Agriculture’s 'Missing Middle' Is Key to Making Food Systems Climate Resilient

In 2024, severe floods in Kenya damaged more than 26,000 hectares of farmland and killed 11,000 livestock, deeply undermining local families' food security and incomes. A cyclone in India in 2023 destroyed hundreds of thousands of hectares of crops, leaving farmers "in despair." As climate change intensifies, drought, wildfires, extreme heat and pest infestations are taking an ever-larger toll on food production and farmers' livelihoods.

However, these impacts do not stop at the farm gate. People all along agricultural value chains are feeling the effects of the climate crisis - from factory workers who lose income when extreme weather shuts down facilities, to families who can't access the food they need when flooded roads prevent crops from reaching markets.

These disruptions ultimately affect millions of people who work in everything from production, processing and packaging to distribution and wholesale. They also exacerbate food insecurity in a world where more than 300 million people still face acute chronic hunger. Yet, efforts to make agriculture more climate-resilient have so far largely focused on farming - just one link in the chain.

Moving forward, governments, companies and other stakeholders need to think more comprehensively about building resilience all along agricultural value chains. Addressing this "missing middle" will be critical to feeding, clothing and employing the world's growing population amid a changing climate.

How Climate Change Impacts Ripple Across Supply Chains

Agricultural value chains are intricately connected, so climate impacts in one area may lead to ripple effects across the entire system.

For example, increased humidity driven by climate change makes it more difficult to dry rice within 24 hours of harvest. This can cause storage issues like mold and pests, which decrease the quality and quantity of rice coming out of facilities. Traders and sellers may have to spend more time and money sourcing rice from other regions and preparing it for sale. Their increased costs can ultimately be passed on to consumers, driving up prices for a staple crop that millions rely on.

These impacts extend beyond food, too, to crops like cotton. This, in turn, affects workers in the textile industry and the prices people pay for clothing.

People and Economies Are Feeling the Impacts

Communities around the world, particularly those that are low-income and already vulnerable to hunger, are increasingly feeling the effects of supply chain threats on their food security, health, work and incomes.

Threats to food security

In addition to damaging crop production and quality, climate change is increasing the sheer volume of food lost and wasted along supply chains, with impacts like higher humidity and warmer temperatures causing produce to rot in storage or transit. The challenge is most severe in low- and middle-income regions like Africa, where farmers and local businesses often cannot afford cold storage and other ways to keep food fresh. This worsens food insecurity, especially in West and Central Africa, where nearly 55 million people are already facing hunger.

Rising seas and more frequent and severe storms and floods are also increasingly damaging transport infrastructure connecting the world's food systems.

A 2017 study of three agrarian communities in Nigeria found that heavy rainfall and floods were linked to road damages and bridge collapse, causing major transportation disruptions. In a country already experiencing a food crisis, up to 40% of rice, yams and other harvested crops were stuck in the towns where they were grown and couldn't make it to markets. These threats are growing as the climate warms: In 2024, torrential rains in northeastern Nigeria were even more severe than the previous two years, with similar wide-reaching effects.

People and cars on a heavily flooded street in Maiduguri, Nigeria in 2024. Worsening floods driven by climate change have caused disruptions to food transportation in Nigeria. Photo by Sadiqnanic/iStock

Variations in temperature and rainfall, as well as damages from increased extreme weather, can also make it harder for people to access food markets and retailers - particularly in poor areas where infrastructure is more vulnerable. Outdoor markets may have to close during heavy rains, extreme heat and windstorms, or people may not be able to reach them.

Human health risks

The same study in Nigeria showed that climate-related transport disruptions can have knock-on effects on human health. When transport was stalled, some farmers, lacking proper storage, were only able to extend their crops' shelf life by increasing the use of preservative chemicals and pesticides; these are known to pose serious health concerns, such as organ and neurological damage.

A mill employee in Nandyal, India, monitors the relative humidity of cotton seeds used to make oil for cooking. Higher humidity can cause crops develop mold, pests or other issues post-harvest. Photo by Stefanie Tye/WRI

In addition, increased heat and humidity due to climate change can cause many foods, including rice, to develop fungi that produce toxic compounds. Some, called aflatoxins, have been designated as Group 1 carcinogens. These are especially poisonous to children's immune systems and can hinder their growth. Half of the world's population eats rice as a staple food; 15% of it is contaminated by aflatoxins.

The only way to reduce the risk of aflatoxins is by monitoring humidity and heat in the early stages of rice processing and by ensuring cool, dry storage conditions from the moment rice is harvested and dried until it can be processed and packaged. But many processors in low-income countries cannot afford the added electricity cost of running mechanical dryers to ensure rice is processed safely on warmer, wetter days.

Loss of work and income

Agricultural supply chains are crucial sources of employment, especially in rural areas of primarily agrarian countries. In 2019, about 375 million people worked in post-farm links in agricultural value chains; many of these workers are women, youth and members of other marginalized groups who have few other job opportunities.

Climate impacts are directly threatening their livelihoods. Warehouse staff who process and box produce, and factory workers who spin cotton into yarn, for example, will suffer during heatwaves if the facilities they work in are uncooled. Many lose wages when storm-related electrical outages or flooding shut down the facilities they work in. Roads damaged by flooding can prevent people from getting to work.

Larger companies may have insurance to help cover their losses or be able to source from other areas if the harvest in one area is poor. But individual workers and small businesses often have no protection when the value chains in which they are employed are disrupted.

Workers process cotton at a mill in South India. Climate impacts like extreme heat and severe storms can create dangerous working conditions or prevent people from working altogether. Photo by Stefanie Tye/WRI

How to Make Agricultural Supply Chains More Resilient

Stakeholders along agricultural value chains - including farmers, processors, distributors and supply chain managers, as well as government agencies - can reduce and better manage these climate risks in many ways.

A critical first step is to map how climate risk exposure is changing over time, identify which parts of the supply chain are most affected and pinpoint how they interact with each other. A growing number of freely available tools can support this:

• Climate Risk Planning & Managing Tool for Development Programmes in Agri-Food Systems (CRISP) supports the mainstreaming of climate risk into agriculture- and food-related development projects. It helps users examine climate-related hazards, exposure, impacts and vulnerability factors so they can better understand climate risk and identify relevant adaptation options.
• The Africa Agriculture Adaptation Atlas hosts information on climate adaptation in Africa targeted at investors, policymakers and researchers. It provides insights into climate risks, impacts, vulnerability and adaptation strategies for 29 crops in Africa to support climate adaptation investments and policies.
• WRI's AgriAdapt tool provides a map-based, whole-of-value chain approach to medium- and longer-term adaptation planning, with a primary focus on the rice and cotton value chains in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, India. Users can gain a better understanding of climate risks within these contexts.

With a clearer picture of climate risks, supply chain stakeholders can more holistically incorporate agricultural adaptation into their climate planning and investments.

• Farming and production: governments and agribusinesses can invest in climate-resilient crop variety development, crop insurance and early warning systems to help farmers prepare for more frequent and severe climate events.
• Storage and processing: food companies can construct storage houses with adequate ventilation and temperature regulation to protect both harvests and workers against more extreme heat.
• Transportation: Governments and the private sector can invest in improving transportation infrastructure (both vehicles and roads) and cold chain logistics to withstand higher temperatures and more extreme climate events like heavy rainfall, flooding and landslides.
• Addressing food loss and waste: Agribusinesses and processors can invest in facilities and resources for adding value to harvested crops; for example, saving tomatoes from spoilage by creating canned tomato paste or turning yams and rice into flour. Distributors can invest in cold storage and shipment to keep the products they ship fresher, longer, despite increasing heat and humidity. These measures can both boost local incomes and reduce losses of crops that are vulnerable to damage from higher temperatures and moisture resulting from climate change.

Only by considering how climate affects all parts of agricultural value chains can stakeholders identify where and how investments should be made to generate the biggest benefits for climate resilience, food security, health and prosperity.