The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recently released its annual Global Food Situation Assessment Report, which explicitly warns that the global food system is currently exposed to three predictable, high-probability, and highly destructive persistent risks, which the industry defines as the three major "gray rhinos" in the field of food security. Unlike short-term black swan events such as sudden conflicts and extreme disasters, gray rhino risks are characterized by slow fermentation, year-by-year accumulation, and difficulty in rapid resolution. They erode the food production, distribution, and storage systems of various countries in the long term, gradually increasing the global hunger population. Data shows that by 2025-2026, the number of people facing food insecurity globally has exceeded 1.3 billion, an increase of nearly 40% compared to ten years ago. Low-income food-importing countries, landlocked developing countries, and climate-vulnerable island nations are bearing the most severe impact. The core risks identified in this report are: the continued erosion of arable land productivity by climate extremism, structural imbalances in the global agricultural supply chain, and persistently high and volatile costs of fertilizers and agricultural production materials.
Climate extremes become the norm
Climate change is the primary "gray rhino" risk to food security. Unlike isolated sudden rainstorms or droughts, the high temperatures, extreme precipitation, seasonal droughts, and sea-level saltwater intrusion caused by global warming have transformed from occasional disasters into annual, recurring phenomena, causing continuous and irreversible losses to the world's core grain-producing regions. Over the past thirty years, global average temperatures have steadily risen, and the summer heatwave cycles in the mid-latitude major grain-producing areas of the Northern Hemisphere have lengthened year by year, resulting in regular yield reductions in Eurasia, central North America, the Pampas grasslands of South America, and the rice belt of Southeast Asia.
High temperatures directly disrupt the critical flowering and grain-filling stages of grains. The pollination success rate of wheat, corn, and rice drops significantly in environments with sustained temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius, leading to a year-on-year decrease in yields for the same arable land area. Simultaneously, precipitation distribution has become completely unbalanced. Traditionally rainy areas are experiencing persistent droughts, while semi-arid agricultural areas frequently suffer from short-duration torrential rains. These rainstorms wash away topsoil, causing widespread soil erosion, continuous loss of soil organic matter, and a gradual decline in soil fertility.
The Po River Plain in Europe, the Corn Belt of the American Midwest, and the Ganges Rice-producing region of India are typical affected areas. Northern Italy has experienced three consecutive summer droughts, with insufficient replenishment from Alpine snowmelt, leading to a persistent shortage of irrigation water. Large areas of rice and cornfields have cracked, resulting in an average annual reduction of 20-30% in local grain yields. In the American Great Plains, high temperatures and drought combined with over-extraction of groundwater have caused a significant annual drop in deep aquifer levels, gradually leading to the withdrawal of farmland reliant on groundwater irrigation. In India, disrupted monsoon rainfall cycles result in either prolonged droughts delaying rice planting or concentrated torrential rains flooding vast rice paddies, affecting tens of millions of acres of farmland annually and causing frequent fluctuations in domestic rice exports. Coastal grain-producing areas also face the additional threat of seawater intrusion. In the Mekong Delta of Southeast Asia, the Ganges estuary in South Asia, and the Adriatic coast of Europe, low river levels during droughts allow seawater to penetrate inland, seeping salt into the soil and damaging crop roots. Land contaminated by saline water often requires several years of fallow before it can be cultivated again, directly reducing the total amount of long-term usable arable land.
Climate warming is simultaneously exacerbating the risk of cross-border transmission of pests and diseases. Warmer and more humid climates are accelerating the reproduction of pests and diseases such as locusts, rice planthoppers, and wheat rust. These pests, originally confined to tropical regions, are gradually spreading northward, crossing traditional climate boundaries to invade temperate grain-producing areas. The pest outbreak cycle has shortened from once every few years to once or twice a year. Farmers must increase their pesticide inputs to control the outbreaks, further raising planting costs. Some economically disadvantaged smallholder farmers cannot afford pesticide expenses and are forced to allow large-scale crop failures. The cascading hydrological changes caused by melting polar glaciers further amplify these risks. High-altitude snow cover is a stable source of water for most rivers globally. The continuous reduction in snow cover means that the seasonal water supply mechanism of rivers is being disrupted, and the stability of irrigation in agricultural areas is losing its natural guarantee. Traditional agricultural models relying on natural precipitation and snowmelt are becoming completely ineffective.
Structural Imbalance in Global Agricultural Supply Chains
Supply chain disruptions and imbalances in production and sales represent the second major "gray rhino" risk. This risk system comprises multiple factors, including geopolitical trade barriers, rising logistics costs, a lack of warehousing and reserve mechanisms, and an imbalance in import and export dependence. It has long existed within the global food trade system, only masked in stable years, and will erupt in a concentrated manner once external disturbances occur. Currently, global food production is highly concentrated, with wheat, corn, and soybean exports heavily reliant on a few countries. These four countries alone account for over 70% of global corn exports. Rice and oilseed crops also suffer from high export concentration. Most low-income countries have virtually no domestic grain production capacity, relying entirely on imports for their annual food needs. This extreme uneven distribution of production and sales naturally amplifies the impact of supply chain disruptions.
Trade protectionism continues to erode the global distribution system. Countries frequently introduce unilateral policies such as export bans, tariff increases, and quota restrictions. Whenever there is a slight reduction in local production or fluctuations in grain prices, grain-exporting countries immediately restrict exports to prioritize their own domestic supply. Such short-term self-protection policies can quickly spread to the global market, triggering panic buying and causing a sharp short-term surge in international grain futures prices. This doubles the procurement costs for grain-importing countries, directly increasing the burden on domestic livelihoods. The shortcomings of the cross-border logistics system further amplify distribution risks. Uneven distribution of global ocean freight capacity, aging port facilities, continuously rising shipping costs, and inconsistent customs quarantine standards among countries lengthen grain clearance cycles, resulting in high rates of mold and loss during long-distance grain transport. Landlocked underdeveloped countries face an even more difficult situation. Lacking access to the sea and with inadequate cross-border road and rail infrastructure, grain can take weeks to be transported from ports to inland villages, with transportation losses and fuel surcharges significantly increasing final grain prices.
The uneven development of reserve systems is a core weakness in the supply chain imbalance. Developed countries, relying on their strong fiscal resources, have established multi-level grain reserves covering the entire country, stockpiling large quantities of grain during bumper harvests to offset the risk of reduced production. Most developing countries, however, face fiscal constraints, and their national strategic reserves can only sustain short-term domestic demand. Private commercial storage facilities are insufficient, and their moisture-proof and insect-proof equipment is outdated, making large-scale grain storage impossible. The global distribution of food reserves is extremely polarized. A few high-income countries control more than half of the world's grain stocks, while dozens of low-income countries have strategic reserves below the safety threshold, lacking the buffer capacity to withstand short-term supply disruptions. At the international level, there is a lack of a unified emergency food allocation mechanism. When a large-scale famine occurs in a region, the food allocation process is cumbersome and the coordination cycle is lengthy, making it difficult to quickly deliver humanitarian food aid.
The monopoly of large multinational grain traders exacerbates the problem of unfair distribution. A few companies control resources across the entire global food supply chain-from procurement and storage to processing and distribution-allowing them to manipulate price differences between regions. In years of bumper harvests, they suppress farmers' purchase prices, while during periods of reduced production, they raise end-user prices, profiting huge margins. Small farmers lack bargaining power, their production income is continuously squeezed, their willingness to cultivate the land declines year by year, and some regions are experiencing farmland abandonment, further shrinking the total global food supply. This structural contradiction in the supply chain is persistent and slowly intensifies each year, representing a typical gradual gray rhino risk. Existing multilateral trade coordination mechanisms have limited binding force and are unable to constrain unilateral trade restrictions and corporate monopolistic behavior, meaning the vulnerability of the supply chain will only continue to rise.
High agricultural input costs are putting pressure on global agricultural production costs.
The persistently high and volatile prices of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers, seeds, agricultural machinery, and energy represent the third major, escalating "gray rhino" risk. The rising basic input costs of agricultural production are squeezing farmers' profit margins, suppressing global grain production expansion, and constraining long-term increases in food supply. Nitrogen, phosphate, and potash fertilizers are core fertilizers for grain cultivation, but fertilizer production is highly dependent on fossil fuels such as natural gas and coal. In recent years, global traditional energy prices have fluctuated upwards, leading to a corresponding increase in fertilizer manufacturing costs and persistently high final fertilizer prices. Even with slight declines in energy prices, fertilizer companies are unlikely to lower prices to protect profits, creating a situation where agricultural input prices are more likely to rise than fall.
For the vast majority of smallholder farmers worldwide, fertilizer expenses account for more than 60% of their annual planting costs. Rising agricultural input prices directly turn farming profits into losses. Farmers in low-income countries cannot afford to purchase sufficient fertilizers and are forced to drastically reduce fertilization. This leads to insufficient replenishment of soil nutrients, declining land output, and a vicious cycle of "less fertilization → lower yields → lower income → even less fertilization." High-quality, stress-resistant seeds also face rising costs. Patents for improved seeds with drought resistance, insect resistance, and high yield are concentrated in a few multinational corporations, leading to year-on-year price increases. Ordinary farmers are forced to choose low-yield conventional seeds, making it difficult to mitigate climate-induced yield reduction risks through variety improvement.
The rising costs of agricultural machinery and fuel are simultaneously increasing the barriers to expansion. Modernized, large-scale farming requires the use of tractors, seeders, and harvesters. The purchase, maintenance, and fuel costs of machinery all require stable capital investment. With continuously rising agricultural input costs, small and medium-sized farms cannot afford to upgrade their aging machinery and are forced to continue using inefficient manual farming methods, hindering production efficiency. Some developing countries lack domestic agricultural machinery manufacturing industries, relying entirely on imports. Combined with tariffs and transportation costs, the cost of agricultural machinery further increases, hindering the transformation to large-scale and modernized agriculture. The shortage of agricultural labor is simultaneously amplifying the pressure on agricultural inputs. The continued migration of young people to cities and the severe aging of the rural farming population are driving up labor costs year by year. Coupled with fertilizer and machinery expenses, overall agricultural input costs continue to rise.
Agricultural subsidy policies in various countries have significant shortcomings and are insufficient to offset the impact of rising agricultural input prices. Developed countries' subsidies cover the entire supply chain, from planting and agricultural input procurement to storage, effectively stabilizing farmers' enthusiasm for production. However, most developing countries have limited agricultural subsidy funds, narrow coverage, and delayed disbursement, failing to effectively offset the economic pressure from rising fertilizer and seed prices. At the international level, there is a lack of a coordinated mechanism for stabilizing agricultural input prices, and the import and export of fertilizer raw materials, seeds, and agricultural machinery lack unified regulatory standards, meaning that fluctuations in commodity prices directly impact agricultural production. This risk will not cause an immediate food crisis, but it will gradually weaken the potential for global food production growth, widen the global food supply-demand gap in the long term, and slowly increase the number of hungry people-a long-term, easily overlooked "gray rhino" threat.
Conclusion
The global hunger population continues to expand, with low-income food-importing countries, climate-vulnerable island nations, and landlocked developing countries bearing the heaviest burden. The potential risks of regional food shortages, soaring food prices, and social unrest are accumulating. To mitigate the long-term impact of the three "gray rhinos" (high risk factors for food shortages, high risk of food shortages, and high risk of food instability), adjustments by individual countries or sectors are far from sufficient; a global collaborative governance system is needed. Countries need to simultaneously advance the construction of farmland irrigation, soil and water conservation, and drought-resistant facilities; proactively implement emission reduction actions to slow the rate of global warming; reconstruct a more balanced and diversified global food trade pattern, reduce reliance on exports, establish a multilateral emergency food reserve and allocation mechanism, and abandon unilateral export restrictions and protectionism; improve the agricultural input price regulation system, increase agricultural subsidies, support the development of domestic fertilizer, improved seed, and agricultural machinery industries, and reduce the planting burden on farmers.
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