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Heat and agriculture

Extreme heat is an increasingly significant threat to food security, disrupting food production, processing, storage, distribution, and access across local, national, and global food systems.

Rising temperatures, prolonged heatwaves, and sustained heatwaves can reduce crop yields, stress livestock, degrade soil moisture, and strain water resources, with cascading impacts along food supply chains. See below for the latest selections related to extreme heat's impact on agriculture.

Faced with extreme heat, farmers are turning to the forest for solutions.
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Pathways to Climate-Smart Agriculture in Uzbekistan thumbnail
Documents and publications
Pathways to climate-smart agriculture in Uzbekistan

This study describes the scope of Climate-Smart Agriculture adoption, farmers’ interest in these technologies, and the broader enabling environment, including the training and financial incentives needed to support adoption in Uzbekistan.

World Bank, the
Update
Safeguarding the rice bowl: Southeast Asia’s workers face heat every day, not just during heatwaves

For millions of workers across the region, acquiring that rice bowl is becoming increasingly difficult, putting people’s health at risk.

Global Heat Health Information Network (GHHIN)
Update
Germany: How weather extremes impact local agriculture

Heat, drought, heavy rain and late frosts are taking a toll on German farmers. They increasingly respond with adapted varieties, new crops, modern breeding techniques and modified farming methods.

Deutsche Welle
A landscape image.
Research briefs
Increasingly hot Europe faces more severe droughts and growing challenges for water and land management

The European summer of 2026 has so far been characterised by exceptional heat and widespread dryness.

World Weather Attribution
Two African men inspecting lettuce crops and a mango tree nursery on the fertile banks of the Niger river close to Niamey.
Research briefs
When heat rises, farmers shift gears: How extreme temperatures are reshaping agricultural input use decisions in West Africa

A new study of groundnut farming in Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria asks: when temperatures soar, how do farmers change what they put into the ground?

World Bank, the
Coffee bean fields in brazil
Update
A severe El Niño could threaten something essential to half of humanity – rice

Forecasters expect the El Niño now underway in the tropical Pacific to strengthen into a strong or very strong climate driver later this year.

Conversation Media Group, the
Research briefs
Could a controversial cooling strategy save our fisheries and coral reefs from marine heat waves?

As the planet continues to warm, marine heat waves are growing longer and deadlier, hurting the seafood supply that billions of people worldwide rely on for their food and livelihoods.

Michigan State University
Update
Extreme heatwaves have become a major threat to Australia's food supply, and not just in summer

When record-breaking heatwaves hit parts of Australia over summer, it was not just people and wildlife that suffered.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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