A number of pressures have converged on food production over the past year, and their effects are likely to show up in our shopping baskets this winter. Farmers have faced increasingly erratic weather, influenced by climate change and the El Niño phenomenon, while international conflicts have pushed up the cost of fuel, fertiliser and other essential inputs.

These pressures compound one another: adverse and unpredictable weather reduces crop yields, while higher fertiliser and energy costs make it more expensive to produce and process food.

This will not only impact farmers’ livelihoods and shoppers’ wallets, but potentially the quality, volume and nutritional value of the food on our shelves, as manufacturers turn to cheaper alternative ingredients to limit overall price increases.

Here are five familiar foods that illustrate how this could play out this winter:

Chocolate is not only a comfort food with the ability to boost mood, but its production supports the livelihoods of nearly 6 million smallholder farmers worldwide, mostly in West Africa. This is a result of the manual labour required to harvest cocoa, meaning that as a crop it cannot easily be grown on an industrial scale.

However, cocoa trees are sensitive to their environment. The effect of drought on cocoa yields has long been recognised, but recent research shows that intense periods of heavy rainfall can be a problem too. They can reduce the activity of the flying insects........

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