Sudden Spikes in Global Food Prices to ‘Become the Norm’

Food price spikes caused by extreme weather events like the US drought will become the norm over the next twenty years, leading to millions of deaths from malnutrition among the world’s poorest if Governments do not act
on climate change, Oxfam has warned.

While the average price of staple foods is already expected to double in the next twenty years, the UK’s leading poverty charity predicts that separate catastrophes such as droughts, floods and bad harvests will also become more common as a result of climate change, leading to regular and dramatic jumps in prices.

The effect may have already been seen this year, the charity says. A 10 per cent rise in world food prices in July has been blamed on the severest drought in the USA in fifty years, along with dry weather in Eastern Europe and Kenya. Oxfam warned that policymakers have “underestimated” the full impact of climate change on future food prices.

“The huge potential impact of extreme weather events of future food prices is missing from today’s climate change debate,” said the charity’s climate change policy advisor Tim Gore. “Rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns hold back crop production and cause steady prices rises. But extreme weather events – like the current US drought – can wipe out entire harvests and trigger dramatic food price spikes.”

July was the USA’s hottest month on record, contributing to the warmest 12 month period for the country since records began. Widespread drought has destroyed one sixth of the country’s corn crop and driven up staple food prices worldwide.

Oxfam predicted that future weather events on a similar scale, such as a flood in southern Africa or another drought in North America, could have a catastrophic impact on food prices within the next twenty years. Financial modelling suggested that one or more extreme events in a single year could cause two decades worth of price inflation to occur in a matter of months.

More