Extreme weather raises uncertainty about harvests

MadridAfter the severe drought of 2023, it seemed that the countryside was starting to breathe again regarding agricultural damage resulting from the climate and extreme weather phenomena. In 2024, the damage rate across the country decreased, but it has rebounded again in 2025 with hailstorms as the main factor.

This is according to a new agri-food sector report prepared by CaixaBank Research, the study center of CaixaBank, and published this Tuesday. "Although the water situation has improved, extreme weather phenomena continue to gain relevance and increase uncertainty regarding harvests," the study concludes. Catalonia is not exempt from this shock, although the weight of a more industrialized agricultural sector makes the territory more resilient, reflects CaixaBank Research economist Pedro Álvarez. "[Climate change] Is one of the current major sources of tension," he indicated during the presentation of the study.

Therefore, the impact of climate change is no longer limited to drought. The agricultural sector is facing greater frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as storms, hailstorms, DANA (high-altitude isolated depression) events, or longer summer heatwaves with higher temperatures that directly affect production. Hail, for example, accounted for 59% of the total claims registered in 2025. It was followed by drought (8%), wildlife (8%), wind (7.3%), and frost (4.17%). Fires, which marked the summer of 2025 in many parts of the country and have done so again in 2026, accounted for only 1.14% of total claims.

It must be taken into account that it is the abandonment of forest areas, as well as the agricultural mosaic, that has boosted the spread of fire and the difficulty of extinction in recent years, as pointed out by a multitude of experts and agricultural organizations such as Unió de Pagesos.

The case of wine

One of the sectors that suffers most from the impact of climate change is the wine industry. In fact, high temperatures have caused the Penedès region to record its earliest harvest in history in 2026, which began at the end of July. Adverse weather phenomena such as frost, drought, or hail affect the yield, but also the quality of the grapes (sugars, acidity, or compounds) and, therefore, the harvest and production. At the same time, the frequency and intensity of all of them have triggered volatility in harvests and difficulty in planning.

Spain is the country among the main wine producers where production falls the most (30% since 2020) and where profitability has grown the least during the 2020-24 period. By wine-growing regions, Tarragona and Barcelona are two of the hardest hit, with a notable drop in production yield as a result of the increase in temperatures over the last decade.

This is relevant because wine has significant economic weight within the Spanish and Catalan agricultural sector: the State has the largest vineyard area in the world and is one of the main international producers and exporters. Meanwhile, Catalonia, for example, occupies the second position in terms of the economic value of sales from the whole State abroad. Furthermore, it is an activity closely linked to the territory, culture, and Mediterranean diet.

"In this context, improving production resilience with varieties more resistant to new climatic conditions [...] is an unavoidable objective," the report points out. In the case of the State, the study detects a growing recovery of native grape varieties better acclimated to heat and water stress.

However, new consumption habits on a global scale are added to this challenge, but also in the State and in Catalonia, especially among the young population, which have triggered a decrease in wine demand. "The question is no longer just how to produce wine in more adverse climatic conditions, but how to respond to an increasingly weak demand [...]. Competitiveness will depend less on volume and more on the sector's capacity to innovate or differentiate products," the report states.

Impact on exports

To the extent that production is punished, so are exports, acknowledges Álvarez. "If we produce less, we export less," he laments. This scenario would aggravate foreign trade, which ended 2025 and started 2026 faltering –exports have fallen by 1.6% in the first half of the year, and imports have grown by 2.3%, so the trade surplus has been reduced by 10,331 million euros–. The main reason for this is lower sales to China and the United States. On one hand, of pork, due to trade restrictions derived from swine fever in Catalonia; and, on the other, of olive oil and other products exposed to the tariff war with the USA.