Climate change means our food is more expensive
Climate change is adding to the cost of living crisis - Story 137
Welcome to Bridged2050: creating an even better Barnes during this climate crisis
Climate change is no longer something abstract, happening ‘over there’. It is here, shaping our daily lives in ways that are both banal and brutal. It closed Hammersmith Bridge in 2019, according to Hammersmith & Fulham council. It has pushed up the price of home insurance. And now it is making our food more expensive. By a lot.
Climate and cost of living link
Paul Behrens, Professor at the Oxford Martin School, has put it starkly: climate change is pushing up the prices of the food we buy, altering what ends up on our plates.
One-third of UK food price increases in 2023 resulted from climate change, according to research by agricultural economists.
This extra cost contributed to food price inflation and the UK’s cost-of-living crisis.
Behrens, who is Professor, Future of Food, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford said this trend is likely to continue.
Extreme weather — floods, droughts, heatwaves — is now built into the economics of global food supply.
A diet shaped by climate
Behrens and colleagues argue the most effective counter is to change what we eat. Not by giving up meat and dairy altogether, but by shifting balance: more plants, less meat.
The plant-rich diet we investigated isn’t vegan. It’s not even vegetarian.
It does include a reasonable (and healthier) amount of meat and dairy.
That moderation, not extremism, is what makes the shift both practical and urgent.
Global markets, local prices
This confirms research by Carbon Brief in 2024, that explained why extreme weather events were affecting global food prices.
They showed how extreme weather is already disrupting supply chains: rice in China, oranges in the US, olives across the Mediterranean. The heatwaves of 2025 have only underlined the point.
Take olive oil. Global production fell by a third between 2021 and 2024, according to the International Olive Council.
Carbon Brief reports,
As a result, the price of olive oil has soared in different parts of the world.
Prices were up by 50% in the EU, on average, during this time period.
Olive oil is now the “most stolen product in supermarkets across Spain” due to the price tag, the Guardian reported in March.
Notes & thoughts
That is the wider lesson.
Climate change has ceased to be a looming threat; it is a fact of life. But it is insidious — threaded through daily experience in ways so familiar we barely notice. A bridge closed. An insurance renewal. A bottle of olive oil priced like a luxury good.
The cost of living crisis is, in part, a climate crisis. We are paying the bill already.