As the UK announced inflation has remained at almost twice the Bank of England’s target of 2% one leading charity has said climate change is driving up food prices and shows every chance of creating future food shortages and rising unaffordability.

The WWF has said extreme weather such as flooding and drought has reduced the amount of food produced, reducing supply. Reduced supply has an inflationary effect. It added the Bank of England has warned that extreme weather is increasingly influencing prices.

“While we operate within a global food system that has historically been able to buffer national supply disruptions, the recent price volatility of staple food items like coffee and chocolate remind us that the resilience of this system has limits,” it added in  a briefing. “These shocks are amplified when multiple extreme weather events occur simultaneously, as is becoming more common: even well-established supply networks can collapse.”

WWF added this year’s UK drought hit British farmers hard and is now contributing to inflation. For example, a livestock farmer who grows feed for the winter but suffered a poor harvest due to the drought will now need to buy feed, driving up costs – an example cited by the Bank of England’s August Monetary Policy Report.

Research from ECIU found that in FY 2022-23, climate change was responsible for a third of the UK’s high street food price inflation. Research this week has revealed that the price of five foods – butter, beef, milk, coffee and chocolate – account for nearly 40% of all food price inflation. All are affected by extreme weather driven by climate change.

Karen Ellis, chief economist at WWF said:”Food prices are going up as a result of climate change and nature loss, and this is having real impacts on inflation and our cost of living. In future, things we now consider basics like coffee, could become a luxury. Climate change was responsible for a third of the UK’s high street food price inflation in 2023 and that is why we are calling on the Government to work with the Bank of England to better assess and manage these impacts and the threats they pose to the UK economy.”

The charity explained:

• Britain has lost the equivalent of more than a year’s supply of bread this decade as extreme weather takes its toll on wheat harvests. Record-low harvests over the past ten years are putting the UK’s wheat self-sufficiency at risk, while costing British farmers billions in lost income as millers turn to imported wheat instead.
• Wholesale prices for cauliflower, one of the vegetables hit hardest by the drought this summer, increased from 89p per kilo at the beginning of August 2025 to £2.14 by the middle of the same month. This shows how significantly extreme weather can affect consumer prices even within short spans of time.
• World coffee prices reached a multi-year high in 2024, increasing by almost 40% compared to the previous year’s average, due to extreme weather. Arabica beans, a UK favourite, experienced a 91% price hike in the past year. With rising temperatures projected to reduce the area suitable for coffee growing by half by 2050, coffee may gradually become a luxury product.
• Cocoa production is highly concentrated in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, both of which are severely impacted by climate change. Excessive heat, shifting rainfall patterns and the increased spread of fungal infections and pests due to warmer weather caused cocoa prices to surge 136% between July 2022 and February 2024. Up to half of Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa regions are set to become unsuitable for production, meaning that cocoa is likely to become less accessible, or potentially drive deforestation elsewhere to open up new production areas.
• The UK dairy sector is highly sensitive to weather conditions. As climate change is causing wetter winters, cows are turned out to pasture later, and dryer summers are reducing forage yields. Less available forage can lead to lower milk production, so many farmers are having to buy costly feed, such as soy – driving up costs and putting greater pressure on forests in Brazil. Additionally, studies suggest that climate change-induced heat stress can cause significant milk production losses in dairy cows in the UK.