Five favourite foods threatened by climate change

Climate breakdown is affecting weather patterns around the world.  But did you ever expect it to affect everyday foods?  

The UK's Met Office forecasts that 2025 will be one of the three warmest years on record, along with 2023 and 2024. The world's oceans, which absorb heat and help balance temperatures, are also warming to record levels.

Behind that headline, what might seem like a small change in "average global temperature" is having catastrophic effects, including super-charging extreme weather.

In the UK and Northern Europe, we are seeing a rise in intense rainfall and flooding. There have been earlier and prolonged heatwaves in central and southern Europe, destroying harvests in some of Europe's most fertile regions.

London had its own unnerving experience of a record-breaking 40C heatwave in July 2022.

Every part of the world is experiencing the fallout from the changing climate, and it is putting some of our most-loved foods at risk.

Coffee, chocolate, bananas, rice and potatoes - climate shocks are already making these everyday foods more expensive. Scientists say these foods are at risk of extinction over the next few years, due to climate change.

So what's going on?

Some types of food crop are highly sensitive to their environment - they can't survive changes to weather patterns, rising temperatures or higher intensity of rainfall.

Other species are threatened by new kinds of blight or infestation which have emerged as temperatures rise. 

And other food crops are at risk from rising sea levels, salination and reduced availability of land. 

Would you miss your morning coffee or that chocolate treat? It's a reason to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and slow down climate breakdown, that's surely close to the heart.

Salamander News' series Food will how investigate how rising food costs are affecting households. We'll share recipes for people and plant.

And we'll hear from Lewisham communities taking food production into their own hands - community gardens, local growers and more.