Food procurement of staple cereals for world major cities in 2050

Cities are dependent on food transported domestically or internationally. However, little is known about how the burden of transporting food to cities will changes under future socio-economic and climatic conditions. Here we present the current transport loads of major commodities (wheat and rice) and their projections in 2050 for 208 world’s major cities, using food-miles as a metric. The estimated freight transport routes and resulting distance-sufficiency curves characterized the cities well and provided insights to improve the robustness of food procurement. The least food-miles required to achieve 70% of the city’s wheat (rice) demand in 2050 were projected to increase in 68 (85) cities and decrease in 61 (54) cities, compared to the variations in food-miles associated with the current natural climate variability, with 79 (54) cities remaining unchanged. These findings provide city-specific information that ultimately helps to plan for more robust food procurement in the context of climate-resilient cities.