Understanding the impacts of climate on UK food
09 October 2025As the climate changes, the way we produce, move and sell must too. Uncover our climate risk assessment to understand the impact for your business.
Climate risk and the food system
Food is uniquely exposed to weather and climate. Shifts in heat, rainfall and water availability are already disrupting yields, driving volatility and putting pressure on costs across domestic and global supply chains.
These pressures will intensify without decisive action. Our recent report, A climate risk assessment for the UK food system, quantifies the financial impacts of physical climate risk across key commodities under three scenarios: business as usual; a delayed transition; and accelerated progress to net zero.
The goal is pragmatic: give decision‑makers a clear, comparable view of exposure so they can prioritise where to invest, collaborate and adapt.
Climate mitigation and adaptation are complementary, not a trade-off. Cutting emissions reduces tomorrow’s risk; adapting operations and sourcing builds resilience today. For businesses, resilience is not a “nice to have”; it is a commercial imperative. In a world of constrained resources and more frequent shocks, the ability to secure product consistently will be a source of competitive advantage.
Key findings from the assessment
Our initial assessment highlights five material insights for industry and policymakers:
The cost of inaction is significant: maintaining “business as usual” exposes the UK to an additional £2.6bn in commodity sourcing costs across the modelled basket equivalent to around 14.7% of annual spend on those commodities. How this cost then increases along the supply chain until it reaches consumers underlines the impact this could have.
Fruit and veg are most exposed: horticultural commodities stand out their sensitivity to climate change. Citrus, bananas and tomatoes are major contributors to the risk level.
Sourcing geographies will need to shift: Spain, the UK’s critical sourcing hub for several fresh categories, emerges as a leading contributor to risk in our modelling horizon.
Dietary transitions change the risk profile: moving towards healthier, more sustainable diets - a priority for the UK - leads to higher fruit and veg consumption, potentially amplifying exposure unless resilience is built in tandem. Demand side change must therefore be matched with supply side adaptation.
The UK must maintain and adapt domestic capacity: changing growing conditions may increase the relative competitiveness of some UK production. Targeted investment, technology, and protected cropping can help offset risk while building strategic resilience at home.
Why this accelerates the case for net zero
Our findings reinforce what the Net Zero Transition Plan for the UK food system set out last year: transitioning faster reduces future risk. Cutting emissions reduces the probability and severity of those hazards; well designed adaptation brings nearer term protection. Progress globally on both fronts is essential and mutually reinforcing.
In practice, this means pairing supply side decarbonisation with business level adaptation. As our assessment shows, the cost of inaction mounts quickly; the sooner businesses and policymakers align investment to decarbonise and adapt, the lower the physical climate risk exposure and the stronger the food system’s resilience.
Open access and further model development
This publication is a first step towards an open access model of UK food system climate risk. We want every actor - growers, manufacturers, retailers, foodservice, logistics and policymakers - to be able to interrogate the exposure, test scenarios and stress test plans using a common evidence base. Over the next phase, we will:
Publish a dynamic model with a user-friendly interface so organisations can explore exposure by commodity and scenario.
Add new ‘modules’:
Horticulture module: a deeper dive on fruit and veg (including protected cropping), given their outsized risk and importance for healthy diets
Meat and fish module: explore the direct impacts of climate on animal agriculture, building upon the with the current analysis of feed.
Geography module: country and region level views (for example, Spain and UK) to support sourcing diversification strategies.
Additional climate impacts: include additional climate impacts, such as flooding to further build out the analysis.
Diet and demand module: linking dietary scenarios to exposure so demand changes and supply side resilience can move shift together.
Integrate with net zero planning: align model outputs with our Net Zero Transition Pan for the UK food system, so businesses can see how mitigation choices and physical risk exposures interact.
Pilot with partners and iterate: we will work with a cross section of industry stakeholders and climate academics, to test functionality, sense check assumptions and prioritise the next content releases ensuring the tool is practical, transparent and trusted.
Our intent is to create a shared evidence base that helps the UK food system move faster together. By making the core model open access, we aim to lower the barrier to high quality risk analysis for all across the industry, enabling consistency in commercial discussions and policy dialogue, and focus collective effort on the areas of greatest impact.