Nearly three quarters of the world's food production could face extreme risk from heat stress by 2045

AFTER the scorching summer many have just experienced, scientists have already warned that these conditions will inevitably reoccur in the coming years.

In the event of temperatures warming by 2°C above pre-industrial levels, nearly three quarters of the world's food production could face "extreme risks" from heat stress by 2045, affecting 64 countries and accounting for 71% of global food production.

For many, 2022 was a scorcher. For farmers, this year forced them to face water restrictions due to the record droughts that seriously endangered various crops, such as corn, but also fruit.

Before the summer, India had already banned wheat exports, the production of which had dropped due to intense heat waves. In Northern Italy, home to 40% of the country's agricultural production, two thirds of the fruit and vegetable crops had been scorched before the summer had even reached August.

At that time, Italian wheat production had fallen by a third. According to Copernicus, the EU's climate observation service, the old continent saw its hottest summer on record. And we already know, according to scientists' estimates, that such hot conditions will occur again.

We now have a better idea of how food production could be threatened by global warming in the long term. The British firm Verisk Maplecroft recently published forecasting research that estimates that nearly three quarters of the world's food production could face "extreme risks" from heat stress by 2045, affecting over 60 countries. In the case of temperatures warming 2°C above pre-industrial levels, rice, cocoa and tomato crops would be seriously threatened.

The impact would be considerable for countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, whose economies are based, among other things, on rice harvests.

Brazil's economic and agricultural system could also be seriously challenged by global warming and could fall into the extreme risk category within a single generation, according to the study.

And this kind of future would pose a problem of global scale, since the country is the third-largest agricultural producer in the world. Brazilian agriculture is centered around staple foods such as oranges, sugar cane and soybeans. In its forecasts for 2045, the British firm estimates that nine of the ten countries most at risk could be on the African continent, including Ghana, Togo and the Central African Republic.

In Europe, Montenegro, Italy and five other countries of are among the ten destinations where the risk of experiencing such a situation is most heightened.

According to the report, intense heat waves already pose extreme risks to agriculture and food production in 20 countries around the world, including India, Eritrea, Djibouti, Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, South Sudan and the Sultanate of Oman.