Microplastics negatively affect plants’ capacity for photosynthesis, causing vital crops like maize, rice, and wheat to cease to exist. Experts estimate that between 4% and 14% of these staple crops are being lost due to the pervasive pollution. Microplastic pollution could potentially put an additional 400 million people at risk of starvation by 2040, worsening the already dire hunger crisis that affected 700 million people in 2022. The annual crop losses caused by microplastics could be of a similar scale to those caused by the climate crisis in recent decades, the researchers behind the new research said. The world is already facing a challenge to produce sufficient food sustainably, with the global population expected to rise to 10 billion by around 2058. The findings underscore the urgency to safeguard global food supplies in the face of the growing plastic crisis, said the researchers, led by Prof Huan Zhong, at Nanjing University in China. The study combined more than 3,000 observations of the impact of microplastic on plants, taken from 157 studies.