Publication: Food trade disruption after global catastrophes

Our Global Risk Lead, Florian Jehn, is the lead author on an insightful new paper on global food trade systems and how they could be affected by global catastrophic risks and infrastructure losses. Using a network model the authors analyse how wheat, maize, soybeans, and rice - which account for 60 % of global calorie intake - could be severely affected by these scenarios, which would include a substantial reduction in crop yield and overall global food trade.

The team underscore the vulnerabilities of the global food network and call for more preparedness to mitigate the effects of potential catastrophic risks.

Read the full paper here at Earth System Dynamics Journal.

 Jehn, F. U., Gajewski, Ł. G., Hedlund, J., Arnscheidt, C. W., Xia, L., Wunderling, N., and Denkenberger, D.: Food trade disruption after global catastrophes, Earth Syst. Dynam., 16, 1585–1603, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1585-2025, 2025.