In a turbulent year that has seen farmers worldwide get pummeled by trade wars, fertilizer shortages, and sky-high energy prices, another potential shock looms on the horizon.
Meteorologists have declared that the world is already seeing the cyclical weather phenomenon known as El Niño, which has big implications for crop production everywhere. On the most basic level, El Niño events see unusually warm waters in the Pacific Ocean, which pump heat into the atmosphere that then influences global rainfall patterns and temperatures.
In a turbulent year that has seen farmers worldwide get pummeled by trade wars, fertilizer shortages, and sky-high energy prices, another potential shock looms on the horizon.
Meteorologists have declared that the world is already seeing the cyclical weather phenomenon known as El Niño, which has big implications for crop production everywhere. On the most basic level, El Niño events see unusually warm waters in the Pacific Ocean, which pump heat into the atmosphere that then influences global rainfall patterns and temperatures.
With forecasts that this could shape up to be a particularly strong El Niño event, aid agencies are bracing for the worst in regions already seeing high levels of food insecurity. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) earlier this month issued a joint appeal for more than $200 million to shield 8.8 million people in high-risk countries from the weather phenomenon’s potential damages.
“El Niño always hits the most vulnerable farmers the hardest,” said Ertharin Cousin, a former executive director of the WFP.
Global agriculture is no stranger to tumultuous weather, or even the impacts of El Niño, which last occurred between 2023 and 2024. El Niño events take place about every two to seven years, according to Brian Barker, a principal faculty specialist at the University of Maryland who works for NASA Harvest, the agency’s food security and agriculture program.
But the geopolitical and economic blows of the past few months have injected additional volatility into the sector.
“This is a particularly challenging year because you already have farmers who are affected by higher fertilizer prices, higher energy prices, and that is potentially compounded now by El Niño,” Cousin said.
The impacts of El Niño events are often felt unevenly by region, experts said, driving wetter conditions in some regions and intensifying drought risks in others. At the global level, crop production impacts tend to offset one another, particularly for corn and wheat, Barker said. And there remains considerable uncertainty about what this El Niño will look like.
“Each El Niño event is different with regards to strength, structure, and timing, so that you never receive exactly the same impacts around the world,” Barker added, noting that impacts depend on a region’s initial agricultural conditions.
On the upside, world inventories of rice, wheat, corn, and soybeans are high right now, offering some relief. “Because of the stocks we have at a global level, the market seems not as concerned,” said Seth Meyer, a former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
It’s at the regional level where pain will likely be felt. During the El Niño of 2015-16, one of the strongest El Niños on record, Paraguay saw floods that pushed 145,000 people from their homes; Indian farmers saw droughts rage when they were expecting much-needed rainfall from monsoons; and South Africa faced one of its most intense droughts in decades.
As a result of that drought in South Africa, total corn output plunged by nearly 50 percent compared to the five-year average, according to the USDA. Maize and rice output dropped in Asia in 2015, driving up key food prices, per the FAO.
That El Niño event impacted more than 60 million people, according to the FAO, and triggered $5 billion in humanitarian appeals.
This time around, the most at-risk regions are southern Africa, Central America, India, and Australia, according to a report by the Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM). Worryingly, in southern Africa, the expected peak of this El Niño event will overlap with the main maize season, the report said.
Aid agencies are worried. “We know that regions of the world that are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity and facing food crises are some of the areas with the highest levels of risk,” said Richard Choularton, the director of the Climate and Resilience Service at the WFP.
El Niño has a “pretty significant impact on some major producing countries that can drive global food prices higher and where we ourselves buy food from for our operations,” he added. “You combine that with the knock-on impacts of the Middle East crisis … that’s a really concerning combination.”
Not everyone will be hurt from the phenomenon. In the United States, where farmers—one of U.S. President Donald Trump’s core constituencies—have for months suffered economically under his trade wars and Iran war, El Niño may have a positive impact on crop yields, according to the GEOGLAM report. Yields in parts of Central Asia, East Africa, and South America may also benefit, the report said.
“It doesn’t generally have a negative effect on us [in the United States],” said Meyer, the former USDA chief economist.
But for more vulnerable regions, the potential shocks from this El Niño are coming at a time when the WFP has warned that some 45 million people are at risk of acute food insecurity and global humanitarian aid funding has plunged.
“We’re seeing increased effects of both climate and conflict on food security at a time when national governments have reduced their support for food assistance, and it’s not just the U.S.—other governments have reduced their support as well,” said Cousin, the former WFP chief.
With these production risks looming, trade between countries will be “the most important tool” for mitigating El Niño-induced production deficits, Barker said.
“The key thing is seeing this coming and understanding where we might see failures in the future, particularly southern Africa,” he said, “and how important trade is here in getting food to where it needs to be in advance of any crop failure.”
