Feeding Under Fire: The Climate Change–Food Security Nexus in Low‐ and Lower‐Middle‐Income Economies

The shift in Global Climatic conditions is one of the most pressing issues, with far‐reaching consequences for ecosystems, agriculture, and human livelihoods. Cereal production in low‐income countries (LIC) and lower‐middle income countries (LMIC) is highly vulnerable to climatic variations, affecting food security and livelihoods. This paper focuses on the interactions between the rainfall, CO 2 emissions, and temperature with cereal production in the low‐ and lower‐middle‐income nations. We have employed panel autoregressive distributed lag (Panel ARDL), Westerlund cointegration, and panel causality to examine the impact of climate change on food security, and robustness has been checked using panel‐corrected standard errors (PCSE). On the other hand, method of moments quantile regression (MMQR) complements Panel ARDL by showing that climate effects on cereal production vary across output levels in both panels. The long‐run outcomes show that CO 2 emissions and precipitation have a strong positive effect on the production of cereals in both types of income groups, and the effects of temperature are not significant in lower‐middle‐income nations but have a positive, but mild impact in low‐income nations. Whereas, the shock in temperature has a negative influence on cereal production, and CO 2 and precipitation have insignificant direct effects in the short run. The negative and significant error adjustment terms are confirmation of adaptation towards the long‐run equilibrium. Results point to the fact that lower‐middle‐income nations are more resilient to changing temperatures but vulnerable to other climatic shocks. The policy implications highlight that climate‐smart agricultural practices and resilient infrastructure must be prioritized to enhance sustainable food production and safeguard food security.