Do food prices rise due to the expected heat summer?

If you are currently driving across the country, you will see tractors in the fields that have tremendous clouds of dust. The upper layers of the soil are dust dry, the result of the current drought in Germany. It has hardly rained in large parts of the country since February. “We are currently experiencing a pronounced spring village,” says Jacob Bernhardt, researcher at the Thünen Institute. “It is more dry than ever since the start of the weather records.”

Germany is actually a country where it rains enough. But it is important for the farmers that this does not happen in winter, but when the plants germinate and grow on the fields. “It used to be certain: at some point the rain came,” says farmer Martin Schulz, Chairman of the AG Portal Agriculture (Abl), the star. He has a farm in the Wendland. “Since 2018 we have experienced years where it was in principle not raining the whole vegetation period sufficiently. That was in 2018, in 2019, in 2020 in parts and 22 again.” That is why, like many farmers, he is now afraid that it will not rain again.

It is already becoming apparent that this year there will also be a particularly hot summer for the spring village. Lara Wallberg, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, examines the influence of heat in the depths of the North Atlantic on weather patterns in Europe. “If more and more warmth build up in the North Atlantic for over three years, a particularly hot summer is very likely,” says Wallberg star. This is the case this year. The forecasts of the German Weather Service (DWD) also indicate that the coming summer will be rather hotter and drier than usual. In addition, if it is a degree hotter, about seven percent more evaporates in water. So the heat tightens the lack of rain.

While inflation as a whole subsides, many foods are continuing. Quite a few due to drought and heat, partly in combination with other weather extremes. This applies, for example, to oranges, cocoa, coffee and olive oil – all agricultural products that do not grow in Germany.

“Agriculture and yields are still less impaired,” says Andreas Brömser, agricultural meteorologist at the DWD, with a view to the German soils. In the particularly dry parts of the country such as the entire north, however, there are problems with germs and drought in the plants, especially with the cultures sown in spring. For example, this affects sugar beet and corn. “If there is no productive rain in the next two weeks, the situation becomes critical in many places,” said Brömser, not just for the freshly set plants. Then larger plants, such as winter cereals, could already be affected.

Weather services are currently expecting more clouds for the coming days and occasionally Schauer. But real rain is only predicted in the very south of the country. It is very uncertain whether this will reach the rest of the country in the course of the next 14 days.

Overall, there is only the possibility of watering the fields in Germany for only five percent of the agricultural area. This is usually used for vegetables, because with grass, grain and many crops, the effort is hardly worthwhile. If the rain should remain scarce in summer, large -scale harvest losses threaten to have complete losses. Sometimes this could be compensated for by imports, for example in the grain. Then important income breaks away from the farmers, but it does not necessarily depend on the consumer.

The first grass section for cattle feed is already impaired. Even if other feed plants become scarce, meat and dairy products are certainly one of the first candidates for a price increase in the supermarket.

More weather extremes and therefore long drought phases are a direct consequence of climate change. In Germany, the temperatures are already 2.5 degrees above pre -industrial times. Because of the increasing evaporation, “it would have to rain 15 to 20 percent more” to compensate for that, says agricultural meteorologist Brömser. “However, the rainfall in the vegetation period has remained largely constant.” The problems of agriculture will therefore increase and the food will continue to become more expensive.