Vegetable supply to Tokyo disrupted by 2023 and 2024 summer heatwaves

Understanding the impacts on urban food supply from extreme climate events is a first step towards building climate-resilient agri-food systems. Here, we report on vegetable supply disruptions in the Tokyo metropolitan area due to the summer heatwaves of 2023 and 2024, using the governmental survey on wholesale market arrival volumes and prices. Fifteen vegetables (broccoli, cabbage, carrot, Chinese cabbage, cucumber, eggplant, Japanese radish, lettuce, onions, potatoes, spinach, sweet pepper, taro, tomato and Welsh onion) were considered. Compared to the 2010-2022 average, the arrival volume in the September-October period was on the bottom third level or severer for carrot (-27.1%) and Japanese radish (-22.3%) in 2023, and for tomato in both 2023 (-19.9%) and 2024 (-22.9%), with their price increases of 46.0-81.9%. The negative impact of high temperatures in August or September on arrival volumes in the following month was detected for these vegetables in at least one main producing prefecture. However, in 2024, the price increases were more widespread, affecting 14 vegetables. As there were no appreciable decreases in arrival volumes, it is unlikely that climatic factors were the primary cause of the price increases in 2024. These results highlight the need for domestic vegetable production to be more heat tolerant, given its influence on downstream of agri-food systems, such as urban consumers.