This Summer's Extreme Weather Impacts Reverberating Through Global Food Production, Markets
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Extreme weather continues slamming crops across the world at a time when food prices are already near the highest in a decade. The list goes on: Flooding in China’s key pork-producing region has raised the threat of animal disease. Devastating rains in the EU are raising fears of widespread fungal diseases in grains. And in the High Plains along the U.S.-Canada border, grains and livestock are at risk as predicted deepening drought keeps commodities brokers and farmers on edge. Russia, another global bread basket, is also hot and dry, and wheat crop expectations have fallen.
Brazil is one of the most important agricultural exporters in the world. But prolonged drought there is causing concerns for 2021’s second corn crop. Drought and rare freezing weather are hurting coffee-growing regions too, which are suffering some of their coldest weather in 25 years. On July 29, a wide area of Brazil even saw snow. (Climate chaos, while it produces substantially more heat records, also sometimes generates extreme cold.) The coffee harvest will be damaged. World coffee prices are rising. Other crops could be impacted, as Brazil is the planet’s biggest exporter of sugar, orange juice and soybeans. “There’s no other country in the world that has that kind of influence on the world market conditions — what happens in Brazil affects everyone,” Michael Sheridan, director of sourcing and shared value at Intelligentsia Coffee, a Chicago-based roaster and retailer, told Bloomberg.
As elsewhere, Brazil’s climate disasters are regionalized, only damaging harvests in some places, but not others. In unaffected areas, farmers are doing well, even better than expected because world commodity prices have climbed, partly because of droughts around the planet. And as is so often the case in the commodities market, one farmer benefits from another’s disaster, though the big commodities traders have the versatility and economic power to weather whiplash weather — at least for now. The Brazilian government’s statistics authority, IBGE, is expecting a “record-breaking harvest of grains, cereals and oilseeds in 2021.” Agribusiness outside the drought-affected Paraná region is jubilant. Maurilio Biagi Filho, whose family owns vast sugar plantations, says that it is “very rare” for high agricultural prices to coincide with record production. “When that happens, it’s extraordinary,” he adds.
A similar phenomenon is evident in the U.S., where the fortunes of two very different corn belts have emerged. The U.S. Southeast is experiencing “great summer weather” (cool and wet), while the Northwest is facing “a terrible drought” (hot/dry weather). “The crux of the matter is the crop is being damaged in the West, and improving in the East,” comments one farming media source. This mixed economic picture comes with a caveat: As 2021 unfolds and the global climate crisis deepens year-on-year, forecasts say fewer and fewer farmers may benefit, with extreme weather disasters and failed harvests proliferating.
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https://news.mongabay.com/2021/08/a-world-of-hurt-2021-climate-disasters-raise-alarm-over-food-security/