A new analysis from the Economist Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) finds £3bn worth of UK food, including rice, tea and mangos, comes from countries experiencing high levels of displacement fuelled by climate change.

In 2024, 15 per cent of the UK’s food imports came directly from nations with low ‘climate readiness’, those that are highly exposed to climate impacts but are also underprepared, the report shows. These are crops we cannot grow at commercial scale here because they are not suited to our climate and soils.

For example, from 2022 to 2023, the average price the UK paid per kilo for Pakistani rice rose by a third, the report shows, meaning more for less rice as yields were hit by the floods and resulting internal displacements.

Pakistan is the second biggest supplier of rice to the UK with over £120m of rice imported from the country last year, and rice is bought by 88 per cent of British households shows the report, Climate change impacts on food and migration. In August 2022 Pakistan saw three times its usual rainfall with scientists concluding it ‘likely’ that climate change had played a role in driving these extreme monsoon rains.

World Weather Attribution analysis of flooding in northern Pakistan has shown that the monsoon rainfall, normally expected every five years, was made 15 per cent more intense this year by climate change.

Commenting Gareth Redmond-King, head of international programme at ECIU said: “UK farmers are being hit by extremes of wet and dry, threatening livelihoods, yields and our food security. But when floods and droughts force farmers overseas to leave their homes, they often head to the cities which not only breaks apart communities but raises questions about a growing threat of who is going to farm the food we have to import like rice.”

---