Drought warnings and crop forecasts are only the beginning of food-system preparedness. Europe also needs to understand how water shortages, disrupted transport and higher costs travel through processing, distribution and household access.
A food manufacturer can have a well-equipped factory and still struggle to operate if its ingredients, cooling water or transport links become unreliable. Climate resilience therefore extends beyond protecting the harvest. It involves the connections that allow food to be processed, moved and sold at prices people can afford.
Europe’s first Climate Risk Assessment, published in 2024, identified 36 major risks across areas including food, energy, water and infrastructure. Its warning about interacting pressures makes a strong case for assessing those connections together. An intervention that protects one business while transferring pressure to a shared water source may leave the wider food system vulnerable.
Read drought warnings as signals for action
The Joint Research Centre’s July 2026 drought report described deteriorating conditions in central and eastern Europe, with alert conditions worsening in western Europe and drought warnings expanding across France. Low rainfall combined with high temperatures and heatwaves, leaving soil moisture and river flows below normal. The report expected effects on crop yields; it was not a final account of the harvest.
That distinction matters for businesses using such information. A warning should trigger a review of exposure, while later observations establish what actually happened. Treating a forecast as a realised loss could produce unnecessary purchasing decisions; ignoring it until deliveries fail could leave little time to respond.
A processor could begin by identifying ingredients linked to the affected regions, their arrival dates and the practical alternatives. The exercise should also examine where the factory’s water and electricity come from. Two apparently separate suppliers may depend on the same basin or transport corridor, making their risks more closely connected than the supplier list suggests.
Connect climate information to a specific decision
The MED-GOLD research project developed climate services for grapes and wine, olives and olive oil, and durum wheat and pasta. Its final report describes prototypes co-developed with industrial users, an open-source platform and work identifying decisions that could benefit from information over periods ranging from months to decades.
Those decisions included vineyard siting and variety choice, olive irrigation and harvest management, and wheat procurement and supply-chain planning. Their different timescales illustrate why a single climate dashboard cannot answer every question. A seasonal purchasing decision and the location of a long-lived orchard require different information.
The project’s work establishes examples of services and user engagement, rather than a guaranteed reduction in losses for every adopter. A useful evaluation would ask whether the information changed an actual decision, whether the user understood its uncertainty, and how the resulting outcome compared with the previous approach. The value lies in a better decision, not simply a more detailed forecast.
Measure water savings at the right scale
Water efficiency offers a particularly important test of system-wide thinking. FAO guidance distinguishes reductions in water withdrawals from real savings in water consumption and non-recoverable return flows. Water that leaves a field may remain available elsewhere in the basin. Reducing that flow does not necessarily create an equivalent saving for other users.
This means a more efficient irrigation system needs to be assessed within its local water balance. Changes in crop choice, irrigated area and the use of any apparent saving affect the outcome. A farm can improve output per unit of water without necessarily reducing the total pressure on a shared resource.
For food companies, supplier programmes should therefore distinguish production efficiency from basin resilience. Both matter, but they answer different questions. Reporting water use per tonne alongside total use, production volume and local water conditions would help buyers see whether an intervention reduces exposure or simply supports more production under the same constraint.
Include storage and cooling in adaptation
The UNEP and FAO report Sustainable Food Cold Chains examines another connection between resilience and environmental impact. Refrigeration can prevent losses, but cooling equipment uses energy and can release refrigerants. The 2022 report estimated that cold-chain technologies, together with food losses associated with insufficient refrigeration, accounted for around 4% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. This is a global estimate with a defined combined scope, rather than the footprint of refrigeration alone.
The implication is that food preservation and cooling performance need to be evaluated together. A storage investment should be judged against the losses it prevents, its energy demand and the conditions under which it operates. A unit that performs well in a standard test still needs a workable plan for hot weather, maintenance and interruptions to power.
For a manufacturer or distributor, the practical questions include how long products remain within their required conditions during an interruption, what backup arrangements can sustain them, and which deliveries should take priority. Such planning connects equipment decisions with food quality and continuity of supply.
Diversify supply without assuming distance decides resilience
Recommendations adopted by the European Food Security Crisis Preparedness and Response Mechanism in July 2023 emphasised diversification across production and supply. They recognised roles for both shorter and longer supply chains, alongside the ability to source food and inputs through trade. Short supply chains can provide alternatives during disruption, but cannot alone meet every urban population’s needs.
A local supplier and a distant supplier may face different hazards, but distance alone does not establish independence. The relevant comparison includes water sources, transport routes, input dependencies and the ability to substitute products. Adding another supplier in the same exposed area may provide less protection than the contract count implies.
Diversification also has operational limits. A substitute ingredient must work in the intended recipe and production process, and its safety and labelling implications need checking. An alternative supplier that has never been qualified may offer little help during an urgent interruption. Preparing those options in advance makes resilience part of normal sourcing decisions.
Use stress tests to expose linked vulnerabilities
In 2026, the Joint Research Centre published an operational framework for stress testing EU food security. It addresses the need to identify vulnerabilities under interacting climate, geopolitical and economic pressures. A framework provides a way to examine possible disruption; it does not establish that a particular crisis will occur.
For businesses and public authorities, a useful exercise could combine a poor regional harvest with a transport interruption or higher energy costs. Participants would then examine how those conditions affect processing capacity, delivery times and food access. The assumptions should be explicit, so the results can be challenged and updated rather than treated as precise predictions.
The exercise also needs people who can act on the findings. If a scenario identifies a vulnerable cold store, the next decision concerns maintenance, alternative capacity or investment. If it identifies unaffordable replacement supplies, procurement and social-policy responses may both matter. Responsibilities should follow the vulnerability through the chain.
The measures used to assess a response should extend to the customer. Restoring the total volume delivered might still leave particular neighbourhoods or institutions without suitable food. An exercise could therefore track product availability and replacement costs for different users, rather than reporting only aggregate tonnage. It could also specify the point at which a temporary workaround becomes unsustainable, whether because backup capacity is exhausted or because continuing costs exceed what a supplier can absorb. That makes the duration of a disruption part of the planning decision.
Climate resilience becomes more useful when it is expressed in those concrete terms: which function could fail, who would be affected and what can be prepared before the disruption. Research can improve the information behind each decision. Following the consequences beyond the farm gate helps ensure that a successful adaptation protects the food system people rely on.
