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HEATWAVE COSTS EUROPE €2 BILLION IN GRAIN LOSSES
Due to the June heatwave in Europe, the total crop yield for 2026 is forecasted to have lost 23.4 million tonnes of grain compared to last year's harvest – Here's how it will affect food security and prices.
By Sigrid Vestergaard Frandsen, Director of Environmental Health
07/24/2026
Europe has just survived the hottest June ever recorded. And it did not go unnoticed. The heatwave that shattered temperature records across Western Europe has quietly cut deep into the continent's food supply. On July 10th, the European association representing crop trade and agrosupplies, COCERAL, published a forecast for this year's crop yield in Europe. The number will likely fall to 286.6 million tonnes from last year's 310 million tonnes of crop yield. A reduction that would give the 27 EU member states and the UK their smallest harvest since 2018, and represent lost crop production larger than the combined total forecast grain production of Austria, Ireland, and the Netherlands.
The impact on food security:
These consequences may push Europe toward greater dependence on grain imports from Ukraine, Brazil, and the U.S., and contribute to higher global commodity prices. This pressure is further intensified by the fact that southern and western parts of the U.S. are simultaneously suffering severe drought affecting grain and meat production — two of the world's grain superpowers, strained at the same time – and by the ongoing war in Ukraine. But whether this works out cheaply or expensively hinges on how the Southern Hemisphere's harvest turns out in late 2026 and early 2027.
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Heatwaves damage food supply
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Pushes Europe towards dependence on imports
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Forced to import from Ukraine, Brazil or the U.S. (the biggest producers)
Food insecurity intensified by further heatwaves and war in those countries
Prices of bread, flour, meat and dairy go up 15 - 25%
France and Hungary bore the brunt of the losses. The biggest reductions in forecast production came in France, where the corn crop is expected to fall 3.4 million tonnes short of June's projections — a loss worth an estimated €891 million for corn and other grains in France alone. Hungary follows with a 2.4-million-tonne shortfall, and Spain with 1.4 million tonnes.
The impact on food prices:
First, when a harvest comes in smaller than expected, the price per tonne rises immediately in the futures market, before a single loaf has changed price. That's already happening — corn export prices are running about 16% higher than a year ago, and EU milling wheat futures have been climbing since the June heat hit.
Second, grain is a hidden ingredient in meat and dairy. This is the part people miss. Most of Europe's grain harvest doesn't go directly into bread — it goes into animal feed. Corn and barley are staple inputs for pigs, cattle, and poultry. When feed grain gets more expensive, it doesn't just raise bread and flour prices — it raises the cost of producing meat, milk, and eggs months later, once the more expensive feed works its way through a season of raising livestock. EU beef production is already predicted to fall further in 2026 and 2027, keeping prices high even before this year's grain losses are fully priced in.
Third, the price increase shows up at the cash register with a delay. Eurozone food inflation had actually fallen to 1.6% by June 2026, its lowest reading since mid-2021, on the back of a strong 2025 harvest and a milk oversupply. That's the calm before this year's heat shows up in the data. Oxford Economics and Deutsche Bank both expect food inflation to climb back toward roughly 3% in 2027, and Oxford Economics calculates that weather-related factors like this heatwave could add up to a full percentage point to food inflation next year on their own. Separately, Deutsche Bank estimates the broader spring commodity shock — heat plus fertiliser and energy costs — could lift food prices by around 1.3% in the UK and 0.8% across the eurozone over the coming year.
This is not something that reverses once the weather cools down. Research modeling shows that, without adaptation, climate-driven shocks could push global food price inflation up by 1 to 3 percentage points by 2035 — and unlike a normal price spike, these "climate-driven" increases don't fully unwind afterward. Each hot summer adds a little more to the baseline, rather than being a temporary blip that fades the following year.
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Heatwaves damage food supply
The price per tonne rises immediately in futures market
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Meat, dairy, and egg prices will rise over the next few years due to this
Food inflation will climb by one full percentage point
Without adaptation, these climate-driven shocks will only push us further into food insecurity
It is important to note that nobody should expect a bread-aisle shock in the next few weeks. The pipeline from farm to shelf typically takes months, but the inflation trend is clear enough that economists across multiple institutions — not just climate researchers — are now pricing heat into their inflation forecasts as a matter of course, not an exception.
European food security has always rested on a mix of domestic production and confidence in global trade to fill the rest. This year didn't break that system. But it stressed it more severely than usual. Each time that happens, it becomes a little more visible how much of Europe's food security was resting on assumptions about a stable climate and stable trade routes that are both looking less dependable due to heatwaves and war for several years now.