Climate Change and Maize Prices in Global Producing Countries: Impact Assessment and Mitigation Strategies

Climate change poses a growing threat to global food security, with staple crop prices serving as a key transmission channel. This study systematically assesses the impacts of climate change on real maize price levels across 39 major producing countries over 1992–2023, using a two-way fixed-effects model with country-specific trends. Climate conditions are captured by growing-season mean temperature, accumulated precipitation, the share of extreme heat days (above 30 °C), and a drought indicator based on the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). The benchmark results show a significant U-shaped relationship between growing-season temperature and maize price levels, with a turning point near 15.3 °C, implying that further warming raises prices in most producing countries. Extreme events emerge as the dominant driver: a one-standard-deviation increase in the share of extreme heat days is associated with approximately 11.9% (β = 0.610, p < 0.01) increase in real maize prices, and drier growing seasons are associated with modestly higher price. The heterogeneity analysis reveals that development level buffers the price effects of gradual temperature changes, whereas production capacity does not systematically moderate gradual climate shifts; extreme-heat effects are not moderated by either dimension; and drought effects strengthen with production scale. Extreme-heat price impacts are concentrated in net-exporting countries and thus propagate to world markets. These findings imply three policy pathways: coordinated global climate governance, multi-level price stabilization mechanisms, and country-specific support systems to contain climate-induced increases in maize price levels and safeguard global food security.