EU Study - European Crop Losses Projected To Increase By 2/3 By 2050, To $29 Billion Annually

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(Ed. - Greek winemaker) Boutaris is employing new tactics to tackle the problem, including installing irrigation and water storage and planting more vegetation among the vines to help the land hold more water and keep temperatures down. He is also buying higher land and seeking out different varieties of grapes which are more resilient to extreme weather. He has just invested €250,000 (£216,000) in irrigation and now plans to spend a further €200,000 (£173,000) on a project for 40 hectares of vineyards in Santorini.

Producers across Europe will be forced to pass on such extra costs to consumers, in the form of higher prices, he argues. “Cheap wine is not going to be easy to find. It used to be that the south of France, Spain and Greece produced cheap wine of Europe. Now it is going to be very difficult to compete on price,” he says. Shoppers are already feeling the effects, as droughts in Spain, Italy and Portugal, where the UK sources much of its fresh fruit and vegetables during autumn and winter, push up prices this summer, at a time when prices would usually fall. This summer even farmers in parts of the UK have been hit by long dry spells affecting production of cereals, potatoes, carrots and broccoli, which are not usually irrigated.

Things are expected to get far worse as a result of the climate crisis. In the EU, the average annual loss for crops is forecast to increase by up to two-thirds by 2050 to as much as €24.8bn, according to analysis by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Commission. By 2050, the most severe increase in drought risk is expected in Spain, Italy and Greece with more than nine times as many days of severe drought conditions each year compared to 1990 under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s “middle of the road” projections.

France, Italy, Spain and Romania are likely to see the largest absolute increases in crop losses – with average annual losses expected to increase by 64%, or more than €1bn (£866m), with drought a major factor, according to the EIB and commission’s report. In 2022, for example, maize yields were down 24% on the previous year across Europe with Spain bearing the largest proportion of losses followed by France, Italy and Romania.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/25/we-cannot-do-it-the-way-our-fathers-did-farmers-across-europe-struggle-to-adapt-to-the-climate-crisis