Northward Crop Migration Under Climate Change Erodes Farmer Price Protection at a Cost of $5 Billion per Year

Climate change is shifting where crops grow, yet commodity futures contracts remain anchored to delivery points established in the nineteenth century. Whether this growing geographic mismatch imposes measurable costs on farmers has not been quantified. Using a novel county-level price dataset (193,891 observations across 2,911 counties), we show that northern corn counties receive $0.25/bu less than the national average—a discount that has widened significantly over the past two decades (τ = −0.321,p = 0.0067). The soybean price penalty per 100 km of delivery distance has tripled (p = 0.0239). Basis volatility trends upward in migration-exposed counties (corn p = 0.0008; soybeans p = 0.0001), hedge ratios deteriorate with distance from delivery (p =. 0.0001), and geographic features carry statistically significant predictive power for basis dynamics (Diebold–Mariano p < 0.0001). In Canada, crop centroids shifted 2.03◦ southward (p < 0.0001), confirming that the mechanism operates regardless of migration direction. Geographic mismatch between production and delivery infrastructure costs U.S. farmers $5.34 billion annually (95% CI: $4.26–6.41 B). Climate-driven migration adds $0.11 billion per year to this total—a share that is growing as production continues to shift. Addressing this requires CME delivery-point modernisation and expanded USDA price reporting