Inflation: climate change makes pads more expensive – 02/21/2023 – Market

When the US Department of Agriculture finished its calculations last month, the results were staggering: 2022 was a disaster for upland cotton in Texas, the country’s main growing area for the fiber, and from where it is later sold. to the entire world in the form of sanitary napkins, cloth diapers, gauze pads and other products.

In the biggest loss on record, Texas farmers last year had to abandon 74% of the crops they planted —nearly 15 million hectares— due to heat and parched soil, the effect of an especially intense drought, made worse by the change in climate.

That drop helped push up 13% in US sanitary napkin prices over the last 12 months. The price of cotton balls rose by 9% and gauze bandages by 8%.

It’s an example of how climate change is affecting the cost of everyday living in ways consumers may not realize.

West Texas is the main source of upland cotton in the country, which in turn is the world’s third largest producer and largest exporter of the fiber. This means that the collapse of this cotton crop will have effects beyond the United States, economists say, and will be felt on store shelves across the planet.

“Climate change is a secret driver of inflation,” said Nicole Corbett, vice president of NielsonIQ. “As extreme weather continues to affect crops and production capacity, the cost of staples will continue to rise.”

By 2040, half of the regions where cotton is grown across the planet will face “high or very high climate risk” from droughts, floods and fires, according to the Forum for the Future, a non-profit organization. .

Texas cotton offers a glimpse of the future. Scientists project that heat and drought, exacerbated by climate change, will continue to drive lower crop yields in the southwestern United States. A 2020 study found that heat and drought, exacerbated by climate change, had already reduced upland cotton production in Arizona, and projected that future cotton crop yields in the region could decline by 40% between 2036 and 2065 .

Cotton is a bellwether crop, said Natalie Simpson, an expert in supply chain logistics at the University at Buffalo.

“When the climate destabilizes it, we see changes almost immediately,” Simpson said. “That’s true wherever it’s grown. The future supply everyone depends on is going to be very different from today. The trend is already there.”

Translated by Paulo Migliacci