Bananas, grapes, avocados, coffee and tea are among staples of UK shopping baskets in the firing line as climate impacts bite. That’s the finding in an analysis by Christian Aid, who mapped key food imports and found a shopping basket of goods likely to be hit as the planet warms.
Researchers focused on households in the United Kingdom, Italy and Germany and found that a significant portion of the fruit, vegetables, pulses and meat products—specifically, 22%, 23%, and 15%, respectively—originate from countries with high climate change vulnerability and low climate readiness levels. The authors warn that further warming would mean more harvest-destroying extreme weather events, leaving consumers facing more price rises and empty shelves.
It comes weeks after the UK Government’s five-year adaptation plan warned that climate change threatened the UK’s national security and food supplies.
Last month National Farmers Union President, Minette Batters, highlighted that climate change was causing havoc with food supplies. She said:
“I have never known such volatility in the global food system. Climate change is wreaking havoc on food production across the world, with farmers in Southern Europe literally fighting fires while farmers here are despairing as they now must spend thousands of pounds to dry sodden grain.”
This was echoed by Alain-Richard Donwahi, a former Ivory Coast defence minister who led last year’s UN Cop15 summit on desertification. He said the impacts of the climate crisis combined with water scarcity and poor farming practices threaten global agriculture.
The findings build on 2022 analysis by UK government advisors the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) which warned “risks are rising for international supply chains” and urged the ministers to raise spending on adaptation and “increase capacity building through its overseas programmes to improve global capacity for climate resilience, including supply chains.”
A typical UK food shop would see 22% of fruit, vegetables, pulses and meat products coming from high-risk climate change countries, found Christian Aid. More broadly, 8 out of 25 UK’s top import trade partners are countries with high climate vulnerability and low climate readiness. These include Brazil, South Africa, India, Vietnam, Peru, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire and Kenya – where the UK imports the majority of its tea from.
These goods reflect a 5-day diet typical for a 4-person family from the three countries and underscore the risks consumers face in a world where extreme weather is hitting hard. The report comes after the UN warned the world may tip over the 1.5C warming limit agreed by governments in the coming years, which experts reckon will lead to a spate of more serious extreme weather events.
UK supplies of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, peppers and citrus fruits ground to a halt earlier in 2023 as drought hit parts of Spain and Morocco. Rising temperatures are also hitting olive oil supplies, with Lebanon’s famed olive groves deemed at growing risk.
Patrick Watt, Christian Aid’s Chief Executive, said:
“The UK may be an island but in an ever more interconnected world we cannot escape the damage caused by climate change. Our record on carbon emissions has helped cause the climate crisis. Farmers in some of the world’s poorest countries are now struggling to cope with droughts, storms and rising temperatures.
“The climate crisis is increasingly disrupting the supply chains of the food in British shopping baskets and risks adding to the cost-of-living crisis. The case for action has never been clearer. The UK Government must work with others to provide the financial support needed to help vulnerable communities adapt to a fast-changing climate.”
Simon Lewis, Professor of Global Change Science, University College London, said:
“For 10,000 years farmers experienced a broadly stable climate. Indeed, this stability is one key factor in the rise of complex civilisations. Now the game is radically different, because, on average, next years’ climate is not like the past. This spells, at a minimum, food supply disruption and elevated food prices. We live in a globally connected world, including the supply of food that keeps us all alive. Disruption of food supplies is a real and growing risk in the UK. Everything we do to cut our emissions in the UK, including not licencing new oil and gas projects, reduces the level of the coming chaos. The UK paying to help poorer countries adapt to climate change also increases our security too. It is a good investment in our future. Climate impacts may well push already strained societies into failed states. A world of many more failed states is a much more dangerous one for the UK. Rising food prices, already causing real hardship in the UK and globally is just the beginning, unless we slash carbon emissions and invest in adapting to the impacts of our rapidly changing climate.”
