Last updated:
19 Nov. 2025
As the UN climate summit, COP30, continues in Belém, Brazil, analysis reveals how vulnerable food imports to the UK from the host country are to the impacts of climate change, including household staples like coffee, orange juice, chicken and beef, as well as soy which is fed to UK livestock.
Recent media reports suggest Government officials blocked the publication of a report warning that the collapse of tropical rainforests like the Amazon could severely affect UK food supplies [1].
Beyond the wealthier, developed nations of Europe and North America, Brazil was the UK’s leading food supplier by volume sending around 1.4 billion kilograms (or 1.4 million tonnes) of food worth nearly £1.2 billion last year. Brazil tops the list of countries from which the UK imports food with the lowest levels of resilience to worsening climate change impacts.
The UK is most heavily reliant on Brazil for soy, which underpins intensive livestock production. In 2024, the UK imported £243 million of Brazilian soy – around 60% of total soy imports. Around 90% of imported soy is used for animal feed, mainly British poultry, as soymeal is the main protein source in intensive feed systems.
The research, by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) [2] also shows that Brazil is the UK’s largest supplier of coffee, typically providing 30–35% of the UK’s unroasted beans, worth around £225 million in 2024. But hot and dry conditions linked to El Niño reduced expected yields in the 2023/24 harvest, driving price spikes that peaked in March 2025.
Coffee and beef are two of five products hit by extreme weather that are a key driver UK food price inflation – pushing up prices over four times faster than others in the average shop [3].
Commenting, Gareth Redmond-King, International Programme Lead at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) said:
“British families are already paying the price at the tills for climate extremes hitting both here and abroad. This year saw the UK’s second worst harvest on record [4].
“We depend on Brazil for coffee, sugar, oranges and tropical fruits – as well as a lot of soy to feed livestock grown in the UK. In addition to the threat from climate change, vast swathes of rainforest and other biomes have been cleared to grow some of these foods; this deforestation is itself a key driver of the climate change affecting the ability to produce these foods.
“UK leadership at climate summits is important as ultimately, collectively we need to hit net zero emissions given it is the only way to bring balance back to our climate and stop climate change.
“British climate finance helps support farmers in Brazil and other countries from whom we import food, to enable them to adapt and protect their livelihoods, and our food supplies.”
The UK relies on imports for around two-fifths of the food on its shelves, worth £64 billion in 2024. Of this, about £25 billion (39%) went on products that cannot be produced domestically at scale, such as coffee, orange juice and cocoa.
Brazil is vulnerable to climate change in the form of droughts, heavy rainfall and extreme heat and fires. 2023-2024 saw climate change and El Niño combining to inflict severe drought conditions on the Brazilian Amazon; lasting 18 months, it was considered the most intense in the seventy years since monitoring began.
Southern Brazil was also hit by disastrous floods in 2024, and has again seen heavy June rains in 2025, hitting crops and livestock in the region. Rainfall in recent years has been made heavier and more intense by climate change, and turbo-charged by El Niño, making the 2024 floods twice as likely.
Brazil is also facing around 2.2°C of temperature rise by 2050, with several regions warming faster than the global average. The number of days in a year affected by heatwaves has increased nearly threefold, to 52 in the decade to 2020, compared to 20 in period from 1961 to 1990. In March 2025, extreme heat forced five Brazilian cities to close schools.
Brazil is also the world’s dominant citrus producer, producing roughly one-third of all oranges globally and supplying over 70% of the world’s orange juice exports. Extended droughts, heatwaves and crop disease outbreaks in Brazil have pushed up prices; the average price of fruit juices remains 30% higher than it was in June 2022, with orange juice rising over 130% since 2020.
Extreme climate impacts hit crops and damages infrastructure, hampering harvests and transport of food products. Demand for products like soy and beef are also major drivers of deforestation, as trees are cleared to grow crops or raise cattle. Deforestation is not only responsible for 3.4% of global emissions each year, but is pushing the world close to a tipping point that could see the Amazonian ecosystem become too dry to sustain itself.