United Kingdom
Ausut 25, 2026
A major international study has found that severe drought across the world’s wheat‑growing regions strongly drives global wheat prices with future climate warming threatening to make these drought‑price shocks far more frequent and far more extreme.
Published in Earth’s Future, the research shows that if the planet warms by around 3°C, average global wheat prices could rise to USD 364 per ton, roughly three times higher than the inflation‑adjusted price in 2010. For farmers, traders, millers, and food manufacturers, the findings highlight a growing climate‑related risk to one of the world’s most important crops.
Wheat covers more land globally than rice or maize, supplies a major share of human calories and protein, and is one of the most widely traded agricultural commodities. Much of the world’s wheat is grown under water‑limited conditions, making it highly sensitive to drought.
The research team, spanning climate science, agronomy, crop modelling, and food‑system economics, set out to answer a critical question: Can drought across global wheat regions explain year‑to‑year changes in global wheat prices?
To uncover this link, scientists developed a new indicator called severe water scarcity (SWS). It captures both short‑term and long‑term water deficits during the four months before harvest, when wheat is most vulnerable to moisture stress. Researchers mapped SWS across global wheat, maize, and rice production areas and compared the affected area with global commodity prices. The clearest relationship emerged for wheat with 74% of annual variation in global wheat prices (2000–2021) could be explained by SWS alone. For maize, SWS explained up to 40% of price variability. For rice, no meaningful relationship was found.
The model was built without using data from 2022–2024, yet it still captured the broad price levels and shifts during these turbulent years, providing a strong real‑world test. Between 2000 and 2020, an average of 5% of global wheat land experienced severe water scarcity each year. In major drought years 2000, 2010, 2012, and 2020 - more than 15% of wheat area was affected. These spikes aligned with notable movements in global wheat markets.
But what about the future? Using simulations from 31 CMIP6 and 27 CMIP5 global climate models, the team explored how warming could change drought patterns and wheat prices. The results show a clear trend:
- At ~2°C warming, average wheat prices could reach USD 273/ton.
- At ~3°C warming, prices could rise to USD 364/ton — three times the inflation‑adjusted 2010 price.
As warming increases, severe water scarcity becomes more widespread across major wheat belts, amplifying price volatility and raising long‑term average prices.
Dr Mikhail Semenov, co-author of the study from Rothamsted, said, “The study does not claim that drought alone sets wheat prices. Energy costs, fertilizer markets, grain stocks, exchange rates, trade policies, pests, diseases, and geopolitical shocks all play major roles. But the research reveals a climate‑driven signal that has been extremely difficult to quantify until now and shows that large‑scale drought across key production regions can ripple through global wheat markets.”
Publication
Climate-Induced Severe Water Scarcity Events as Harbingers of Global Wheat Price
https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EF006095
The research was led by Miroslav Trnka of the Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CzechGlobe) who brought together scientists from research institutions across Europe and the United States.
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