Food security

Food security: crop failures set to intensify due to climate change

Major "shocks" to global food production will be three times more likely within 25 years because of an increase in extreme weather brought about by global warming, warns a new report.

The likelihood of such a shock, where production of the world’s four major commodity crops – maize, soybean, wheat and rice – falls by five to seven per cent, is currently once-in-a-century. But such an event will occur every 30 years or more by 2040, according to the study by the UK-US Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Resilience.