Accelerating nature loss exacerbating climate threat to security of EU food imports – new study

Wheat, maize and cocoa subject to twin threat amid European reliance on imports to meet demand.

The security of key EU food imports is increasingly threatened by environmental factors, according to a new study, raising some uncomfortable questions around the bloc's preparedness and policy response.

Unlike previous smaller studies, which have focused solely on the climate vulnerability of food imports, the study by consultancy Foresight Transitions also examines the levels of nature or biodiversity loss experienced by the relevant export countries .

The study applies these metrics to six key food imports: maize, rice and wheat - selected as staples of global food security - and cocoa, coffee and soy - chosen as key import commodities for EU agrifood production and exports.

The findings are sobering. Researchers found that over half the imports of each of the six imported food commodities were from climate vulnerable countries, with limited resources to adapt. This is acutely felt with rice, for example, with more than a third of total EU supply, worth €1.5bn annually, now under threat from increasing climate impacts.

Furthermore, three of these - wheat, maize and cocoa - are also at significant risk from biodiversity-related impacts, amplifying the threat to supply already posed by the climate and expanding the amount of production at risk.

Climate threats

Lead researcher Camilla Hyslop explains, "These aren't just abstract threats - they are already playing out in ways that negatively affect businesses and jobs as well as the availability and price of food for consumers. And they are only getting worse.

"In 2024 alone, floods in the UK and France decreased wheat production andhigh temperatures in Eastern Europe disrupted maize crops, making imports crucial for food security, while higher rainfall left cocoa rotting in West Africa, creating headwinds for chocolate producers. This is to say nothing of longer-term trends of declining production, such as extreme rainfall decreasing Chinese rice yields over the last two decades."

Hyslop adds: "Climate impacts are made worse by declining biodiversity, which leave farms and surrounding ecosystems far less resilient to climate and other shocks. Not only are less biodiverse farms less resilient to crop disease - these diseases often emerge due to decreased biodiversity.

"Yields are also more broadly affected by the clearing of native vegetation, which can change local micro-climates, and practices such as monocropping, which deplete the soil and damage biological ecosystems that underpin food production."

Biodiversity threats

With the EU doubling its dependency on maize imports over the past decade or more (from around 10% to 20%) - in part due to domestic droughts - 90% of imports are found to come from low and medium climate-vulnerability countries, while 67% are sourced from countries with a medium* or below biodiversity ranking (*where medium is significantly below the levels of biodiversity intactness considered safe).

However, as the world's biggest producer and exporter of chocolate, it is the EU's chocolate industry - worth an estimated US$50bn - that faces the biggest threat, with 97% of its prime input of cocoa coming from countries with a low-medium or below climate score, while 77% comes from countries with a medium or below biodiversity rating.

European imports of cocoa are centred on a few countries in West Africa - Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria - which are experiencing overlapping climate and biodiversity impacts. All are predicted to see the current negative trends for climate and biodiversity worsen into 2030 and over the following decades.

"The European Union has forked out an increasing price for cocoa imports as a result of these environmental pressures, with the total value of imports increasing by 41% over the last year," says Hyslop.

"The increasing value has also been driven by climate-related increases in the price of sugar, highlighting the environmental 'double whammy' facing not only chocolatiers but other kinds of producers using multiple environmentally-sensitive inputs."

Policy response

While the EU produces a wide range of food for its own consumption, the bloc still relies on agri-food imports. In 2023, the EU27 imported €158.6 billion's worth of agri- food goods from all corners of the globe. The value of these imports hovers just under 10% of total EU food consumption expenditure.

Dr Mark Workman, director of Foresight Transitions and co-author of the report, says:

"It is clear from this context that imports are integral to the EU's food security and that our research in turn demonstrates that this food security is increasingly threatened by the twin climate and biodiversity vulnerabilities of partner countries.

"While it is fashionable to argue that reshoring addresses such vulnerabilities, the truth is that it would by itself be a wholly insufficient response. Not only would the EU struggle to grow some of these commodities in large quantities, it is facing its own climate and biodiversity threats - not to mention the unpalatable land-use implications of significant reshoring of food production."

"It is therefore entirely in the self-interest of EU policymakers to get serious about investing in the climate resilience of partner producers as well as overseas trading infrastructure such as ports that support this trade and are also subject to environmental stresses.

"This is an important message to convey at a time when overseas aid budgets are often being pitted against investments in defence and security - but the truth is they are two sides of the same coin.

The report sets out a series of policy recommendations to help secure the EU's food imports, such as measures to support smallholder farmers who supply the majority of cocoa to the EU.