Under the best circumstances, agriculture can be a tough business. Today, increasing pressures on the world’s land and water resources are jeopardizing humanity’s ability to feed itself. Exacerbated by climate change, these pressures are making agriculture a more vulnerable and challenging enterprise. Elevated temperatures, changes in water availability, deteriorating soil quality, extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and ocean acidification, among other factors, can have an impact on food production, processing, storage, and distribution, right up to the moment it reaches our tables. In other words, our entire food system is threatened by climate change. 

Ensuring food safety at every step from farm to fork means that farmers, producers, and the agri-food sector as a whole need to prepare for and respond to threats throughout the supply chain. And this work is now more complicated with the changing climate, which can make food unsafe in myriad ways (see “Identifying the Cause of a Foodborne Disease Outbreak Is Now More Complex Because of the Globalized Food Chain and Climate Change,” below).