Extreme heat is no longer just a weather event. It is becoming a direct threat to crops, livestock, farm workers, food prices and the survival of farming communities.
Author’s Note: climate change agriculture, extreme heat farming, farmers climate crisis, India agriculture climate change, heatwaves and crops, food security, farm fires, agricultural labourers, climate risk IndiaWhile writing this article on how climate change is scorching agriculture, I received a disturbing call from my mother. Flames had spread across our own farm, burning 15 irrigation pipes and electric cables to ashes. At that moment, the subject I was writing about was no longer distant or academic. It had entered my own home, my own field. As farmers face rising heat, erratic weather, fires, droughts and crop losses, one question keeps haunting me: how is a cultivator expected to survive when farming itself is becoming so unbearably difficult?
An invisible enemy has now entered farmlands across the world. That enemy is not a pest, disease or market crash alone. It is the growing fury of rising temperatures. The warning emerging from the jointly published report “Extreme Heat and Agriculture” by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Meteorological Organisation is not merely alarming. It is directly connected to human survival. The livelihoods, health and labour of more than one billion people are now being pulled into the dangerous grip of extreme heat. Over the past five decades, the frequency, intensity and duration of extreme heat events have increased sharply, and all indications suggest that this crisis will deepen further in the years ahead.
FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu has described extreme heat as a “risk multiplier.” This is an important phrase. It means heat does not damage only one sector. It simultaneously affects agriculture, animal husbandry, fisheries, forest resources and the social systems that depend on them. The World Meteorological Organisation has also warned that heat is now beginning to decide where farming can happen, how it can happen and how much it can produce.
For already vulnerable communities, this is not an abstract environmental debate. It is a direct economic and social crisis. The impact on agriculture is no longer temporary or seasonal. Once temperatures cross 30 degrees Celsius, the productivity of many major crops begins to decline. In crops such as potato, the damage can begin even at lower temperatures. The situation is equally worrying in livestock. When temperatures rise above 25 degrees Celsius, many animals begin to experience heat stress, affecting milk production, fertility and long-term health. Poultry and pigs are even more vulnerable.
The crisis does not stop at land. In warmer oceans and water bodies, oxygen levels decline, making survival difficult for fish and other aquatic species. In 2025, marine heatwaves were recorded across more than 90 percent of the world’s oceans — a figure that shows the terrifying scale of this global disruption. For agricultural labourers, the danger is even more immediate. In South Asia and many other regions, there may be nearly 250 days in a year when working under the open sun could become life-threatening. Heat also worsens water scarcity, sudden droughts, forest fires, pest attacks and disease outbreaks. This means the farmer is not fighting one crisis at a time. He is being forced to fight many crises together.
A global study by scientists associated with the University of British Columbia has made the danger even clearer. It examined year-on-year changes in the production of three important crops — maize, soybean and sorghum. The findings are disturbing. For every one degree Celsius rise in global temperature, volatility in maize production increases by seven percent, in soybean by nineteen percent and in sorghum by ten percent. These are not merely statistics. For a farmer, one bad season can mean the difference between survival and debt. As Dr. Jonathan Proctor has rightly observed, a farmer does not live on average production. He lives on the actual harvest of each year. One failed season is enough to push a farming family into financial ruin.
The relationship between rising temperatures and agricultural damage is not linear. It is far more dangerous. If temperatures rise by just two degrees Celsius, soybean crop failures that earlier occurred once in a hundred years could happen once in twenty-five years. Maize could face severe crisis once in forty-nine years and sorghum once in fifty-four years. If emissions are not controlled, soybean crops could face devastation once every eight years by the end of this century.
This is a frightening warning for global food security. Agriculture is not only the farmer’s issue. Everyone may not farm, but everyone eats. When production becomes unstable, the effect travels from the field to the market and from the market to the plate. Food prices rise. Supply chains weaken. Poor families suffer first. The 2012 drought in the American Midwest is one such example. Maize and soybean production fell sharply, the American economy suffered losses running into billions of dollars, and global food prices rose.
The most vulnerable regions are those that have contributed the least to the climate crisis. Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and South Asia face some of the greatest risks because farming in these regions is heavily rain-dependent, irrigation facilities are limited and economic safety nets are weak. Where irrigation exists, crop volatility can be reduced to some extent. But in the most climate-vulnerable regions, water scarcity itself is becoming severe. This creates a vicious cycle from which escape is extremely difficult. India’s situation is particularly worrying.
The “Weathering the Storm” report by IPE Global and ESRI India presents a disturbing picture. By 2030, extreme rainfall events in India could increase by 43 percent, while heatwave days could become two-and-a-half times more frequent. Major cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Patna may witness a doubling of heatwave days. Between 1993 and 2024, the number of extremely hot days during the summer period from March to September has increased sharply. In the last decade alone, the rise has become even more intense.
Several districts, including Darjeeling, Salem, Hassan and Chikmagalur, face serious risks to agricultural production. In states such as Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Uttarakhand, heatwaves and extreme rainfall are projected to converge. By 2030, more than 80 percent of districts in these states could be affected.
There is another important dimension that often gets ignored — the link between heat and extreme rainfall. Where heatwaves are more intense, sudden and irregular heavy rainfall has also been observed. Prolonged heat disturbs weather cycles. The result is not just drought, but also uncontrolled rain, flooding and crop destruction. Land-use changes, deforestation and encroachment on mangroves further disturb local climates and make the crisis more complex.
Experts have suggested several adaptation measures. These include heat-tolerant crop varieties, changes in sowing schedules, improved farm management, early warning systems and financial protection through crop insurance. For India, there is also a recommendation to establish a Climate Risk Observatory to monitor climate hazards in real time. District-level Heat Champions have also been suggested to help local administrations respond to heatwave risks.
But adaptation alone will not be enough. The most fundamental and unavoidable solution is to slow global warming itself. That means strict cuts in emissions. Local measures are important, but they will remain insufficient if global development continues to follow high-emission models. Governments must show the courage to rethink such models, strengthen international cooperation and build serious risk-sharing mechanisms for vulnerable communities.
The future of food does not belong only to farmers. It belongs to all of us. When standing crops are scorched in the field, the impact begins in the farmer’s home but eventually reaches the global market and every household plate. In an interconnected world, ignoring the shadow of extreme heat is like striking a blow at our own food security.
There is still time. But that time is passing quickly.
