Impacts of climate change on global agriculture accounting for adaptation

Climate change threatens global food systems 1 , but the extent to which adaptation will reduce losses remains unknown and controversial 2 . Even within the well-studied context of US agriculture, some analyses argue that adaptation will be widespread and climate damages small 3,4 , whereas others conclude that adaptation will be limited and losses severe 5,6 . Scenario-based analyses indicate that adaptation should have notable consequences on global agricultural productivity 7-9 , but there has been no systematic study of how extensively real-world producers actually adapt at the global scale. Here we empirically estimate the impact of global producer adaptations using longitudinal data on six staple crops spanning 12,658 regions, capturing two-thirds of global crop calories. We estimate that global production declines 5.5 × 10 14 kcal annually per 1 °C global mean surface temperature (GMST) rise (120 kcal per person per day or 4.4% of recommended consumption per 1 °C; P 10,11 , we find that global impacts are dominated by losses to modern-day breadbaskets with favourable climates and limited present adaptation, although losses in low-income regions losses are also substantial. These results indicate a scale of innovation, cropland expansion or further adaptation that might be necessary to ensure food security in a changing climate.