As the climate crisis causes rising temperatures, water scarcity, and unstable weather patterns, some of the world’s most beloved food and drink are at risk of going extinct. These five vignettes offer a glimpse of the far-reaching threats a warming planet poses to agriculture. This piece originally appeared in SAVEUR’s Spring/Summer 2025 issue. See more stories from Issue 204 here.

Off the northern coast of Croatia, the narrow island of Pag sits like a craggy shard that tumbled into the Adriatic from the nearby Velebit Mountains. Despite its small size and rocky terrain, it is home to three foods that bear the European Union’s coveted Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) seal: salt, lamb, and Paški Sir cheese.

The milk for this award-winning wheel—Croatia’s best-known product—comes from Pag’s small, sturdy native sheep, which graze on wild grasses and aromatic herbs. That mix of flora is key to the cheese’s flavor, as is the cold winter wind, called the “bura” in Croatian, that whips down from the Velebit, blowing the sea’s salty spray across the sheep’s pasture.

Like fog in San Francisco, the bura is a fact of life on Pag. Locals credit it with clearing the air, even though the salt has been known to weigh down electrical wires, leaving islanders in the dark from time to time. “I call [the bura] a lunatic,” says Martina Pernar, president of the association of Paški Sir producers. It doesn’t snow or freeze on Pag, but “when the bura blows, it can feel like below zero, and you can write your name on your car windows from the salt.”

Pernar remembers when the wind blustered across the island at least once a month between January and July, usually for three days at a time. “But this year it was just one bura, in January, and it lasted one day,” she says. The wind’s usual timing coincides with lactation cycles and cheese production, and Pernar and her fellow Paški Sir producers worry about the long‑term effects of the decline—both on Croatia’s signature cheese and farmers’ livelihoods.

The concern is supported by a 2021 geophysical and meteorological study co-sponsored by the Institute of Agriculture and Tourism of Croatia, which showed “an indication of a reduction in the number of bora [sic] events during the winter season.” The winds are “a strong ally,” says Pernar. “There is no big secret in the production: Paški Sir is the essence of this island.” —Susan Sherrill Axelrod

The ambrosial beans that perfume many of our favorite desserts are a challenge to produce. Each vanilla flower must be pollinated by hand, and the industry faces a litany of other obstacles, including drought, deforestation, and weather changes that can disrupt blooming. But in Madagascar, where the vanilla orchid thrives and where 80 percent of the world’s supply is grown, another threat looms.

The “main danger” the climate crisis raises for the area’s vanilla farmers is cyclones, says Georges Geeraerts, vice president of Madagascar’s National Vanilla Council. Sava, the main growing region, lies on the cyclone-prone northeastern coast. Even in a productive season, when the vines are flush with pale blooms, risk of violent weather hangs heavy in the air, creating uncertainty for the harvest—and for the growers’ livelihoods.

Cyclones are a familiar foe here; Madagascar endures three a year, on average. But since the 1990s, the incidence of more intense storms has increased. In 2017, Cyclone Enawo hit Sava with 145-mile-per-hour winds, destroying at least 20 percent of the country’s vanilla and tripling prices worldwide. In 2024, a combination of flooding from Cyclone Gamane and fewer than expected blossoms—perhaps a climate impact, or perhaps an effort by farmers to control supply and raise prices, says Geeraerts—cut the harvest in half. Global heating seems to be strengthening the battering ram, bringing even higher wind speeds and heavier rainfall year over year.

Despite promising research underway around the world, including efforts to develop more resilient vanilla orchids, climate impacts are likely to cause more shortages and price spikes in years to come. Vanilla’s perfumed pods may soon become even scarcer than they already are. —Caroline Saunders

To humans, flowering agave smells a lot like rotting fruit, but to the lesser long-nosed bat, Leptonycteris yerbabuenae, it’s a beacon. Dubbed “tequila bats,” the species feeds primarily on nectar from night-blooming agaves, which are used to produce tequila, mezcal, bacanora, and other spirits. But as the climate crisis creates more unpredictable weather patterns, these creatures—and their food source—are at risk.

Rodrigo Medellín, a professor of ecology and conservation at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who is known as the “Bat Man,” has studied tequila bats for years. In 2008, he observed heavy rains along their migratory route, which led to the agave blooming early and gestating female bats arriving late. “When they gave birth, there was not enough food to keep the mothers and pups alive,” explains Medellín. “When I arrived at the cave, the floor was littered with thousands of pup skeletons.”

Most agave farmers harvest the plants before flowering to access their concentrated sugars, but some producers, like Killinga, a bacanora distillery in Sonora, let a portion of the crop bloom to maintain the pollinators’ food source. Bat populations are trending upward now, but as climate patterns shift and the tequila industry booms, conservationists remain vigilant. —Lesley Jacobs Solmonson

The favored nut for nondairy milks, smoothies, snacks, and more, almonds are the backbone of a massive agricultural industry, taking up more than 1.5 million acres of farmland in California alone. But keeping the trees alive requires a tremendous amount of water, and amidst ever-worsening drought conditions, growers are seeking alternatives.

“If I had a million bucks, I’d plant pistachios right now,” says Patrick J. Brown, associate professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis. Brown’s research looks to arid locales like Sicily, where flourishing pistachio trees are rainfed with 90 percent less water than farmed pistachio trees in California. The resilient green nuts also take better to sustainable harvesting than almonds, which must be shaken from trees and dried on the ground—a process that requires a barren dirt field. Pistachios, on the other hand, never touch the ground, so farmers can plant cover crops and leave organic material behind, reintroducing beneficial nutrients to the soil. 

While pistachios have their own hangups—alternate fruiting years, chill requirements, and a premium price tag—they have plenty to teach growers. New adaptive pistachio cultivars are increasingly common, and with time, some farms may make the switch, resulting in more affordable nuts. All the more reason to make your next almond croissant a pistachio one. —Sarah Strong

For almost every winemaker, Botrytis cinerea is bad news. The fungal pathogen can quickly turn ripening grapes into cindery waste on the vine. Yet for a few vintners making dessert wines like French Sauternes or Hungarian Tokaji Azsú, this agent of destruction has long been a crucial collaborator. They call it noble rot.

“It’s kind of a mystery how it works,” says Scott Cosseboom, senior research associate and plant pathologist at Cornell Hudson Valley Research Laboratory. First-hand knowledge is often closely guarded by those wines’ producers. What enologists do know is that, in order to develop, noble rot requires a prolonged cycle of environmental factors timed to just the right moments in the grapes’ veraison, or the period when ripening begins: cool nights, morning mists fed by a river or lake, and sunny afternoons that bake everything dry. As the rot advances and retreats—and the vine’s natural defenses kick in—the grapes’ metabolism changes, reducing acidity and water content while developing savory-enhancing compounds. The results are gold-toned elixirs with a distinctive, earthy complexity that lingers on the palate after notes of honey and nectarine wash away.

Extreme shifts in precipitation and temperature patterns pose a number of challenges to this delicate process. Too little moisture, and there might be no botrytis activity of any kind; too much, and the collaborator becomes a killer. Without some clever agricultural intervention, these prized wines may soon prove impossible to make. But Cosseboom is optimistic: “We can look to our neighbors to see what they are dealing with in slightly different climates,” he says, “to help us prepare for things that might be coming down the road.” —Ian Epstein