Food Prices Increased by Climate Change

Your chocolate Easter bunnies aren’t the only foods getting more expensive due to climate change. Global “weather and climate shocks” will drive up food prices by as much as 1.8 percentage points over the next ten years, increasing the expected level of overall inflation by as much as 0.9 percentage points, according to a study published Thursday in Communications, Earth & Environment.

Over the next 36 years, those numbers are expected to rise even further with food prices jumping as much as 4.3 percentage points annually, boosting overall inflation by as much as 2.2 percentage points. “There are these productivity shocks that we know about from climate change, from the weather phenomena caused by climate change, from heat waves and so forth to reduce agricultural productivity,” Max Kotz, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute and lead author of the study, told the AP. “Those also then have a knock-on effect on food inflation, on headline inflation.” (Inflation: AP, ABC, Forbes, CBS; Easter chocolate: AP, BBC, EcoWatch)