A new study conducted across countries brings into sharp focus how heat stress, affecting farm workers globally, is turning out to be a growing threat to food security in United Kingdom.
The study conducted by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), a research organisation based in the UK, has found that the countries most exposed and least resilient to climate change-impact, including India, were the source of 13% of UK food imports, worth £8.9 billion. The 15 top suppliers in this group alone made up 11% of UK food imports that are worth £7.4 billion.
The research found that on average workers in these countries were losing 50 days a year to heat stress and the lost hours are increasing at 4 to 5 every year due to climate change. In India, 648 hours were lost per worker in 2024, an increase of 52% since 1990.
Question mark over food worth of £7.4 billion
The countries in which the study was conducted were located across Asia, Latin America and Africa. India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea were studied in Asia; Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Argentina in Latin America; and South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire in Africa.
These countries export £7.4 billion worth of food to the UK alone. The items include basic food such as rice, sugar, lentils, nuts, fish, and soy for farm animal feed; fruits and vegetables such as grapes, onions, oranges, and peas; and products such as coffee, chocolate, wine, and tequila.
India, biggest supplier of rice to UK, is a key factor
India is of particular concern as it is the biggest supplier of rice to the UK. It also supplies tea, grapes, lentils, sweetcorn, pepper, guavas and coffee to the UK.
“The UK government’s national security advisors, along with the Climate Change Committee, and some the world’s leading food security experts, are warning with increasing urgency that we risk sleepwalking into a food crisis,” said Gareth Redmond-King, head of International Programme at the ECIU. “The threat from climate change is growing, hitting the food crops themselves, but also the workers we rely on to produce them. In countries like India where the mercury is currently hitting the high forties degrees Celsius, it’s simply dangerous to be outside working which puts health, livelihoods, and steady supplies of food in jeopardy,” Redmond-King added.
In a previous study, the researchers had found that in the UK, the average food bill went up by £360 in 2022 and 2023 due to climate impacts. With a very strong El Niño predicted this year, food prices in the UK is likely to go up even more.
Hormuz disruption adds to the problem
Other than climate change, the war in West Asia has disrupted food supplies to the UK. “Foods we import to the UK that are hit by climate change are disproportionately driving food price inflation (and) short term shocks like the closure of the Strait of Hormuz add new layers of threat to our food imports,” said Chris Jaccarini, food and farming analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).
The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFOA), an organisation analysing risk for the financial sector, said in April that the world’s food system is fracturing as a result of worsening climate change impacts and the loss of biodiversity.
El Niño plays in tandem with already rising heat
“Extreme heat makes the already difficult job of farming even harder. There are real fears that hotter, drier weather caused by a super El Niño could damage harvests,” said Shamika Mone, rice farmer in India and president of the Intercontinental Network of Organic Farmers.
“Extreme heat makes the already difficult job of farming even harder. There are real fears that hotter, drier weather caused by a super El Niño could damage harvests. To safeguard our food system governments, need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, including from fertiliser production, and get more climate finance directly to smallholders and their organisations so they can adapt,” Mone added.