In the years to come, global warming and successive heat waves will drive up food prices around the world. This is the conclusion of a study published this week in the journal Communications Earth and Environment. The countries of the South will be the most affected by this inflation.
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Agriculture is particularly sensitive to the effects of climate change. Researchers from the University of Potsdam and the European Central Bank therefore wanted to know what their impact could be on the price of our food.
To determine this, they compared food costs and climate conditions in 121 countries between 1996 and 2020. And they were able to prove that higher temperatures systematically cause food prices to rise.
From there, the researchers extrapolated this data based on predictions of our climate conditions in the future. Result: the rise in temperatures predicted for 2035 will increase food prices by at least 1.49 percentage points per year.
This figure is a global average. The actual impact will vary greatly depending on the seasons and regions. L’Africa and Latin America will be the continents most affected, but not the only ones. In Europe, the heatwave of summer 2022 has already been responsible for an increase of 0.67 points in food inflation.
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