Food insecurity can be directly exacerbated by climate change due to crop production-related impacts of warmer and drier conditions expected in important agricultural regions 1, 2, 3. However, efforts to mitigate climate change through comprehensive, economy-wide greenhouse gas emission reductions may also negatively affect food security, due to indirect impacts on prices and supplies of key agricultural commodities 4, 5, 6. Here we conduct a multiple model assessment on the combined effects of climate change and climate mitigation efforts on agricultural commodity prices, dietary energy availability, and the population at risk of hunger. A robust finding is that by 2050, stringent climate mitigation policy, if implemented evenly across all sectors and regions, would have a greater negative impact on global hunger and food consumption than the direct impacts of climate change. The negative impacts would be most prevalent in vulnerable low-income regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where food security problems are already acute.

This paper analyses the impacts on global agricultural markets of the demand shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the first wave of lockdown measures imposed by the governments in the first semester of 2020 to contain it. Specifically, we perform a scenario-based analysis on the IMF economic growth forecasts for 2020 and 2021 using a global multi-commodity agricultural market model. According to our results, the sharp decline in economic growth causes a decrease in international meat prices by 7–18% in 2020 and dairy products by 4–7% compared to a business as usual situation. Following the slowdown of the economy, biofuel prices fall strongly in 2020, followed by their main feedstocks, maize and oilseeds. Although the income losses and local supply chain disruptions associated with the pandemic undoubtedly has led to an increase in food insecurity in many developing countries, global food consumption is largely unaffected due to the inelastic demand of most agricultural commodities and the short duration of the shock. From an environmental viewpoint, the COVID-19 impacts point to a modest reduction of direct greenhouse gases from agriculture of about 1% or 50 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2020 and 2021.

Temperature and precipitation are the most important factors responsible for agricultural productivity variations. In 2018 spring/summer growing season, Europe experienced concurrent anomalies of both. Drought conditions in central and northern Europe caused yield reductions up to 50% for the main crops, yet wet conditions in southern Europe saw yield gains up to 34%, both with respect to the previous 5‐year mean. Based on the analysis of documentary and natural proxy‐based seasonal paleoclimate reconstructions for the past half millennium, we show that the 2018 combination of climatic anomalies in Europe was unique. The water seesaw, a marked dipole of negative water anomalies in central Europe and positive ones in southern Europe, distinguished 2018 from the five previous similar droughts since 1976. Model simulations reproduce the 2018 European water seesaw in only 4 years out of 875 years in historical runs and projections. Future projections under the RCP8.5 scenario show that 2018‐like temperature and rainfall conditions, favorable to crop growth, will occur less frequent in southern Europe. In contrast, in central Europe high‐end emission scenario climate projections show that droughts as intense as 2018 could become a common occurrence as early as 2043. While integrated European and global agricultural markets limited agro‐economic shocks caused by 2018's extremes, there is an urgent need for adaptation strategies for European agriculture to consider futures without the benefits of any water seesaw.

Systematic model inter-comparison helps to narrow discrepancies in the analysis of the future impact of climate change on agricultural production. This paper presents a set of alternative scenarios by five global climate and agro-economic models. Covering integrated assessment (IMAGE), partial equilibrium (CAPRI, GLOBIOM, MAgPIE) and computable general equilibrium (MAGNET) models ensures a good coverage of biophysical and economic agricultural features. These models are harmonized with respect to basic model drivers, to assess the range of potential impacts of climate change on the agricultural sector by 2050. Moreover, they quantify the economic consequences of stringent global emission mitigation efforts, such as non-CO 2 emission taxes and land-based mitigation options, to stabilize global warming at 2 • C by the end of the century under different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. A key contribution of the paper is a vis-à-vis comparison of climate change impacts relative to the impact of mitigation measures. In addition, our scenario design allows assessing the impact of the residual climate change on the mitigation challenge. From a global perspective, the impact of climate change on agricultural production by mid-century is negative but small. A larger negative effect on agricultural production, most pronounced for ruminant meat production, is observed when emission mitigation measures compliant with a 2 • C target are put in place. Our results indicate that a mitigation strategy that embeds residual climate change effects (RCP2.6) has a negative impact on global agricultural production relative to a no-mitigation strategy with stronger climate impacts (RCP6.0). However, this is partially due to the limited impact of the climate change scenarios by 2050. The magnitude of price changes is different amongst models due to methodological differences. Further research to achieve a better harmonization is needed, especially regarding endogenous food and feed demand, including substitution across individual commodities, and endogenous technological change.

The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) has developed novel methods for Coordinated Global and Regional Assessments (CGRA) of agriculture and food security in a changing world. The present study aims to perform a proof of concept of the CGRA to demonstrate advantages and challenges of the proposed framework. This effort responds to the request by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for the implications of limiting global temperature increases to 1.5°C and 2.0°C above pre-industrial conditions. The protocols for the 1.5°C/2.0°C assessment establish explicit and testable linkages across disciplines and scales, connecting outputs and inputs from the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs), Representative Agricultural Pathways (RAPs), Half a degree Additional warming, Prognosis and Projected Impacts (HAPPI) and Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) ensemble scenarios, global gridded crop models, global agricultural economics models, site-based crop models and within-country regional economics models. The CGRA consistently links disciplines, models and scales in order to track the complex chain of climate impacts and identify key vulnerabilities, feedbacks and uncertainties in managing future risk. CGRA proof-of-concept results show that, at the global scale, there are mixed areas of positive and negative simulated wheat and maize yield changes, with declines in some breadbasket regions, at both 1.5°C and 2.0°C. Declines are especially evident in simulations that do not take into account direct CO effects on crops. These projected global yield changes mostly resulted in increases in prices and areas of wheat and maize in two global economics models. Regional simulations for 1.5°C and 2.0°C using site-based crop models had mixed results depending on the region and the crop. In conjunction with price changes from the global economics models, productivity declines in the Punjab, Pakistan, resulted in an increase in vulnerable households and the poverty rate.This article is part of the theme issue 'The Paris Agreement: understanding the physical and social challenges for a warming world of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels'.

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