"The research shows how droughts, heat and floods raised prices of consumables like chocolate and cocoa and warns that future spikes could lead to political and economic upheaval."
"Extreme weather has stoked food prices around the world in recent years and could lead to more political instability and inflation, with the world’s poor bearing most of the economic pain and health impacts, according to new research.
A report published Monday in the journal Environmental Research Letters tracks 16 weather events, many directly attributed to climate change, including extreme heat and flooding, and connects those to specific price surges.
“We can see that there’s a broad global context for this happening in recent years that extends all the way from East Asia through Europe and also to North America,” said Maximillian Kotz, a post-doctoral fellow at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and the lead author of the study. “We think our paper is really a call to action for us to consider these wider effects of food price increases in response to climate change for our societies.”
In California and Arizona, extreme heat and dry soil conditions in the summer of 2022 drove an 80 percent increase in vegetable prices that November. In Spain and Italy, a drought spanning 2022 and 2023 led to a 50 percent spike in olive oil prices by 2024."
Georgina Gustin reports for Inside Climate News July 21, 2025.
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