change in food inflation due to the higher-than-average temperatures in Europe in June, July and August 2022. Red indicates an increase in food inflation and blue indicates a decrease. Credit: Carbon Brief, based on Kotz et al. (2024)
Extreme heat can influence food prices around the world. A 2024 study found that high temperatures “persistently” increase food inflation in both high- and low-income countries.
Combining climate data with more than 27,000 monthly observations of consumer price indices for food eaten at home and in restaurants in 121 countries, the researchers quantified the impact that temperatures had on inflation between 1996 and 2021.
They found that higher temperature during already hotter months caused the biggest increases in food inflation. This “implies short-term rises in inflation from exceptionally hot periods”, the authors write – including the intense summer of 2022.
The above map, based on data from this study, shows how much Europe’s hottest summer on record impacted annual food inflation.
Countries across Europe faced “unusually intense and widespread” heatwaves in the summer months in 2022, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The heat broke many records, contributed to wildfires, killed more than 60,000 people and affected hundreds of millions more.
The heat impacted the cost of food, the study found, with food inflation increasing by 0.43-0.93 percentage points.
European food inflation varies each year, generally staying below 5%, but it can spike much higher. Rates soared by as much as 19% during parts of 2022 and 2023.
