Climate risk isn’t just on the farm: the hidden infrastructure under threat

Climate change is wreaking havoc on global supply chains, with extreme weather hitting crop yields and threatening farmer livelihoods. The evidence is everywhere. Take the recent cocoa crisis: extreme heat and heavy rainfall have pushed West African production to historic lows, sending cocoa prices soaring and leaving chocolate companies scrambling . Or look to Indonesia, where severe floods have disrupted palm oil plantations, forcing food manufacturers to seek alternative sources. But when extreme weather hits, it’s not just fields and factories under threat. There’s hidden infrastructure integral to food production that’s rarely front-of-mind – and it’s not set up to deal with the volatility of climate change. Businesses can no longer afford to focus solely on the production stage of the supply chain when droughts, floods, and other climate shocks hit. That’s easier said than done in the middle of a supply chain crisis, of course. “The first thing we do is imagine the farm,” says Nicholas Mazzei, vice president of sustainability, Europe at logistics business DP World. But it’s much broader than that. Companies need to consider the entire supply chain, from beginning to end, and that includes an integral but hidden component: data centres. Everything from digitised manufacturing processes through to electricity-powered transport and even retail stores are reliant on data centres. Not to mention the IT systems powering manufacturers’ head offices. When data centres fail, food supply chains face immediate and potentially severe disruptions. Industry’s growing reliance on cloud-based systems means failures can rapidly ripple through farms, factories, logistics networks and retailers – ultimately affecting food availability, safety, and price stability. The issue is that most data centres are not set up for extreme weather resilience. At least not the examples of extreme weather industry is experiencing today. The majority are designed for “extreme” weather events such as three consecutive days at 38°C and just two minutes at 40°C. But given the temperatures recorded in recent years, that definition of “extreme” no longer holds. “That’s just a normal summer now in the northern hemisphere,” says Mazzei. Data centres built more recently are designed for temperatures of 40°C, which is moving in the right direction. But they’re in the minority. That means food operators are likely working with risks assessments “so outdated” that they’re not prepared “even for relatively normal summers and winters”, explains the sustainability lead. “We’re seeing examples where people are meeting the standards, and examples where they’re not. And we’re seeing far too many instances where people are not thinking about physical infrastructure, like data centres.” It’s not just data centres exposing food operators to risk. Other physical infrastructures, ranging from import points to warehouses, are also vulnerable amid extreme weather patterns. So much so, that when Mazzei first visits a customer’s warehouse, the first question he asks is how hot it got in the summer. “We need to be thinking about the health and safety of teams, the limits of the human body, and when staff should or should not be operating.” Logistics poses its own set of challenges. As DP World’s core focus, it’s an area Mazzei is constantly reassessing through a climate lens. A strong advocate of electrification, he believes the wider logistics system must shift decisively away from planes and diesel trucks towards ships and rail if it’s to withstand rising climate pressures. The message is clear: if climate change compromises even one link in the supply chain, the disruption cascades. And that, Mazzei says, is exactly what he’s seeing on the ground. “We can see the whole end‑to‑end workflow,” he explains, pointing to issues emerging at multiple points along the chain. “Climate resilience and sustainability are part of that. “I don’t think the food sector is taking it seriously enough.”

Climate risk isn’t just on the farm: the hidden infrastructure under threat

Industry needs to look beyond fields and factories to where climate change is hitting supply chain blind spots

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