A few months ago, I was in a meeting with a representative from the National Confectioners Association to discuss the removal of lead and cadmium from chocolate.
During a break, I brought up an article we had posted to our website, ClimateInflation.org, about how the price of chocolate had tripled in the past year. He said he’d been in the industry for 30 years. Cacao prices had always been around $3,000 per metric tonne. Now, the price was closer to $10,000 –something he never thought he’d see in his lifetime.
Historic heat in West Africa and floods in South America were partly to blame.
According to Bloomberg, cacao is now as expensive as copper. More volatility for all foods are expected, as a new report shows: “Climate impacts on economic productivity indicate that climate change may threaten price stability.” The report also estimates that, based on temperature increases that climate scientists expect by 2035, climate change could be responsible for increases in food costs of 3.2% per year.
Because the causes of inflation are often invisible, most Americans have yet to realize that climate change is behind the surge in prices.
To inform the public and financial professionals, we published, “Climate Inflation: How Extreme Weather is Driving Up the Price of Food.” As our paper shows, chocolate isn’t the only family favorite that’s more expensive than ever due to climate change. A study by Cornell showed that a warming planet had already reduced farming productivity by 21% since 1961, creating a new “food polycrisis.”
NASA’s Jonas Jägermeyr recently told the New York Times, climate is driving a “fundamental change across most breadbaskets on the planet.” The bottom line: Climate change is already here, already hitting your pocketbook, and already impacting what’s for dinner, tonight.
Record breaking droughts, flooding, rising sea levels, hurricanes, wildfires, and other extreme weather events, amplified by fossil fuel pollution, have decimated crop yields and made grocery bills unaffordable for many families. Prices are significantly higher for olive oil, coffee, milk, wine, cheese, almonds, cereal, seafood, fruit, tomatoes, and just about every global food staple.
A few examples from France: The UK could unseat top wine-producing regions Champagne and Burgundy in France due to the effects of climate change. No more Champagne from Champagne. The town of Picodon, known for its eponymous soft goat cheese with notes of hazelnut and mushroom, can no longer grow the grass that give the cheese its remarkable flavor profile. No more Picodon from Picodon.
Rising costs from climate change exemplify how fossil fuel firms force families, taxpayers, shareholders, and the rest of society to pay multiple times for their planet-warming products. It isn’t enough to price- gouge at the pump as they rake in record profits; now that climate change is causing havoc on whole sectors of the economy, we also pay more for food and homeowners insurance (if we can get it). Pretty soon oil executives (and those lucky enough to make what they do) will be the only ones who can afford to eat what The Wall Street Journal calls “the finer things in life,” like chocolate and coffee. Yep – the oil industry is coming for your Mocha Frappuccino!
In many cases, the climate has changed over the long-term, like in Georgia where peaches no longer get enough winter nights of freeze to bear fruit. Suddenly, the Peach State can’t grow peaches and Florida can’t grow oranges. Lower supply results in higher prices at the grocery store, squeezing family budgets for other household products they would have otherwise purchased. Everyone loses across the entire economy, especially families struggling to make ends meet.
Tip of the food chain
Food prices are just the beginning. A warming planet is impacting just about every industry and sector in our complex, interrelated economic and food systems.
There were 28 natural disasters in the United States in 2023, each with damages exceeding $1 billion. These storms caused a total of $21 billion in crop losses, with an estimated $93 billion economic loss overall impacting nearly every industry. That sobering loss was an improvement over 2022’s staggering $179 billion in losses. Between 2019 and 2023, the U.S. experienced 102 catastrophic events that cost more than a billion dollars, with a total price tag of $617 billion. All four years were also the hottest in recorded history. As a result, insurance companies are fleeing climate prone areas, leaving homeowners with few or no options to insure homes.
Gradual increases in temperature have also led to increased health risks and forced migration for communities leaving newly inhospitable areas with non-arable land. As one NASA study showed, food shortages are likely to affect people in poorer parts of the world far more than richer ones. That could increase the flow of immigration that is already inflaming political tensions in North America, Europe, and other parts of the world. “People don’t stay and die where they are. People migrate,” concluded the researcher.
As You Sow (the nonprofit I lead) has beat the drum on climate inflation for years. We placed a full-page ad in the Financial Times in 2022 and dedicated a micro-site called ClimateInflation.org to tracking the latest evidence and articles from around the world.
Only by proving to voters and citizens that climate change isn’t some distant problem for future generations will we find the collective willpower to implement solutions – that thankfully already exist. What we need are more economists, corporations, scientists, and academics to help Americans connect the dots between climate and the rising cost of food.
We want everyone to be able to afford nutritious, delicious food – and a Mocha Frappuccino, if they’d like, too!
Andrew Behar is the CEO As You Sow
