Europe Burns: The Growing Threat to Europe’s Food Security

In Europe, the summer of 2026 is shedding light on another uncomfortable reality of what a warming climate means. June was the warmest June on record for western Europe and the second-warmest for Europe as a whole. Vast regions of western Europe, parts of central and eastern Europe, and southern Britain were also substantially drier than average ^[1].

As rivers exposed their beds, soil moisture plummeted and wildfires ripped through parts of Spain and France. By mid-July, the European Drought Observatory described drought conditions across much of the continent as critical, with conditions worsening in central-western Europe ^[1][2].

This is not simply a story of our own discomfort and the scramble for air conditioners. Europe’s food system is itself increasingly exposed to the same combination of heat, drought and water scarcity.

The effects of this drought are already showing up in this year’s crop forecasts. In July, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre cut its yield forecasts for every major spring and summer crop. Grain maize and sunflower forecasts were reduced by 6–7%, while repeated heatwaves shortened the grain-filling period of winter crops and reduced their forecasts by 1–4% ^[3].

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The distinction between winter and summer crops is important. Climate change does not mean the failure of every harvest in Europe, nor does every region suffer equally. Agriculture is affected by the timing of extreme weather as much as by annual averages.

For example, a crop that receives adequate water through spring may survive a hot year relatively well whilst another exposed to high temperatures during flowering or grain filling can lose a significant share of its potential yield in merely days. Dry soil exasperates the problem because plants also lose one of their main mechanisms for cooling themselves: transpiration.

This makes climate change less a straightforward story of steadily declining average yields than one of increasing variability. The European Environment Agency identifies drought as one of the most economically consequential hazards facing European agriculture. In particularly dry years, crop yields can fall by as much as 22%, while southern Europe faces the greatest combination of chronic drought, extreme heat and water scarcity ^[5]. What was once an unusually bad season increasingly risks becoming part of the range of conditions farmers must routinely plan around.

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Olive oil: A warning from the Mediterranean

Olive oil, a critical ingredient in many European cuisines, offers an unusually good illustration of this problem given that olive trees are already adapted to the Mediterranean climate. These hardy trees tolerate heat and water stress far better than most Europe-grown crops. As even olives begin to struggle, they provide something of a canary in the coal mine for Mediterranean agriculture.

We have already seen what this can look like. During the 2022/23 growing season, heat during flowering combined with water shortages during fruit development ravaged olive production across much of southern Europe ^[7].

The European Commission initially expected EU olive-oil production to decline by around 25%, explicitly attributing the reduction to high temperatures during flowering and water deficits during olive growth ^[7].

Final figures from the International Olive Council were worse. EU production fell from roughly 2.27 million tonnes in 2021/22 to 1.39 million tonnes in 2022/23, a decline of around 39%. Spain, normally Europe’s dominant producer, suffered a 55% fall in production. Portugal fell 39% and Italy 27%. Greece was the major exception, recording a strong harvest ^[8].

This shortage quickly became visible to consumers. In January 2024, olive-oil prices across the EU were 50% higher than one year earlier. Price increases were even larger in some of the countries where olive oil is most deeply embedded in everyday diets, with 69% in Portugal, 67% in Greece and 63% in Spain ^[9]. Prices eventually eased as production recovered, but that is precisely the point. Climate change does not require the permanent disappearance of a crop to threaten food security. Repeated production shocks can generate sharp swings in availability, farm incomes and consumer prices.

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A longer-term outlook suggests that the stresses behind those poor harvests will become harder to avoid. A study published in Agricultural Water Management modelled future conditions for olive cultivation across the Mediterranean. It found that land climatically suitable for olives could actually expand by around 25% by the middle of the century, particularly northwards and at higher elevations. On first inspection, that sounds positive. Yet the same study projected an average 8% increase in olive evapotranspiration and an 18.5% increase in irrigation requirements ^[11].

This trade-off captures one of the central contradictions of European climate adaptation. Warmer temperatures can make new regions suitable for crops previously restricted to the south, but the traditional agricultural heartlands of those crops may simultaneously become more dependent on irrigation. The problem is that irrigation demand rises precisely where water is expected to become scarcer putting additional pressure on societies experiencing water stress.

The UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reaches similarly troubling conclusions. Under global warming of 1.5°C to 2°C, olive yields in some northern Mediterranean locations could fall by as much as 21%. Under still higher warming, considerably larger reductions are possible in some rain-fed systems. The IPCC also identifies major risks to vegetables and other Mediterranean crops as extreme heat increases and irrigation water becomes less reliable ^[12]. The olive tree is unlikely to disappear from Europe, but its geography, productivity and dependence on irrigation may change considerably.

The canary in the coal mine

This is where olive oil stops being simply a story about an increasingly expensive bottle of something that surely can easily be replaced? Wheat, maize and other staple crops matter much more directly for European food security.

The European Commission’s PESETA IV climate-impact modelling projects substantial reductions in grain-maize and wheat yields across southern Europe in the absence of adaptation. Northern Europe performs better in many scenarios, and the modelling suggests that total EU agricultural production could prove more resilient than the southern European numbers alone imply. Yet this creates a pronounced north-south divide rather than eliminating the problem ^[13].

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There are several reasons why simply moving production north is not an easy solution. Agriculture is not determined by temperature alone. Soil type, the length of days, rainfall patterns, local water availability, pests, farming knowledge/skills, processing facilities and transport infrastructure all matter. Olive groves, vineyards and orchards require years to establish before harvest yields. Irrigation networks and reservoirs take considerably longer. A climate zone can migrate north faster than the agricultural economy built around it. Furthermore, this assumes a new found stability to the climate that simply may not exist in our lifetimes.

Nor is climate change solely a southern European problem. The European Environment Agency’s first European Climate Risk Assessment concluded that heat and drought risks to crop production have already reached critical levels in southern Europe, while countries in central Europe are increasingly exposed as well ^[15]. Northern regions may benefit from longer growing seasons in some years, but they also face heavier rainfall, saturated soils and greater weather volatility. Agriculture suffers as variability increases.

A warmer Europe is therefore not simply a Mediterranean climate shifted several hundred kilometres northwards. It is a more volatile climate system in which the agricultural advantages created in one region may coexist with much larger losses elsewhere.

This matters for food security because modern European agriculture is highly specialised. A regional crop failure can normally be compensated for by imports or production elsewhere, but the cost of doing so rises when several regions simultaneously experience poor conditions.

Drought can reduce grain yields while also lowering river levels used to transport fertiliser and animal feed with rivers and canals a critical part of the European transportation system. Heat reduces livestock productivity and limits the amount of work that can safely be performed outdoors. Wildfires can destroy perennial crops (crops that take more than a single year to grow) that require multiple years to replace. Water restrictions can force agriculture, households, industry and ecosystems to compete for the same diminishing resource.

Food security, in other words, is not simply a question of whether Europe produces enough calories in an average year. It also concerns reliability, affordability and the resilience of the system tested when several things go wrong at the same time.

Adapt or face a grave cost

Adaptation is thus critical. Farmers can change planting dates, improve soil water retention, adopt more drought-tolerant varieties, diversify crops and use irrigation more efficiently. Agroforestry, landscape diversification, improved soil structure and better water-management systems can all reduce exposure to climate shocks ^[5][16].

Europe faces this growing crisis from a relatively strong position. It is one of the largest agricultural producers and exporters in the world with a high level of agricultural expertise. Climate change is not likely to result in Europeans facing large-scale shortages, suddenly being unable to find food on supermarket shelves. At least in the short to medium term.

But adaptation has physical limits and can be expensive. More efficient irrigation can reduce the amount of water required to produce a tonne of food but at a point it is simply not a substitute for rainfall. Reservoirs cannot indefinitely compensate for depleted rivers and aquifers. Crop breeding can increase heat tolerance, but plants still have physiological limits.

Moving crops north cannot instantly reproduce the soils, infrastructure and farming economies of southern Spain, Italy or Greece.

The consequences may simply be limited to more volatility rather than a simple, linear decline in average European food production.

It is important to be aware that a continent can remain food secure in aggregate whilst individual farmers lose their livelihoods, traditional producing regions become marginal, imports increase and consumers experience increasingly frequent price shocks. A European harvest that looks acceptable overall can conceal severe regional losses, and the increased costs required to produce the same yield.

Olive oil is a useful warning and we have already watched this process unfold in real time. The 2022/23 harvest demonstrated how a combination of heat and water stress could remove hundreds of thousands of tonnes of European yields in a single season. Within little more than a year, the consequences had travelled from olive groves in Spain and Portugal to supermarket prices across the continent.

Only four years later, the summer of 2026 is again demonstrating the conditions capable of producing such shocks. Western Europe has experienced record-breaking heat, drought remains widespread and forecasts for major summer crops have already been revised downwards ^[1][2][3].

Olive oil may be the canary in the coal mine, but wheat, maize and vegetables are the crops that should make policymakers wake up and pay attention.

There is a key lesson that is all too often forgotten. Volatile, potentially inflationary food prices have consequences beyond the obvious. Periods of political upheaval, including the Arab Spring of 2011, have been linked at least in part to rising food prices, while broader research has found a causal relationship between food-price increases and social unrest ^[17][18]. Economic and financial insecurity has also been associated with increased support for populist parties across Europe ^[19].

Thus, if climate change places sustained pressure on European food prices, the consequences may therefore extend beyond household budgets. There is clear evidence that growing prices could fuel political extremism, deepen existing social divisions and, in the most severe case, contribute to the fragmentation of the European project itself.

The price of inaction may therefore be far more costly than anticipated.