Climate change could mean more oranges, soya beans and grapes grown in East Anglia

Scientists have predicted that more oranges, soya beans and grapes could be grown in agricultural heartlands like East Anglia as our climate warms in the coming decades.

A study led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), in collaboration with the University of East Anglia (UEA), assesses the UK’s future suitability for growing foods traditionally produced in warmer parts of the world.

The modelling study, part of the OpenCLIM research project, investigates the prospects for more than 160 existing and new food crops in different UK regions under warming scenarios of +2C and +4C, compared to pre-industrial times.

While climate change already presents “significant challenges” to UK agriculture, it could mean crops such as chickpeas, soya beans and oranges becoming widely grown, says the study — making home-produced hummus, tofu and marmalade a common sight on supermarket shelves by 2080.

Oranges could become increasingly widely grown in the UK as a result of climate change, say scientists at UKCEH and UEA (Image: UKCEH) There could also be “substantial increases in suitability” for a broad range of crops including sunflower, durum wheat, okra and wine grapes.

However, in contrast to these “winners”, the “losers” could include some existing key crops which are likely to become harder to grow in parts of productive arable areas like East Anglia.

The climate here is expected to become less suitable for wheat and strawberries under the +2C warming scenario, while four degrees of warming would result in reduced suitability for other major crops including onions and oats, says the study.

Lead author Dr John Redhead, a spatial ecologist at UKCEH, said: “Our climate is expected to change substantially over coming decades at a time when there will be rising demand for food due to population growth.

“It is therefore essential that arable farming becomes more resilient; one possible solution is growing different crops that are more suited to the new local conditions.”

The paper, published in the journal Climate Resilience and Sustainability, says climate change is already having a major impact on UK agriculture, with extreme weather affecting yields and increasing the threat from agricultural pests and diseases.

Methods to cope with the challenges include further research into the viability of the crops that are identified as “winners”, adopting new agricultural systems such as paludiculture (wet farming) and indoor “vertical farming”, and breeding more drought-resilient varieties of existing staple crops.

Study co-author Prof Rachel Warren of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at UEA said: “Major changes to agricultural systems and diets can take decades to implement and so our long-term projections provide important information well ahead of time for farmers, supermarkets, researchers, policymakers and the public on the opportunities, challenges and trade-offs involved in adapting to the impacts of climate change.”