Global food security models now assume 2°C of warming is locked in, and the crop maps are being redrawn

For years, climate models and agricultural planning operated on a shared assumption: that aggressive policy action could hold global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. That assumption, which underpinned the Paris Agreement and shaped everything from crop insurance to international aid budgets, is quietly being abandoned by the institutions responsible for feeding the world.

\p>A growing number of food security models — including those used by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and the World Bank — now treat 2°C of warming as a baseline scenario rather than a worst case. The shift has been gradual, but the implications are anything but subtle. Entire crop maps are being redrawn, and the agricultural geography that defined the 20th century is entering an era of forced reinvention.

The Quiet Death of the 1.5°C Planning Scenario

The 1.5°C target was always aspirational. But for planning purposes, it served a critical function: it gave governments and institutions a benchmark around which to build models, fund research, and allocate resources. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its Special Report on 1.5°C in 2018, it catalyzed a wave of climate-adapted agricultural research designed around that threshold.

By 2024, the picture had changed. Global emissions continued to rise rather than plateau. The World Meteorological Organization confirmed that 2023 was the warmest year on record, and 2024 tracked even hotter. A study published in Nature Climate Change in late 2024 found that the probability of limiting warming to 1.5°C had dropped below 5%, even under the most optimistic policy scenarios.

Agricultural modelers took note. According to reporting from Reuters and analysis published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), several major food security frameworks quietly updated their reference scenarios in 2024 and early 2025. The baseline shifted from 1.5°C to 2°C — and in some cases, planning now extends to 2.5°C by century's end.

The distinction matters more than the half-degree might suggest. The relationship between warming and crop yield loss is nonlinear. At 2°C, major staple crops — wheat, maize, rice, and soy — face yield declines that are significantly steeper than what the 1.5°C models projected. A 2022 meta-analysis published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimated that each additional 0.5°C of warming beyond 1.5°C could reduce global crop yields by an additional 5–10%, with the sharpest losses concentrated in the tropics and subtropics.

Where the Crop Maps Are Moving

The phrase "redrawing the crop map" sounds abstract until you look at specific regions. In sub-Saharan Africa, where maize is the dominant staple crop, CGIAR models now project that up to 40% of current maize-growing areas will become unsuitable by mid-century under a 2°C scenario. That figure was closer to 20% under the 1.5°C planning framework.

The solutions being proposed involve massive geographic shifts. Sorghum and millet — crops that tolerate heat and drought far better than maize — are being repositioned as primary staples rather than secondary options. In South Asia, rice cultivation zones are expected to migrate northward, pushing into areas with less established irrigation infrastructure. The Punjab breadbasket regions of India and Pakistan, already stressed by groundwater depletion, face compounding pressures.

VegOut recently reported on how climate change is redrawing the global coffee map, with traditional growing regions in Central America and East Africa losing viability. That story is part of a much larger pattern: the same thermal and precipitation shifts that threaten coffee are reshaping the geography of wheat, cocoa, soy, and dozens of other crops that form the backbone of global food systems.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the map is moving too — just in a different direction. Canada and Russia are seeing expanded growing seasons, and agricultural land in Siberia and the Canadian prairies is becoming viable for crops that couldn't have survived there two decades ago. A 2023 study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research estimated that Russia could see a 30% expansion in arable land by 2060, though the researchers noted that soil quality in newly thawed permafrost regions remains a significant unknown.

The Protein Question Gets More Urgent

Crop map changes have a cascading effect on protein systems. When soy-growing regions shift, livestock feed supply chains shift with them. When rice yields drop in Southeast Asia, the caloric deficit has to be filled by something. This dynamic is why food security researchers are increasingly looking beyond traditional protein frameworks.

As VegOut previously covered, some food security researchers are now recommending insect protein over plant-based alternatives for feeding vulnerable populations, precisely because insects require far less water and land per gram of protein. That recommendation becomes more relevant as arable land shrinks in the regions that need calories most.

Meanwhile, Singapore's fast-tracked approval of cultivated meat products represents the other end of the adaptation spectrum: high-tech, capital-intensive protein production that decouples food from traditional agricultural geography entirely. Whether cultivated meat can scale affordably enough to matter for food security — rather than just affluent consumers — remains one of the open questions.

The plant-based sector has its own reckoning to navigate here. Beyond Meat's recent struggles reflect a market correction, but the underlying logic of plant-based protein — that it uses less land, water, and emissions per calorie — becomes more compelling, not less, as agricultural land becomes scarcer. The challenge is translating that logic into products and systems that work across income levels and food cultures.

Adaptation Is Outpacing Mitigation — and That Has Consequences

One of the more unsettling aspects of this shift is what it reveals about institutional priorities. When planning models bake in 2°C, they are implicitly acknowledging that mitigation efforts have fallen short. The focus moves from "how do we prevent this" to "how do we survive this."

That shift carries real risks. Climate adaptation in agriculture is expensive and slow. Breeding heat-tolerant crop varieties takes 10–15 years. Rebuilding irrigation infrastructure for new growing zones takes decades. And the countries most affected — in the tropics and Global South — are precisely those with the least capital to invest in adaptation.

The World Bank's 2024 report on climate and food systems estimated that adapting global agriculture to 2°C of warming would require $350 billion in annual investment through 2050. Current spending is a fraction of that figure. The gap between what models say is necessary and what governments are funding is, by most expert assessments, the most dangerous feature of the current moment.

There's also a feedback loop that deserves attention. Agriculture itself accounts for roughly 10–12% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and land use change adds another 8–10%. As growing zones migrate, deforestation in newly viable areas could accelerate emissions further. Brazil's cerrado, already under pressure from soy expansion, and Russia's boreal forests, which store enormous quantities of carbon, are both in the crosshairs.

What This Means for How We Eat

For consumers in wealthier nations, the effects of crop map changes will initially appear as price volatility. Grain prices, cooking oil prices, and the cost of staple foods will fluctuate more widely as weather events disrupt harvests in shifting growing zones. We've already seen previews: the 2022 wheat price spike following Russia's invasion of Ukraine combined geopolitical disruption with drought-reduced harvests in key producing regions.

Over the longer term, dietary shifts become less of a lifestyle choice and more of an economic and ecological reality. Diets built around a diverse range of plant proteins — legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds — are inherently more resilient to supply chain disruption than diets dependent on a narrow set of commodity crops funneled through animal agriculture. That's a structural argument, not a moral one.

The conversation about ultraprocessed plant-based foods and health is relevant here too. Building food system resilience means investing in whole food plant proteins that can be grown in diverse climates, not just engineering novel products in factories. Both have a role, but the former is more directly tied to the food security models being rewritten right now.

The Map Is Moving. The Question Is Whether We Move With It.

There's a temptation to frame 2°C as a failure — and in terms of climate ambition, it is. The world set a goal and missed it. But from a planning perspective, the honesty of these updated models is valuable. Food systems that plan for the climate they're actually going to get, rather than the one they hoped for, stand a better chance of feeding people.

The crop maps being redrawn right now will shape what's available, affordable, and sustainable to eat for the rest of this century. They'll determine which countries become net food importers and which become exporters. They'll influence migration patterns, trade relationships, and geopolitical power.

For anyone thinking about what conscious living looks like in a warming world, this is the foundational story. The food system we built for the 20th century is being dismantled by physics. The one that replaces it will be defined by how quickly we adapt — and how willing we are to eat differently.

Feature image by ThisIsEngineering on Pexels