Rising Heat Threatens Food Production as Smarter Farming Offers a Path to Resilience

The researchers combined the World Bank’s food production index with weather records from Our World in Data, agricultural productivity data from the US Department of Agriculture and the OECD’s environmental policy stringency index.

A harvest depends on more than the number of hectares planted or the amount of fertiliser applied, because crops also need workable temperatures, dependable water and farming systems capable of handling difficult seasons. Research covering six major emerging economies suggests that rising heat is putting food production under pressure, with improvements in agricultural efficiency offering an important route to stronger harvests.

Published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, "Climate change, environmental regulations, and agricultural total factor productivity: implications for food production in emerging economies" examines Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa from 1990 to 2022. Researchers Awais Ahmed Brohi, Waheed Ali and Yoshihisa Suzuki investigate how temperature, rainfall, farm productivity and environmental regulation relate to food output across countries with different climates and agricultural systems.

Their central finding is that higher temperatures are associated with lower production, and greater rainfall and better agricultural productivity are associated with higher output. Stricter environmental rules show a smaller, less certain positive relationship over time. These results concern national food production, which supplies an essential part of food security without directly measuring whether households can afford nutritious meals.

What 33 years of evidence reveal about heat and rainfall

The researchers combined the World Bank's food production index with weather records from Our World in Data, agricultural productivity data from the US Department of Agriculture and the OECD's environmental policy stringency index. Their main models accounted for arable land, fertiliser use, income per person and financial development, using methods that allow countries to respond differently and experience shared economic or environmental shocks.

The main analysis used a Cross-Sectionally Augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lag model, or CS-ARDL, to distinguish short-term changes from longer-term relationships. Tests supported lasting connections between the variables. A 1% increase in average annual temperature was associated with approximately 0.98% lower food production over the longer term and 0.57% lower output in the short term; these are percentage changes in the temperature measure, not estimates for a one-degree rise.

Rainfall had a positive association, with a 1% increase linked to about 0.15% higher production over the longer term and 0.06% higher output in the short term. Rain can replenish soil moisture and reduce irrigation needs, and heat can increase water loss and place crops under stress. Annual averages cannot capture every damaging season, so the rainfall result does not establish that heavier downpours or flooding improve harvests.

Farm efficiency emerges as a powerful source of resilience

Agricultural total factor productivity measures how efficiently farms turn their combined inputs, including land, labour, machinery and other resources, into output. Its growth can reflect better technology, improved management and more effective use of existing resources, helping explain production gains beyond those achieved by simply adding more inputs.

A 1% rise in this productivity measure was associated with roughly 0.94% higher food production over the longer term and 0.67% higher production in the short term. The relationship remained positive across the researchers' additional checks, making productivity one of the most consistent findings in the analysis and supporting investment in the capabilities that help farmers produce more from available resources.

Interaction models linked productivity to changes in both the rainfall–production and temperature–production relationships over the short and long term. The authors interpret these findings as support for agriculture's capacity to adapt through efficient irrigation, improved water management, crop protection and advanced farming technologies. These national-level associations do not establish how much protection any particular technology would provide during a drought or heatwave.

Environmental rules offer gains with important uncertainties

Stricter environmental regulation was associated with higher food production over the longer term, and the main model found no clear immediate increase. Using the paper's stated variable transformations, a one-point rise in the environmental policy index corresponds to roughly 4% higher long-term output. This is an index-point comparison because the policy measure, unlike the other variables, was not converted to logarithms.

The authors suggest that well-designed rules can encourage cleaner energy, more efficient resource use and innovation that supports agricultural production. Compliance can raise costs during the move to cleaner practices, so the benefits may take time to develop. The baseline policy estimate was less certain than the productivity result, which makes its size a cautious guide for decision-makers.

Evidence that regulation changes the impact of weather was limited. The models found no clear interaction with rainfall or with temperature over the longer term. A weak, negative short-term temperature–policy interaction appears in the results table and is acknowledged in the abstract and conclusion; another results passage reports no interaction, leaving an inconsistency in the paper's account.

Alternative checks using emissions, inflation, agricultural employment and water withdrawals preserved the main findings. Two further modelling approaches supported the positive relationships for rainfall, productivity and regulation, and one also supported the negative temperature result. The other retained a negative temperature estimate with too much uncertainty to establish a clear relationship, showing that the strength of the heat finding depended partly on the method.

Turning the findings into practical support for farmers

The recommendations focus on water management, farm technology and crops suited to difficult weather. Rainwater harvesting, small dams and improved irrigation could help countries make better use of available rainfall, supported by varieties capable of handling persistent wet conditions. Heat-resistant and drought-tolerant crops, temperature-controlled growing systems and automated warnings for heatwaves and droughts could strengthen preparedness for periods that threaten production.

Governments are encouraged to support agricultural innovation, including AI-based tools, clean energy and low-carbon farming practices. The research presents these as policy options informed by its findings; it did not test individual programmes or determine which would deliver the greatest benefit in each country. Local climate, infrastructure and farming conditions would shape how such investments work.