Climate and Food

When major crops wither, it can have knock-on effects across the ocean and show up on your grocery bill. Inflation has been climbing in the United States at the highest rate in 40 years, up 9.1 percent over the past 12 months, much of it the result of spiking food and energy prices. The surge has been egged on by a pandemic-beleaguered supply chain and by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But climate change is becoming a driver of inflation, too. Experts are warning that heat, flooding, drought, wildfires and other disasters have been wreaking economic havoc, with worse to come. "If we wish to control inflation, we must address climate change now," David A. Super, a professor of law and economics at Georgetown, wrote in The Hill. Beyond crops, the changing climate has driven up the price of lumber as well as insurance premiums. "Heatflation" might already have something to do with escalating food costs around the world. A heat wave in India this spring devastated wheat plants, leading it to ban exports. In the United States last year, searing heat and drought in the Great Plains scorched the wheat crop and also enabled wheat-munching grasshopper populations to flourish. The grain's price nearly doubled to $US10.17 a bushel, its highest level since 2008. Extreme temperatures endanger livestock, too: The heat wave that struck much of the country in June caused thousands of cattle to die of heat stress in Kansas.