A powerful El Nino weather event could push an additional nearly 49 million people into acute food insecurity across some of the world's most vulnerable regions by the end of next year, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday.
The UN agency said in a report that there was an 81% chance of a very strong El Nino event, with sea surface temperatures at their warmest levels since at least 1982 and potentially making it the strongest such event since 1950.
Meanwhile, the chief economist of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said that the world is on the verge of another bout of food inflation as wars in Iran and Ukraine along with El Nino create a perfect storm of higher costs and lower crop yields.
Food prices were a key driver of the 2022 global inflation surge but have been relatively benign so far this year, even tempering in some places the surge caused by high energy costs.
El Nino, a periodic warming of ocean surface temperatures in the Pacific, alters global weather patterns and is often associated with drought in Southern Africa, delayed monsoons in parts of Asia and erratic rainfall elsewhere. "These are events that in the past have triggered large-scale hunger," Jean-Martin Bauer, director of WFP's Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Service, told reporters.
Based on an analysis of 45 countries deemed vulnerable to the adverse effects of El Nino, WFP estimates that the number of people facing acute food insecurity could rise by almost 49 million to a total of 274 million people, an increase of 22%, relative to the baseline population already experiencing crisis-level food insecurity or worse.
Central America and Southern Africa are expected to be among the hardest-hit regions, with the number of food-insecure people set to increase by 83% in Central America and nearly 75% in Southern Africa, the WFP report said.
Southern Africa as well as South America and the Caribbean could each see more than 12 million additional people fall into acute food insecurity.
Bauer said global food markets entered theEl Nino period in a relatively strong position following good harvests in 2025, but warned that conflict in the Middle East and potential weather-related crop losses could put further upward pressure on prices.
While past El Nino events have not typically triggered major global food price spikes, regional shortages and higher prices could worsen food access for vulnerable households, he said.
Funding cuts from US and European donors in 2025 were also hampering efforts to monitor the developing crisis, with Bauer describing a growing drought of food-security data used to assess the impact of El Nino.
WFP conducted about 1.1 million household surveys in 2024, compared with about 800,000 in 2025, while data collection has fallen further this year due to funding restrictions. "At a time when you have a risk like an El Nino, it is important to have high-frequency data collection," Bauer said, warning that reduced monitoring could make it harder to identify emerging food crises quickly.
EARLY ACTION REQUIRED WFP
said current forecasts point to rainfall deficits in parts of East Africa, the Sahel, Central America and the Caribbean, while flood risks could rise in Somalia and neighbouring areas.
Significant impacts are also projected across South and Southeast Asia, where drought risks, uneven monsoons and localised flooding could disrupt agricultural production, the report stated.
The agency stressed that the forecasts remain uncertain and that impacts will vary across regions, but warned that governments and aid agencies needed to prepare.
Richard Choularton, director of WFP's Climate and Resilience Service, said the agency had scaled up anticipatory action programmes in 18 countries, reaching more than 1.3 million people so far this year with cash and other assistance to help in the event of extreme weather. (Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin; Editing by Lisa
COSTS SEEN ACCELERATING BY YEAR-END, NEXT YEAR
"I expect that commodity prices will start to increase more now ... and food prices will start increasing by the end of the year, and next year for sure they will increase more," Maximo Torero told Reuters in an interview.
"The transmission from the commodity to the final food price is around three to six months," he said.
Although some commodity prices, such as wheat, maize and rice have increased in recent months, most still reflect relatively good harvests, rather than likely difficulties in the coming year.
"The Strait of Hormuz is a problem that affects all the inputs of agricultural commodities, agricultural systems," Torero said. "Brent oil, because it's used for pumping, packaging, processing, and transportation. And natural gas because it's used for fertilisers."
Meanwhile the damage inflicted by Ukraine on Russia's oil and gas infrastructure curtails the export market for diesel and natural gas, both of them key inputs in food production.
Since commodity prices are global, this inflicts pain across the world, even if richer countries have more cash to buffer producers.
"You're hearing this in Europe, in the US, Brazil and in Asia," Torero said. "Tight margins are putting stress in planting decisions."
Indeed, even in the US, which is self-sufficient for most key inputs, without federal assistance farmers growing nine principal crops may lose $32 billion in 2027, the American Farm Bureau Federation, an industry lobby group, said.
On a per-acre basis, every crop analysed is projected to remain below breakeven in 2027, it said.
Global wheat and corn planting was already cut in the first three months of the Iran war and some US producers have shifted to soybeans, because they require lower fertiliser inputs.
Australia, one of the world's top crop exporters, recently said that winter crop production is seen down by 21% in part because of a significant increase in both fuel and fertiliser prices and uncertainty over the availability of key inputs.
Meanwhile this year's El Nino weather phenomenon is likely to be especially strong, significantly shifting rainfall patterns, likely impacting commodity prices and potentially pushing tens of millions into acute food insecurity.
The monsoon in India is already delayed and below-average rainfall is seen this month, a potential hit for rice production that could impact global commodity costs.
Reuters
