Lower Crop Yields Test Market Forces

As global warming cuts crop yields, trade liberalisation in agricultural commodities will be needed to avoid food shortages and economic hardships.

Food will cost the consumer more as a result of climate change, but it is not at all clear that farmers will profit accordingly, says a new study.

Ultimately, what happens will depend on national and international responses – but as temperatures rise and crop yields fall, producers will have to spend more to meet demand later this century.

Although the same basket of food would cost more, the losses to the consumer would be greater than the gain for the grower, according to the study of global agriculture and climate change by scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany.

“Agriculture is very sensitive to climate change,” says the report’s lead author, Miodrag Stevanović, a PIK mathematician who has been looking at the economic problems of agriculture.

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