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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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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
Update
How extreme heat threatens honeybees

Hot temperatures can overwhelm bees’ natural cooling systems.

Yale Climate Connections
Tea plantations and Muthirappuzhayar River in hills near Munnar, Kerala, India
Update
Building resilience that lasts: game changers for a livable planet

Storms, floods, heat, and droughts hit hardest those who have the least.  When the soil cracks and the rivers dry, work disappears. In Sub-Saharan Africa, one drought can wipe out 900,000 jobs in a year — and with them, years of progress. 

World Bank, the
Extreme heat and agriculture thumbnail
Documents and publications
Extreme heat and agriculture

The frequency, intensity and duration of extreme heat events have risen sharply over the past half century, with worrying impacts on agrifood systems and landscapes, according to this report.

World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
An Asian women harvesting crops in the middle of a field.
Update
Extreme heat pushes agrifood systems to the brink

Extreme heat events threaten the livelihoods, health and labour productivity of over a billion people. Agricultural workers and agrifood systems are on the frontlines.

World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
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