(Bloomberg) -- The risk of global food production shocks andprice spikes is rising due to increasingly intense storms and morefrequent flood and drought events associated with warmertemperatures, U.S. and British researchers said Friday.

By 2040, the danger of a 1-in-100-year food production crisis islikely to rise to a 1-in-30-year probability, the U.K.-U.S.Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Resilience saidin a report for the British government. Concentration of productionof maize, soybean, rice and wheat in a few major producers mayamplify the shocks, showing the need to boost resilience of theworld’s food system, they said.

“It is likely that the effects of climate change will be feltmost strongly through the increasing frequency of extreme weatherevents such as droughts, heatwaves and floods and their impact onthe production and distribution of food -- something we almost takefor granted,” said Tim Benton, a professor of ecology at theUniversity of Leeds in northern England.

United Nations scientists warned last year that the world isill-prepared for the effects of climate change and that globalwheat and maize production are already adversely affected bywarming temperatures. Wheat yields have declined by about 2% perdecade and maize by 1%, with soy and rice largely unchanged, theysaid.

With demand for food projected to increase by 60% from now to2050, there’s a growing need to reverse the yield declines whileincreasing production and reducing the environmental impacts ofcrop production, the researchers said. They recommended countrieswork to make markets more transparent, build up strategic cropstorages and understand better the risks they face.

“Action is urgently needed to understand risks better, improvethe resilience of the global food system to weather-related shocksand to mitigate their impact on people,” Benton said.

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