Foreword: The Role of Agricultural Trade in Countering the Effects of Extreme Weather

Abstract

The phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change is now well-established, with global temperatures in 2024 having already exceeded the Paris Agreement target ceiling of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels (Copernicus 2025) and extreme weather events (EWEs) an increasing occurrence. EWEs—including flooding, extreme heat, drought and wildfires—have profound implications for agriculture (Burke et al. 2015; IPCC 2023; Tebaldi and Lobell 2018; Zhao et al. 2017).

There has been extensive research on how agriculture will need to adapt to climate change (e.g., Huang and Sim 2020), and how policies can facilitate that process, notably by building resilience (Lipper et al. 2018; Wreford et al. 2010). At the same time, agriculture will likely account for an increasing share of global emissions as other sectors decarbonise, and greater efforts will be needed to reduce sectoral emissions. The latter issue has been explored in recent papers in this journal (Kreft et al. 2023; Sørenson et al. 2025).

The impacts of EWEs have been a focus of analysis (e.g., Bezner Kerr et al. 2022; Fabri et al. 2024; Rosenzweig et al. 2001), but the international spill-over effects across markets have received comparatively little attention. Each of the four studies in this Special Focus uses partial equilibrium (PE) modelling to explore how the impacts of extreme weather shocks reverberate across markets. These models are combined with a range of approaches, including stochastic draws based on historic weather variation; Superposed Epoch Analysis; a Combined Stress Index; and a fixed-effects regression analysis on the relationship between weather and overlapping growing periods, to identify and simulate the effects of foreseeable “worst case” scenarios.

The strength of PE models is that they can capture critical interactions within the agricultural economy with a relatively high degree of disaggregation, a strength which for some inquiries outweighs the weakness of treating other sectors exogenously (a weakness addressed by general equilibrium analysis, e.g., Gouël and Laborde 2021). PE models are particularly useful for agricultural policy analysis, for example in assessing how producers and consumers respond to market shocks, and identifying policies that can be used to counter undesired impacts (such as high prices for consumers or suppressed farm incomes).

Each of the PE models used in this Special Focus has been developed by researchers representing some of the most notable institutions engaged in analysing agricultural policy and markets—the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD); China Agricultural University (CAU) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI); the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI).

Together, the special focus papers highlight the major impacts of EWEs on agriculture at the global and local levels. Insofar as the papers draw on historic data to project the impacts of EWEs and potentially underestimate their frequency and severity, they are likely to provide lower-bound estimates of the potential buffering role of international markets.

Global shocks are real, as demonstrated by the food price crisis in 2007–2008 and the ‘aftershock’ in 2011, the war in Ukraine, and the most recent threat of rising protectionism. On balance, however, global markets still play a critical role in pooling and dampening risks, with autarky a particularly risky policy given the possibility of domestic harvest failures.

As climate change and the rising frequency and severity of EWEs continue to stress global agricultural systems, the papers presented in this special focus provide insights into governmental approaches for alleviating some of this pressure. Trade integration, management of stocks, and investment in closing yield gaps in developing countries may offer means to stabilise prices and reduce domestic and global food insecurity.

The author declares no conflicts of interest.