Essay by Eric Worrall
Because people will forget how to build water infrastructure?
AUGUST 21, 2026
Climate change could triple the price of wheat
by Camilla Brodam Galacho, Aarhus University
edited by Gaby Clark, reviewed by Robert Egan…
Among the co-authors is Jørgen E. Olesen, professor and head of the Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University.
“We already know that climate change affects agricultural production. What is new here is that we can document a clear link between widespread drought across the globe and the prices faced by consumers and food markets,” he says.
…
Historical data show that, on average, around 5% of the world’s wheat-growing area has experienced severe water scarcity in any given year. However, this share has increased alongside climate change, and in particularly dry years such as 2000, 2010, 2012 and 2020, it exceeded 15%.
The research team then used climate models to explore how this trend may develop in the future. The study suggests that severe water scarcity will spread across larger portions of the world’s wheat-growing regions as temperatures continue to rise.
At around 2 degrees of global warming, the model estimates an average wheat price of approximately USD 273 per tonne. At 3 degrees of warming, that figure rises to about USD 364 per tonne, roughly three times the inflation-adjusted global wheat price recorded in 2010.
…
Read more: https://phys.org/news/2026-08-climate-triple-price-wheat.html
The abstract of the study;
Climate-Induced Severe Water Scarcity Events as Harbingers of Global Wheat Price
Miroslav Trnka, Jan Meitner, Jan Balek, Song Feng, Juliana Arbelaez Gaviria, Milan Fischer, Esther Boere, Petr Havlík, Kurt-Christian Kersebaum, Claas Nendel, Margarita Ruiz-Ramos, Daniela Semerádová, Mikhail A. Semenov, Markéta Poděbradská, Jan Esper, Ulf Büntgen, Max Torbenson, Jáchym Brzezina, Zdeněk Žalud, Gabriel Katul, Jørgen E. Olesen
First published: 21 August 2026
Abstract
This study connects the dots between global extent of severe water scarcity (SWS) events and spikes in food price. The authors start with three staple crops (rice, wheat, and maize) using a empirical but crop specific characterization of severe water scarcity occurrence, which is defined based on the area of land cultivated with each studied crop that on a given year is under SWS conditions. Water scarcity is estimated based on 1, 3, and 12 months standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index during crop specific sensitive periods (SPs). SPs coincide with the 4 months prior to harvest. A SWS-wheat price relationship model was developed for period 2001–2021 and tested for 1986–2000 and 2022–2024 with future projections calculated under climate change using climate model simulations from CMIP5 and CMIP6 up to 2100. The results show a marked increase in wheat prices driven by increasing SWS area, which is in turn a function of greenhouse gas emissions. The results indicate that the meanglobal mean temperature increase by 3°C (compared to 1951–1980) could lead to the tripling of the mean global wheat price compared to 2010 (after deflating).
Plain Language Summary
Water scarcity is a growing threat to global food production, particularly for crops that depend on rainfall rather than irrigation. When soils do not receive enough moisture during key growing periods, harvests can fail, and food prices can rise. In this study, we introduce a new way to track severe water scarcity (SWS) by measuring the area of cropland affected during sensitive stages of crop growth. We apply this method to major staple crops and examine how changes in SWS are associated with global food prices. We find a clear link between the area affected by severe water scarcity and global wheat prices. Years with larger affected areas tend to coincide with higher prices. Looking ahead, climate model projections suggest that water scarcity will expand under continued warming. Our results indicate that a temperature increase of about 3°C could triple average global wheat prices relative to 2010. These findings highlight the risks climate change poses to global food security and the consequences of more frequent water shortages in agriculture.
Read more: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025EF006095
The study notes there has been a significant increase in prices since 2000, leading to more global hunger;
… Approximately 14% of global cereal production is traded internationally, with 90% of these exports generated by the top 10 producing countries. While wheat, maize, and rice production has steadily increased over the past 60 years, the prices of these cereals showed a marginal overall increase between 1960 and 2000, followed by significant increases over the past 24 years. Among the three crops, wheat is a particularly volatile commodity (Conceição & Mendoza, 2009) exhibiting punctuated growth. During the grain price crises of 2007/08, 2010/11 and 2021/22, wheat prices increased by 97%, 46%, 64%, respectively, relative to the preceding years of increased prices. In comparison, rice prices changed by 124%, 2%, and −4%, respectively, and maize prices changed by 79%, 70%, and 66%, respectively in these years (IGC, 2022). Of far greater concern is the number of undernourished individuals. This number increased from 598 million in 2010 to 735 million by 2020 (FAO, 2022), an increase of 23% in 12 years. …
And the magic words, which indicate how unrealistic the projection scenario is;
… The results of our study indicate that projected increase in the SWS extent and frequency may result (if other parameters are kept the same) to quite high increase of the wheat prices. … The projected increase in food price impacts of SWS events thus require urgent attention in terms of adaptation measures on the one hand and disaster-relief systems on the other hand. …
Interestingly though they claim a shift in growing regions would not fix the problem;
…
4.2 Study Assumptions
The estimates of crop price response to SWS builds on a number of assumptions, which were invoked to ensure that the SWS extent is primarily a function of changing climate conditions. It was assumed that the current wheat-growing areas, their relative weights and the top 10 exporting countries would remain unchanged during the time frame of the analysis. Thus, the potential benefit of shifting wheat production to other agricultural land with a lower SWS probability could lower the model reliability. However, two findings suggest that the conclusions drawn here are little sensitive to this simplification. First, two out of the four models in the final model ensemble are based on SWS occurrence across the entire arable land area; thus, a change in the wheat-growing area would generate no effect. Second, the data revealed that there is little to be gained globally in terms of decreasing SWS exposure by shifting wheat-producing areas both within and outside the present wheat-growing areas, as SWS exposure increases at a similar pace across all regions as already shown by Trnka et al. (2019).
…
Read more: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025EF006095
Their conclusion is their projection is robust –
… Regardless of the discussed assumptions, the SWS–wheat price relations could be in our view considered robust and warrant their inclusion in the projected impacts of the SWS-affected area on wheat prices. In light of the crop price volatility over past 20 years, the projected increase in space‒time coherent SWS occurrence cannot be overlooked in any estimates of future price levels, at least in the case of wheat and to some extent maize. …
I think the biggest weakness is the failure to model adaption to changed conditions beyond simple changes to growing regions. The main reason farmers haven’t invested in sufficient water infrastructure to mitigate those 5-15% of production area severe water shortage years is it isn’t worth the investment. But if the price of wheat was to rise significantly, the value of producing wheat would justify far greater investment in reservoirs and if necessary desalination plants.
In addition the study fails to mention biofuel mandates as a driver of recent price increases – at one point the problem go so severe, even President Obama pulled back from funding starvation in poor countries.
And of course there is the fundamental reality that like many climate models, this food price model contradicts evidence that climate change and CO2 fertilisation is driving an abundance of food production. Future increases in drought are speculation, the evidence is industrial CO2 emissions are good for food availability.
In my opinion this study is a pretty poor effort. The study authors at least mentioned adaption as a viable mitigation study, but didn’t explore in depth the most obvious adaption, investment in water infrastructure. They completely missed the impact of biofuels on recent food prices. And their language is unnecessarily alarmist. I would have had a lot more respect for the authors if they had couched the study as “more water infrastructure required”, rather than headlining with emotionally laden terms like “Harbinger” in the title of their study.
And since when does warmth always mean drougnt?
Drought, edit is belly up
Well, that’s obvious. All warm areas are in drought.
For sure. Take, for example, the highland rain forests of New Guinea. Always in drought.
Not forget how to, rather not be allowed to.
Beat me to it.. The “greenie” agenda basically prohibits new dams.
Even wants to destroy them in some places.
Here is the decade major dam capacity added in Australia per decade.. despite very large increases in population.
The reality is that elevated CO2 greatly improves wheat yields, and improves its drought resilience. Here’s a paper:
Fitzgerald G. J., et al. (2016) “Elevated atmospheric CO2 can dramatically increase wheat yields in semi-arid environments and buffer against heat waves.” Glob Chang Biol. 22(6):2269-84. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13263
The fact that elevated CO2 is very beneficial for crops has been settled science among agronomists, for more than a century. It’s only “climate scientists” (mostly people whose careers depend on the climate scare) who seem unaware of it. Here’s an article about it from 1920!
Gradenwitz A. (1920) “Carbonic Acid Gas to Fertilize the Air.” Scientific American, November 27, 1920. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican11271920-549
Here you can see effect of the climate catastrophe on wheat yields:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair, 1934
Since warmer air can contain/hold more water, it seems as probable as the study that increased air temps would offset drought concerns.
I mean attribution and crack pipe dreams go hand in hand don’t they?
Here’s another example of the ridiculous notion that “climate change” is a force capable of causing things rather than the result of some (possible) forces. Why do intelligent people ignore the misuse — the absurdity of implying a change, of any kind, is a force, rather than a result? Oh, yeah, I almost forgot — it’s long-running indoctrination.
Because they’re working towards an agenda, not truth.
“Climate change could triple the price of wheat” “Could” is carrying a pretty big load here.
Global production of the five largest grain crops according to Copilot AI …
Based on FAO and USDA data:
Ever wonder why we only hear about the expected negative effect of “global warming” on wheat?
Let us eat corn.
Higher prices for fuel, fertilizer and transportation are the reasons for higher food prices.
https://capitalpress.com/2026/08/10/u-s-wheat-chairman-warns-of-zero-farm-profitability/
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/07/29/midwest-farmers-feel-echoes-from-the-crisis-of-the-1980s-as-they-struggle-to-turn-a-profit
I reckon to be a farmer these days, you’d have to have contracted stage 4 masochism.
(maybe that’s what Jeremy Clarkson now suffers from?)
“Of far greater concern is the number of undernourished individuals. This number increased from 598 million in 2010 to 735 million by 2020 (FAO, 2022), an increase of 23% in 12 years.”
This runs into direct conflict with a report from the UN itself:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/22/world-hunger-decline-is-powerful-story-economic-freedom/
The number of undernourished dropped to 645 million people in 2024, which isn’t much higher than the 2010 figure, when the world’s population was lower. I see that climate change has been very good for the cherry-picking industry…
““Of far greater concern is the number of undernourished individuals.”
They call themselves “vegans”.
Triple the cost ? So what ?
Nearly a century ago, in WW1, in Canada, the price of wheat in dollars was the same as it is in modern times, roughly $7.50 to $8.00 per bushel….except back then, a living wage was a dollar a day….and there’s still only a few cents of wheat in a loaf of bread…which is why governments covet and subsidize their farmers….the value added by urban-labor processing such as flower mills and bake shops, are what makes their tax revenue system perform well…
“The study suggests that severe water scarcity will spread across larger portions of the world’s wheat-growing regions as temperatures continue to rise.”
I am getting confused. For years, I was told that rising CO2 will cause rising temperature which in turn causes more water vapor in the air which leads to still higher temperature as well as more rain, floods and devastation. Now I am told that rising CO2 will not cause more water vapor in the air therefore will not cause more rain but instead will cause everything to dry out leading to less food and devastation.
Where does the water vapor go when the CO2-induced heat drys the soil? Wherever it goes and whatever it does must surely lead to devastation, that much seems clear from the Arhaus University report. Surely, one of the 21 people who wrote this must know.
There is no trend in global precipitation.
What prices of all items among all that we grow, breed, harvest, mine, pump, make & sell haven’t shown “significant increases over the past 24 years”?
Mr. wrote: followed by significant increases over the past 24 years
I write: Of course, when you make emission standards impossible, the cost of everything that is planted or harvested or transported will have significant increase in price, this has nothing to do with climate, just bad leadership.
Wheat is the LOWEST value crop in the U.S. for areas with good soil.
It is basically a low water requirement domesticated grass.
If they have more rain, the farmers in the U.S. grow corn, soybeans, etc.
Major portions of the wheat-growing regions in Australia get by with average annual rainfall in the range of 200-400 mm. That sparse amount of rain is considered a “drought” for much of the populated areas of the world.
It’s
turtlesassumptions all the way down.Ok. Here is my small anecdotal evidence.
In Poland which is nett exporter of wheat (it means polish prices of wheat are in direct correlation with world prices). Polish prices of wheat this year are the same (nominally) as in 2007. And it is nothing strange – prices are consistently low. We are one of the driest countries in Europe (if you do not believe – check the data), in many areas we have structural multiyear drought but wheat production output (per area and total) does not change.
It looks like last 20 years of global warming did not change much in conditions of wheat production in Poland.
More problems we had this year was with spring frosts and cold start of the summer.
But, as I said – it is only anecdotal evidence…
Don’t attempt to show a counter-example. Authors did not bother to display ANY historical data. Show me the price of wheat in 1960, 1965, 1970, … 2025. Why didn’t you?
The discrediting is all done in the Assumptions section:
They only looked at the Top Ten Grain Exporting Nations of these: #1 Russia, and #5 Ukraine as over 25% of the world’s wheat exports.
Does anyone think things have changed in their 20 year study?
Does anyone think that there has been zero new GMO work on Wheat during this same study period?
Increasing profit margins are creating increased grain cultivation in Russia.
https://ukragroconsult.com/en/news/russian-grain-prices-fall-below-production-costs-as-black-sea-exports-effectively-grind-to-a-halt/
“We already know that climate change affects agricultural production.”
Yes, a bit of warming with a bit extra CO2 , massively increases crop yields.
Four fundamental problems with this pathetic alarmist ‘models’ study.
In Kansas 90% of the wheat is dry land winter hard red wheat, no irrigation. Wheat production has not decreased long term in quite some time.
I should add that prices have doubled from 1980 to 2025, $4 to $8. Yet input expenses have risen drastically. Imagine buying a car in 1980 for $8,000 versus $40,000 today. Or a tractor for $10,000 versus $150,00 today.
The current prices do not reflect shortages of any kind.
So stop eating wheat. Except for donuts, of course.
35 years ago a loaf of simple white bread (English Muffin bread) cost 98¢. Now they want 349¢ for the same thing. The price of wheat is likely not the bigest reason for this 3.5X increase.
I looked at the number of authors. Willis E. believes that the validity of a paper is in inverse proportion to the number of authors. (or something like that.)
This was written: Historical data show that, on average, around 5% of the world’s wheat-growing area has experienced severe water scarcity in any given year. However, this share has increased alongside climate change, and in particularly dry years such as 2000, 2010, 2012 and 2020, it exceeded 15%.
YET, the Yields continue to increase, go figure.
Of concern is the claim that 2020 is 12 years after 2010.
Our World in Data gets figures from the same FAO dataset. They estimate that the undernourished were 8.7% of the world population in 2010 and 8.5% in 2020. As the global population was ~6.7 billion in 2010 and ~7.8 billion in 2020, this gives 583 million for 2010 and 663 million in 2020. The FAO figures are only estimates. As the paper references the 2022 dataset and OWID uses data through 2024 (i.e., a 2025 dataset), the paper may be using outdated estimates. Alternatively, the data is incomplete. For instance, the FAO dataset does not have estimates for Sudan and South Sudan for 2010, nor for North Korea in 2020. For China, there is only data from 2001 (128.4m) to 2009 (40m), and for Türkiye, from 2001 (20.3m) to 2009 (2.3m). For the last two, OWID has assumed that undernourishment remained at 2.5% of the population, despite the numbers having fallen in the previous decade.
Therefore, Trnka et al have likely estimated missing figures, so they should not have directly referenced the FAO dataset.
OWID chart is below.
One hidden assumption is that yields per hectare are at their maximum. Yet in high school geography, I learnt that due to the abundance of land in Russia, the US and Canada yields were low. In the UK, where land was scarce, there was more intensive agriculture, with higher yields. Wheat is a good example. Yields have increased massively over the past 60+ years. But still there is a possibility of increasing global production (or offsetting global yield declines due to climate change) by increasing yields with existing technology.
See a couple of OWID charts as examples. By doubling yields in India, the US, Canada, and Russia, global production could be increased by 250 mt, or 30%.
“Water scarcity event”? Its too bad there isn’t an English word for that.
Meanwhile, back at the Office For Arbitrary Tariffs, the price of wheat will triple in the US (at least) because in the current climate, (pun intended) Canada will curb its oil and fertilizer exports on which the US is completely dependent. When the price of diesel exceeds $10/US gal and fertilizer is only available at double the price and 1/3 the quantity, commodity futures and food prices will skyrocket. Climate-rooted water scarcity events (I wish there was a word for that) may or may not manifest. Either way, the toxic atmosphere (pun intended) will have down-wind (pun intended) impacts.
Economists, climate modelers, CAGW pundits, Malthusians, market catastrophists… Let’s see by next year who is blowing smoke.
(Yes I am referring to wild fires and the demand that Canada should control Mother Nature with punitive legislation.)
I think the author believes the solution to the disappearance of the Colorado river is to pipe water from the east coast to Phoenix.