Current food trade helps mitigate future climate change impacts in lower-income nations

PLoS One. 2025 Jan 3;20(1):e0314722. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0314722. eCollection 2025.

Abstract

The risk of national food supply disruptions is linked to both domestic production and food imports. But assessments of climate change risks for food systems typically focus on the impacts on domestic production, ignoring climate impacts in supplying regions. Here, we use global crop modeling data in combination with current trade flows to evaluate potential climate change impacts on national food supply, comparing impacts on domestic production alone (domestic production impacts) to impacts considering how climate change impacts production in all source regions (consumption impact). Under 2°C additional global mean warming over present day, our analysis highlights that climate impacts on national supply are aggravated for 53% high income and 56% upper medium income countries and mitigated for 60% low- and 71% low-medium income countries under consumption-based impacts compared to domestic impacts alone. We find that many countries are reliant on a few mega-exporters who mediate these climate impacts. Managing the risk of climate change for national food security requires a global perspective, considering not only how national production is affected, but also how climate change affects trading partners.

MeSH terms

  • Climate Change*
  • Commerce*
  • Crops, Agricultural / economics
  • Crops, Agricultural / growth & development
  • Developing Countries*
  • Food Security
  • Food Supply*
  • Humans

Grants and funding

KB was supported by the University of British Columbia’s Four Year Doctoral fellowship. NR was supported by NSERC Discovery Grant RGPIN-2017-04648 and the Canada Research Chairs Program. TH acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation (CBET-1855937, SES-1463644, OISE-2020635 and DEB-1924111) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture (IND01053G2). TK and FS acknowledge funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) project No. KA 4815/1-1, and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (grant no. GS22 E1070-0060/029). JJ was supported by the NASA GISS Climate Impacts Group, the Open Philanthropy Project, the Future of Life Institute, and the USDA grant 59-6000-0-0071. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.