Recent events highlight concerns about the risks to global food security posed by changing patterns of extreme weather affecting the world’s “breadbasket” regions such as the American Midwest, South America’s southern cone, the Black Sea and the Yangtze River valley. In 2012, the worst drought to hit the U.S. Midwest in half a century sent international maize and soybean prices to record levels. In 2011, wheat prices nearly doubled after an unprecedented heat wave devastated the Russian harvest. The global food price crisis of 2007-8 had its roots in a run of poor harvests in previous years.
Global food security largely depends on the production of a few “mega-crops” in the breadbasket regions: maize, wheat, rice and soybeans. On the whole, the system works well. International trade provides a global market for these specialized production centers, reducing the cost of food for billions of people by allowing agriculture to flourish where it can be most efficient. Trade also allows countries to meet unforeseen production shortfalls through imports, as Britain did in the summer of 2013 after floods spoiled the winter wheat harvest. But when extreme weather ruins the harvest in a breadbasket region, that’s not just a problem in the country affected, it’s a problem for all importing countries.
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