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agriculture
Report Details How Climate Crisis Fuels Crop Failure Risk in Global Breadbaskets
"As globally important food-producing regions face growing risks of climate-driven disruption, the effects can ripple through livelihoods, supply chains, food assistance systems, and geopolitical relationships."
Jun 09, 2026
The climate emergency is sharply increasing the risk of crop failure in regions that produce an outsized share of the world's staple food grains, according to a report published Tuesday that warns of "serious threats to Europe, the NATO alliance, and global stability" if cooperative resilience initiatives and other mitigation strategies aren't pursued.
The report, "Global Breadbaskets: Food System Resilience as a Strategic Imperative," was published by the Center for Climate and Security—part of the Council on Strategic Risks, a Washington, DC-based security policy think tank—and the Woodwell Climate Research Center, an independent nonprofit located in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
"Geopolitical fragmentation, conflict, extreme weather, and global aid cuts already strain food security. Meanwhile, climate change is increasing the likelihood of crop failures in the American, European, and Asian breadbaskets, which produce most of the staple crops underpinning global food security," the report states.
🆕 Across India, France, and Germany, in the next decade and a half, the odds of key crops failing are set to increase by between two- and six-fold. This isn't just a food story. It's also a #NATO security story.
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— Council on Strategic Risks (@councilonstrategicrisks.org) June 9, 2026 at 12:13 AM
The publication follows an April report from a pair of United Nations agencies on how extreme heat is impacting food production and food security around the planet. The new report includes a storymap that explores climate change-driven threats to wheat, rice, and maize (corn) crops in France, Germany, and India—three of the world's "global breadbaskets."
The analysis' authors note that compared with 2010 threat levels, by 2040, "the risk of a given year’s crop failing is projected to grow roughly twofold for Indian wheat and German maize, roughly threefold for French wheat, roughly fourfold for French maize, and roughly sixfold for Indian rice, with sharp increases in critical producing regions."
Climate-driven extreme heat "not only threatens crops, but also the laborers and infrastructure that translate them into food security," the report continues. "Extreme heat is projected to reduce the suitability of 15-40% of India’s rain-fed rice-growing regions by 2050, and to reduce physical work capacity during the average growing season to as little as 40% of 2000-era levels by 2100."
"By 2040, southwestern France will average up to 16 additional days per year above 35°C (95°F), exceeding thresholds that reduce yields, impact grain quality, and cause heat stroke," the paper warns. "Extreme heat also threatens to damage or disable road and rail networks critical to food transportation, agricultural machinery, civil defense, and military mobilization."
The publication also states that global breadbasket failures in Europe "could open rifts for Russian meddling, fuel instability in key partners, and elevate food production as a geopolitical lever."
The Council on Strategic Risks operates within the transatlantic security policy community, whose work often overlaps with NATO's interests.
“We have plenty of examples of how crop failures can contribute to political instability, from the French Revolution to the Arab Spring," Center for Climate and Security deputy director and report lead author Tom Ellison said Tuesday in a statement. "In today’s environment, global breadbasket failures could strain NATO priorities, prompt unrest in key countries, and upend trade relationships."
Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist and report co-author Alexandra Naegele warned that “climate change doesn't just threaten crop yields and grain quality—it destabilizes entire food systems, from labor and livestock to food storage and transport."
"Quantifying these climate-driven risks is an essential step toward building resilient food systems and safeguarding global food security," she added.
The report recommends steps countries—specifically members of the European Union and NATO—can take to mitigate risks to food security, including strengthening cooperative resilience, anticipating instability and hybrid warfare, supporting strategic and vulnerable partners, coordinating trade responses, and investing in agricultural research and development.
"Amid climate change, geopolitical uncertainty, food shocks from the war in Iran, and Russian hybrid warfare, investing in a resilient food system isn’t in competition with security—it’s a key part of it," Ellison stressed.
Monica Caparas, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and report co-author, said, "Understanding and preparing for breadbasket failures is both a national security priority and a humanitarian imperative—one that can help protect lives, reduce instability, and strengthen food resilience before a regional shock becomes a wider crisis."
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Talarico Calls on Trump USDA to 'Fully Staff' Agency to Confront Flesh-Eating Parasite Found in Texas Cattle
A key pest control office "lost 1,300 employees due to cuts and firings" said one public health expert. "That’s the thing about prevention: You don’t notice it when it works, only when it is gone."
Jun 04, 2026
Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico called on the Trump administration to reverse the massive job cuts at the US Department of Agriculture—some of the largest that were imposed last year as President Donald Trump and his then-adviser Elon Musk embarked on a "slash-and-burn exercise" to reduce the government workforce—as the agency announced Wednesday that it had detected the country's first case of New World screwworm since 1966.
The parasitic fly was found in a three-week-old calf in La Pryor, Texas, after months of warnings from Texas agricultural officials and the state's $15 billion cattle industry that the flesh-eating pest, whose larvae exclusively feed on the living tissue of warm-blooded animals, could soon make its way to the US after spreading through Latin America in recent years. Mexico reported its first case in 2024 and saw a 53% increase in the number of cases in animals between July-August 2025.
"Following a historic drought that has reduced our herd size and driven up prices," said Talarico late Wednesday, "the New World screwworm outbreak is further disrupting supply chains that impact all of us who rely on the cattle industry—from meatpacking facilities to feedlots to grocery stores."
"We must fully staff the USDA so that the federal government can provide clear and predictable guidance for ranchers and work alongside the Texas government and the cattle industry to keep pests like the New World screwworm out of our herd," said Talarico.
Catharine Young, a senior fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, noted that the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Prevention Service "helps prevent threats like screwworm from ever reaching US livestock."
"In 2025, it lost 1,300 employees due to cuts and firings," said Young. "That’s the thing about prevention: You don’t notice it when it works, only when it is gone."
The Department of Government Efficiency also cut funding that supported outbreak investigations, response efforts, and testing laboratories in 22 countries and helped build laboratories for testing.
The parasite does not pose a food safety threat, according to officials. A top concern is that an outbreak could raise beef prices—which have already been driven up by the fact that the US cattle herd is the smallest it's been in 75 years following years of drought conditions, the surging costs associated with ranching, and corporate consolidation.
The USDA estimates that an outbreak could cost Texas' economy $1.8 billion in losses before it is contained.
The pest can infect humans—and 41 human cases were reported in Mexico last year—but experts say such cases are rare and that the detection of screwworm in Texas poses little risk to the public.
Instead of spreading from animal to animal, screwworm females lay eggs in animals' open wounds. The larvae then burrow into living flesh and feed on tissue, causing severe infections and death if the livestock goes untreated.
For decades, agricultural officials deployed a technique that successfully eradicated screwworm in the US: releasing sterilized male flies into affected areas. Female flies generally only mate once in their lifespan, so those that mate with a sterile male produce no offspring.
The USDA has begun releasing sterile flies into the part of South Texas where the parasite was found and is investing in sterile fly production facilities in the state. It has also established a 12-mile quarantine zone around the affected area.
US officials are also reportedly working with Mexico and Panama to use the sterile fly technique in those countries.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Wednesday that US has deployed 8,000 traps capable of detecting screwworm, and blamed the case in South Texas on "the open-border policies of the last administration and the resulting illicit cattle movement."
Rollins had denied screwworm was in the United States a day before she confirmed the case at a press conference on Wednesday.
Experts believe pandemic-era disruptions to sterile fly programs, increased movement of livestock and people, and weather conditions that have allowed the parasite to thrive may all have contributed to the screwworm's gradual journey toward the US.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said Wednesday that "for months, the screwworm has advanced rapidly through Mexico in spite of the USDA’s existing gameplan," and called on the Trump administration to approve the deployment of the Screwworm Adult Suppression System, which uses bait and insecticides and was tested by the US in the 1970s to eradicate the parasite.
“We have the ability to shut that and eradicate that screwworm," Miller told The Texas Tribune. "We can do it in about 60 days. USDA has the tools and the knowledge to do it.”
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It's Time for a Progressive Policy to Protect Agricultural Supply Chains
Price floors and supply management programs seem common sense to policymakers when it comes to oil and minerals, but what about US farmers and our overall food system?
Jun 03, 2026
The race to obtain critical minerals and the war in Iran have not only exposed a dangerous dependence on fossil fuels and mining, but they have also uncovered something more surprising—Republicans in Congress actually understand progressive agriculture policy. They just don’t want to admit it.
In February, Vice President JD Vance announced at the State Department that the administration must institute a price floor to protect the US critical mineral market. “This morning, the Trump administration is proposing a concrete mechanism to return the global critical minerals market to a healthier, more competitive state: a preferential trade zone for critical minerals protected from external disruptions through enforceable price floors,” Vance explained. Meanwhile, the US—and other countries around the world—are deploying oil reserves to buffer price shocks caused by the Israel-US attacks on Iran. Price floors and supply management programs seem common sense to these policymakers when it comes to oil and minerals, but what about US farmers and our overall food system?
Like oil and critical minerals, food and agriculture supply chains, such as corn, soy, and dairy, are vulnerable to global shocks, including extreme weather events, wars, and other supply disruptions. The public also needs to understand that without inflation-adjusted price floors, agricultural commodity prices may sink to disastrously low levels, leaving farmers no choice but to increase production with more chemicals and GMO seeds at the expense of our land and water. Congress and the US Department of Agriculture can avoid low prices by creating reserves accumulated during large harvests and, just like the federal petroleum reserve, bringing them back on the market to stabilize prices in times of shortage. We can all agree that food shortages would be disastrous, so guaranteeing its citizens food security should be imperative for any democratic government.
So while Republicans can recognize the importance of price floors and supply management during this administration, Democrats should look at history to understand how the same instruments were developed for agriculture during the Great Depression under the Democratic Party’s New Deal. The twin crises of farm bankruptcies and the Dust Bowl spurred militant farm organizations to demand a response from the federal government. The response was parity farm bills that stopped farm bankruptcies and stabilized the farm economy so that conservation measures and preservation of diversified farming could lead to food security and a balanced economy. Federal leadership in the White House and Congress recognized that price and supply management benefited both farmers and society as a whole. The policy was simple and transparent: The farm bill would ensure that during years of good harvests, public grain reserves would purchase the surplus at the parity rate (price floor adjusted for inflation) and store it to protect consumers in future times of shortage.
A productive agricultural economy that conserves our resources, challenges agricultural consolidation, and offers economic opportunity in rural communities should be a top priority for all our citizens.
However, both parties abandoned this common-sense approach to farm policy in the early 1950s, so that costs of farming have totally outpaced commodity prices. Subsequently, headlines warning of a farm crisis in 2026, like during the Great Depression and the 1980s, are not uncommon. The prices paid to farmers for commodities such as corn, soybeans, wheat, and dairy have dropped to record lows in real dollars. Over the years, this imbalance has led to the loss of family farms, the consolidation of agribusiness and food processing monopolies, along with their profits benefiting handsomely. Stabilizing the ratio of farm prices to farm costs (the correct goal of any Farm Bill) is the key to a sustainable agriculture that avoids soil loss, water pollution, and the decline of rural communities.
A supply management program would not only help revive family operations and rural economies but would also be essential to combat the expansion of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and lower costs for taxpayers. As reported by Food & Water Watch, CAFOs are a disaster for our climate, air, and water, especially for nearby communities. CAFOs are among the most egregious features of today’s low-price, commodity-based industrial agriculture. Thousands of livestock (owned or vertically integrated with large food processors) are confined in small facilities without fresh air or sunlight and fed cheap corn and soy.
CAFOs have been replacing conscientious family farmers who are stewards of the soil and their animals. When family farmers are forced out of livestock production, they face the dilemma of “get big or get out” and often have no farming alternatives other than to tear up their pastures to grow corn and soybeans that will end up feeding animals in CAFOs.
The Trump administration is applying often-forgotten policy instruments to sustain our fossil fuel dependence and our high-tech future, rather than prioritizing a resilient, sustainable economy. Managing a price floor and creating federal food reserves in the agriculture sector are necessary to combat the adverse effects of food processor monopolization, farm consolidation, soil and water degradation, and external shocks, such as wars.
A productive agricultural economy that conserves our resources, challenges agricultural consolidation, and offers economic opportunity in rural communities should be a top priority for all our citizens. “We love farmers” and “We put America’s farmers first” are just political slogans to get votes with no substance behind them. These slogans lead to the usual sleight of hand to send taxpayer dollars to get some farmers through the next planting season. This policy leaves the disastrous cheap commodity regime in place—encouraging CAFO production and exporting commodities at a loss.
The administration’s discovery of the logical policy of price floors and reserves for oil and minerals must open new doors to applying these logical and transparent mechanisms to agriculture to restore the security of family farmers and conservation of our precious resources—after all, we can’t eat petroleum or precious minerals.
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