How El Niño could spark a worldwide food crisis — SkimNews
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- Arabica coffee prices have already jumped 30% as drought hits Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, and Indonesia, the world's top four producers, while UK government reports warn chocolate prices may rise as wildfires hit Indonesian cacao plantations.
- India's rice harvest is forecast to fall 7% (10 million tonnes) after El Niño cut summer monsoon rainfall by 13%, and the University of Reading's Akshay Deoras expects India to restrict exports as it did during the 2023-24 El Niño, when global prices climbed 30-40%.
- UK winter wheat and barley harvests already fell more than 20% during 2023-24 at a £1 billion cost to farmers, and consultancy Parker Walsh forecasts higher prices next year for bread, biscuits, beer, beef, and dairy.
- Southern and East Africa face compounding shocks — drought is already undermining sorghum and millet in Ethiopia, Sudan, and South Sudan, while maize in Zimbabwe and Mozambique could replicate the 2015-16 super El Niño when 36 million Africans went hungry.
- Laines Organic Farm in West Sussex tells of 'climate whiplash' — record summer heat and drought deformed this year's carrot crop, and farmers Tom Chadwick and Rosa Farber now fear El Niño-driven floods will rot garlic and broad bean seedlings planted in coming weeks.
- Humanitarian buffers are thinner: foreign aid decreased 23% in 2025 and the US Agency for International Development was abolished, even as the University of Oxford's Monika Zurek warns that simultaneous breadbasket failures in India, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, California, and Mexico make substitution nearly impossible.
Why it matters: Unlike a regional drought, El Niño hits rice, wheat, coffee, and produce simultaneously across exporters, and the UK and US hold no grain reserves — so a 7% Indian rice shortfall plus a £1 billion UK cereal hit cascades directly into grocery prices, while East African maize failures now meet a 23% drop in 2025 foreign aid.
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