The scorching heat sweeping Europe has parched soils, distressed livestock and is keeping farmers away from fields, superseding the Iran war as the greatest challenge to food supplies.
In France, record-breaking temperatures are damaging corn crops and wiping out hundreds of thousands of chickens. In Spain, pigs are losing their appetite and some fruit is threatened at the key blossoming stage. In the UK, distressed cows are producing less milk.
Though the heat wave will ease by early next week, extreme weather has overshadowed the Middle East conflict as the biggest concern for farmers. Meteorologists are warning of above-normal temperatures for months to come as a developing El Niño compounds the impact of climate change for an industry already facing high fertilizer and fuel costs.
“The next shock to the farmer is potential adverse weather in some parts of the world,” said Les Finemore, chief investment officer at Moreton Capital Partners, which is starting a fund specifically trading El Niño crop risks. “We’ve been focused on the Iranian war situation. The next event will be El Niño.”
El Niño — a climate phenomenon that disrupts normal weather patterns every few years — has contributed to the heat wave across western Europe. This week, temperature highs were reached in the UK and France, where a record 72 departments are under red heat alerts, with similar warnings in effect in the UK, Germany and Switzerland.
Beyond Europe, El Niño is already impacting Asia’s food supplies. In India, it’s delayed the monsoon and reduced rainfall, a risk to rice and sugar. And in Vietnam, parts of the coffee belt are drying up.
Heavy downpours could disrupt grain production in China at a time when imports are under scrutiny. In the US, the weather is also turning hotter, a challenge for its grain farmers.
“Even if energy and fertilizer markets normalize, adverse weather conditions in major producing regions could still tighten supplies and place upward pressure on food prices,” Máximo Torero, chief economist at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, said by email.
France, Europe’s top farming nation, has been the epicenter of the heat wave for more than a week, straining a corn crop that farmers finished planting just weeks ago.
“Some of my corn crops look stressed, with darker color and their structure has changed. They look less like corn and more like leeks,” Franck Laborde, a farmer in Pyrénées-Atlantiques in southwest France, said by phone. “When it is very hot, we need to drink more water. The same applies to corn.”
Water stress is likely to become the major issue, especially as the first corn crops are entering a sensitive flowering stage, he said. Farmers had already curbed plantings after the Iran war boosted input costs. With potentially less than one-third of the French corn area irrigated, harvests this year could be the smallest since 1990, market researcher Expana estimates.
