By Evan Bush - NBC News
Heat waves and extreme droughts triggered by the climate crisis can affect the global food supply and send prices soaring, according to a new study.
The research, published Friday in the journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, assesses the worst-case scenario, in which extreme weather hits two regions of the barn in the same year, affecting winter wheat harvests in both the U.S. Midwest and northeastern China.
Winter wheat is sown in autumn, goes dormant with the winter cold and harvested in early summer. According to the study, extreme weather conditions that would push those wheat crops beyond their physiological tolerances are increasingly likely. If those conditions affected several regions at once – a possible scenario in the current climate – they could jeopardize the global food system.
[Activists warn of effects of livestock on climate crisis]
Erin Coughlan de Perez, lead author of the study and a climate scientist and associate professor at Tufts University, said the research was intended to show political leaders and disaster responders the degree to which a critical crop is threatened, so they can prepare accordingly for such a crisis.
"We're suffering from a failure of imagination as to what this could look like," Perez's Coughlan said. "It's about imagining these serious consequences: we could take steps to prevent them and build a more resilient system," he added.
The climate crisis is already disrupting food production around the world. The Horn of Africa, for example, suffered several years of drought starting in 2020 that killed livestock and wiped out crops. The Global Meteorological Attribution Network identified climate change as responsible for the drought, which left more than four million people in need of humanitarian assistance.
This year, late rain in China's largest wheat-producing province, Henan, is complicating efforts to harvest grain already damaged by wet weather, Reuters reported.