Agricultural Production

With global temperatures already 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, climate change is having major impacts on agriculture that fall disproportionately on the Global South—from crops, to livestock, to aquaculture. Agricultural systems endure frequent heat waves, flooding, and drought—often all in one season. Climate-related extreme weather events such as intense rainstorms pose a serious threat to crops.

Cocoa bean prices have been rising since the last quarter of 2023, hitting a record high of $10.97 per kilogram on April 19 (Figure 1). The price spike is due to a significant drop in bean production by major global suppliers—four key producing nations in West and Central Africa account for more than 60% of the world's supply of cocoa beans: Cote d’Ivoire (with 38% of the global production in 2022), Ghana (19%), Nigeria (5%), and Cameroon (5%).1

With climate change impacts, deforestation, and land use changes accelerating around the world, the need for mapping croplands—which cover 1.2 billion hectares, approximately 12% of Earth’s surface—is growing more urgent.

Two years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the war continues to disrupt agricultural production and trade in Ukraine—one of the world's largest agricultural exporters—and poses an ongoing threat to global food security. Yet global commodity markets have adjusted to these disruptions, in part to due to increased exports by other suppliers, including Russia, easing the initial shock.

Over the past three decades, the world lost as much as $3.8 trillion in agricultural products as a result of disaster events, according to a new flagship report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. That equates to a loss of around 5 percent of global agricultural GDP per year and has serious implications for food security, agricultural livelihoods, and the sustainability of the global agrifood system.