A study on six food imports highlights the need for EU responses to a real and increasingly worrying emergency for food security.
Wheat, maize, rice, but also cocoa, coffee and soya: the security of the European Union's key food imports is increasingly threatened by environmental factors. This is the finding of a report by consulting firm Foresight Transitions, commissioned by the European Climate Foundation, which examined not only the climate vulnerability of food imports, but also the levels of biodiversity or nature loss suffered by the exporting countries involved, raising questions about the EU's preparedness and response to this issue.
The study analysed six key food imports: maize, rice and wheat – selected as staple foods for global food security – and cocoa, coffee and soya – chosen as key imported raw materials for EU agri-food production and exports. It drew on the climate preparedness ranking of the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, which combines a country's vulnerability to climate damage with its access to financial and institutional support, and a biodiversity intactness index from the UK Natural History Museum, which compares current wild species abundance with pre-modern levels.
The researchers found that more than half of the imports of these products came from countries vulnerable to climate change, with limited resources for adaptation. This is particularly evident in the case of rice, for example, with over a third of the EU's total supply, worth 1.5 billion euros per year, now threatened by growing climate impacts. Furthermore, three of these foods – wheat, maize and cocoa – are also at significant risk due to biodiversity-related impacts that compound the climate threat to supply and increase the volumes of production at risk. The European Union is increasingly dependent on maize imports, and at least 13.4 per cent of total maize consumed in the EU is currently at risk.
"These are not abstract threats – they are already materialising in ways that negatively affect businesses and jobs, as well as food availability and prices for consumers. And the situation is only getting worse," said researcher Camilla Hyslop. "In 2024 alone, flooding in the UK and France reduced wheat production and high temperatures in Eastern Europe disrupted maize crops, making imports crucial for food security, while heavier rainfall caused cocoa to rot in West Africa, creating difficulties for chocolate producers. Extreme rainfall has reduced rice yields in China over the past two decades, showing us how a long-term decline in production can unfold."
Hyslop added: "Climate impacts are compounded by biodiversity decline, which makes farms and surrounding ecosystems far less resilient to climate and other shocks. Not only are farms with lower biodiversity less resilient to crop diseases, but these diseases often emerge precisely because of reduced biodiversity." The researcher went on to explain: "Yields are also more broadly affected by the destruction of native vegetation, which can alter local microclimates, and by practices such as monoculture, which deplete the soil and damage the biological ecosystems underpinning food production."
It is the EU's chocolate industry – with an estimated value of 50 billion dollars – that faces the greatest threat, with 97 per cent of its primary cocoa input coming from countries with a low-to-medium or lower climate score, while 77 per cent comes from countries with a medium or lower biodiversity score.
European cocoa imports are concentrated in a handful of West African countries – Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria – which are experiencing climate and biodiversity impacts that are forecast to worsen by 2030 and in the decades beyond. The value of imports over the past year rose by 41 per cent.
"What clearly emerges from this context is that imports are an integral part of EU food security, and that our research in turn demonstrates that this food security is increasingly threatened by the climate and biodiversity vulnerabilities of partner countries," said Mark Workman, director of Foresight Transitions and co-author of the report. "Reshoring is a wholly inadequate response. Not only would the European Union struggle to grow some of these raw materials at scale, but it also faces its own climate and biodiversity threats, to say nothing of the unpleasant land-use implications of any significant reshoring of food production."
For the researchers, it is in the interest of European policymakers to invest seriously in the climate resilience of partner producers, as well as in foreign trade infrastructure, such as ports, which support this trade and are also subject to environmental stress. "This is an important message to convey at a time when foreign aid budgets are often pitted against investments in defence and security, but the truth is that they are two sides of the same coin," Workman concluded.
The report sets out a series of policy recommendations to help safeguard EU food imports, including measures to support the smallholder farmers who grow most of the crops at the heart of the study, yet do not receive sufficient income to adapt to climate change and receive just 0.3 per cent of international climate finance.