Impacts of climate change on global agriculture accounting for adaptation.

Abstract

Climate change threatens global food systems¹, but the extent to which adaptation will reduce losses remains unknown and controversial². Even within the well-studied context of US agriculture, some analyses argue that adaptation will be widespread and climate damages small^3,4, whereas others conclude that adaptation will be limited and losses severe^5,6. Scenario-based analyses indicate that adaptation should have notable consequences on global agricultural productivity^7-9, but there has been no systematic study of how extensively real-world producers actually adapt at the global scale. Here we empirically estimate the impact of global producer adaptations using longitudinal data on six staple crops spanning 12,658 regions, capturing two-thirds of global crop calories. We estimate that global production declines 5.5 × 10¹⁴ kcal annually per 1 °C global mean surface temperature (GMST) rise (120 kcal per person per day or 4.4% of recommended consumption per 1 °C; P < 0.001). We project that adaptation and income growth alleviate 23% of global losses in 2050 and 34% at the end of the century (6% and 12%, respectively; moderate-emissions scenario), but substantial residual losses remain for all staples except rice. In contrast to analyses of other outcomes that project the greatest damages to the global poor^10,11, we find that global impacts are dominated by losses to modern-day breadbaskets with favourable climates and limited present adaptation, although losses in low-income regions losses are also substantial. These results indicate a scale of innovation, cropland expansion or further adaptation that might be necessary to ensure food security in a changing climate.