Super El Nino threatens crops, but global food stocks offer relief

A developing super El Nino is threatening harvests across Asia, Africa and the Americas, but the immediate shock to food markets may be softer than in past climate crises. Near-record global inventories and better harvest planning are giving traders and governments a cushion, even as meteorologists expect the pattern to strengthen and potentially rival earlier extreme events.

The risk still falls hardest on food staples. El Nino typically brings heat and dryness to large parts of Asia while driving heavy rains in the Americas, a split that can damage rice, cereals and other crops in very different ways depending on where the weather turns. Shirley Mustafa, an economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, pointed to some relief in current stockpiles and recent harvests of rice and other cereals, suggesting the world has more food already in storage than it did during earlier shocks.

That matters because the last super El Nino, in 2015 to 2016, was one of the most intense and widespread climate shocks in the past 100 years. FAO said it affected the agriculture, food security and nutritional status of about 60 million people worldwide, while also contributing to droughts, floods and record global temperatures that produced tens of billions of dollars in economic losses. The agency has warned that El Nino-induced climate hazards pose high risks to food security because they disrupt rainfall and temperature patterns, with farmers, pastoralists, fishers and other small-scale producers taking the first hit.

FAO has identified southern Africa, Central America and Far East Asia as higher-risk areas for El Nino-linked drought, making those regions key watchpoints for crop losses and local food stress. Because El Nino can often be predicted months in advance, FAO says governments and aid agencies have a window to design anticipatory actions and emergency responses before the worst damage lands. That planning matters for supply chains as much as farms, since shortages in one exporting region can still be offset by major suppliers elsewhere, at least at first.

The broader market backdrop is already uneasy. The World Bank said domestic food price inflation remained moderately high in early 2026, and the share of low-income countries with food inflation above 5% rose from 40.0% in January to 45.0% in March. If the current El Nino intensifies, that pressure could spread through grain and staple-food trade flows later, leaving U.S. consumers less exposed now but still vulnerable if drought and flood damage tighten global supplies in the months ahead.