When Climate Shocks Become Food Crises

A potentially very strong El Niño is creating a new food-security risk across vulnerable regions. The UN World Food Programme estimates that nearly 49 million additional people could face acute food insecurity by the end of 2027 if the weather event develops as expected. The danger is not El Niño alone: drought, erratic rainfall, conflict-driven energy and fertiliser pressures, and declining humanitarian funding could combine to turn weather shocks into prolonged food crises.

The next food crisis begins long before the shelves are empty

Food crises rarely begin when food disappears from a market. They begin much earlier, when rainfall fails, harvest expectations fall, fertiliser and fuel become more expensive, farmers lose livestock, and governments realise that the next harvest may not be enough to meet domestic demand. That chain is becoming increasingly important as the world enters a period in which climate variability is colliding with conflict, fragile supply chains and existing levels of hunger. The immediate warning comes from the World Food Programme, which estimates that a potentially very strong El Niño could push almost 49 million additional people into acute food insecurity across 45 vulnerable countries by the end of 2027. That would bring the total number of people facing crisis-level food insecurity or worse in those countries to around 274 million, a 22% increase over the baseline.

The projection is not a prediction that 49 million people will inevitably go hungry. It is a warning based on a scenario in which a strong El Niño produces significant weather disruptions across vulnerable regions. That distinction matters. The current global food system has buffers, harvest conditions vary between countries and governments can take preventive measures. But the warning is serious because the world is entering this potential climate shock while millions of people are already struggling with food insecurity, conflict and economic instability. The WFP has therefore been urging governments and humanitarian organisations to act before the effects of extreme weather become irreversible.

El Niño is a climate pattern with consequences far beyond the Pacific

El Niño is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, a natural climate pattern that alters atmospheric circulation and rainfall across large parts of the world. Its effects are not uniform. Some regions experience drought, others receive excessive rainfall, and some agricultural areas can experience disruptions to the timing of their rainy seasons. The current El Niño is already confirmed, and the WFP says there is an 80–90% likelihood that it will strengthen during 2026, potentially becoming one of the strongest events on record.

For agriculture, timing can be as important as total rainfall. A delayed monsoon, an unusually long dry spell or intense rainfall during harvest can damage crops even when the annual amount of precipitation does not appear extraordinary. Farmers operating with limited irrigation, savings or insurance have little room to absorb such shocks. A failed harvest can mean selling livestock, borrowing money, reducing food consumption or losing the ability to purchase seeds and fertiliser for the following season.

This is why the consequences of El Niño can continue long after the weather event itself. A household may survive one failed harvest, but if the following planting season is also disrupted, its ability to recover becomes much weaker. What begins as a climate event can therefore become a household-income crisis and eventually a food-security crisis.

The pressure is already visible across vulnerable regions

The WFP expects Central America and Southern Africa to be among the regions facing the sharpest increases in acute food insecurity under the projected scenario. The agency estimates that food insecurity could increase by 83% in Central America and by nearly 75% in Southern Africa, while Southern Africa, South America and the Caribbean could each see more than 12 million additional people facing acute food insecurity.

The geographic differences are important because El Niño does not produce one universal climate outcome. Southern Africa can experience severe dryness while other parts of the world face excessive rainfall or flooding. The WFP’s hunger-hotspot assessment identifies risks ranging from drought and rainfall deficits to flooding and disrupted agricultural windows across Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean.

That means the food-security response cannot be built around a single global solution. Governments have to understand their own exposure, identify the crops and communities most at risk and act before local shortages become national emergencies. In some places, that may mean drought-resistant seeds and water management. In others, it may mean protecting livestock, strengthening flood defences or ensuring that vulnerable households receive cash assistance before harvest losses occur.

The dangerous part is that climate is not the only shock

The emerging food-security risk is particularly serious because weather is arriving alongside other disruptions. The WFP has warned that conflict in the Middle East can push up energy prices, which then affect food production and transportation. Fuel is required to move agricultural products, operate farm machinery and transport food between regions, while fertiliser markets are closely connected to energy costs. When energy becomes more expensive, agricultural production becomes more expensive as well.

The effect can travel through the food system even when the original conflict is geographically distant. A farmer does not need to be located in a conflict zone to be affected by higher fuel or fertiliser prices. A transport company does not need to grow wheat to be affected by disruptions in energy markets. A household does not need to live in a drought-affected region to feel the consequences if global commodity prices rise.

That interconnectedness is what makes overlapping shocks particularly dangerous. A drought can reduce production, while higher energy costs raise the price of producing and transporting what remains. If fertiliser supplies are simultaneously constrained, the consequences can extend into the following agricultural season. The result is not necessarily a sudden worldwide shortage of food, but a gradual erosion of affordability and resilience among households that were already close to the edge.

A food crisis is also an economic crisis

Hunger is often discussed as though it depends only on whether enough food exists. In reality, food security is also about whether people can afford and physically access that food. A country can have adequate supplies while poor households are unable to purchase them. When prices rise, families with limited incomes may reduce the quantity or nutritional quality of their diets, spend less on healthcare and education, or take on debt to maintain basic consumption.

The WFP has warned that global food markets entered the current El Niño period in a relatively strong position following good harvests in 2025. That provides an important buffer, but it does not remove the risk. Regional crop losses, conflict-related disruptions and higher energy costs could still place upward pressure on prices and make food less affordable for vulnerable households.

This distinction is crucial because it means that preventing hunger is not simply a matter of producing more food. Governments also need functioning markets, transport networks, social-protection systems and enough fiscal capacity to help households absorb temporary shocks.

The world is losing some of its ability to see the crisis coming

Perhaps the most overlooked part of the emerging problem is the weakening of food-security monitoring. Early action depends on knowing what is happening to crops, food prices, household consumption and local livelihoods before a crisis becomes visible in national statistics. But the WFP says funding reductions have already affected its ability to collect high-frequency data. The agency conducted around 1.1 million household surveys in 2024, approximately 800,000 in 2025, and says data collection has fallen further in 2026 because of funding constraints.

That creates an uncomfortable contradiction. The world has increasingly sophisticated climate forecasts capable of identifying potential risks months in advance, yet the systems needed to determine how those risks are affecting households on the ground are under financial pressure. A forecast can tell governments that drought is likely. It cannot by itself tell them which communities have already exhausted their food reserves or which farmers can no longer afford seeds.

The value of early-warning systems therefore depends on what happens after the warning. Information has to be connected to financing, logistics and political decisions quickly enough to protect people before they reach crisis conditions.

The response has to begin before the harvest fails

This is why the international response is increasingly shifting from emergency relief towards anticipatory action. In June, the FAO and WFP launched a joint appeal seeking $202 million to protect nearly 8.8 million people across 22 high-risk countries from the potential effects of a strong El Niño. The measures include cash assistance, drought- and flood-resistant seeds, livestock protection, water harvesting, flood protection, agricultural advice and early-warning information.

The logic is straightforward. It is generally cheaper and more effective to protect a family’s livestock before a drought kills the animals than to replace the household’s entire livelihood afterward. Providing seeds before the planting window closes can be more useful than distributing food months later after a harvest has failed. Early action does not eliminate climate risk, but it can prevent a temporary shock from becoming a prolonged humanitarian emergency.

That approach also changes the role of climate information. Forecasting is not valuable merely because it can predict bad weather. Its real value comes from giving governments and communities enough time to make decisions before the consequences become irreversible.

The bigger question is whether the world has enough resilience

The developing El Niño is not evidence that a global food crisis is inevitable. It is a test of how resilient the world’s food systems have become. The global hunger picture had actually improved in 2025, with the latest UN food-security report estimating that 7.8% of the world’s population experienced hunger, down from 8.1% in 2024. But the same report warned that progress remains fragile and that conflict, weather extremes and reductions in humanitarian assistance could undermine those gains.

That fragility is the central issue. A resilient food system is not one that never experiences drought or crop failure. It is one in which a failed harvest does not immediately become a humanitarian disaster. It has diverse supply sources, functioning markets, strategic reserves, agricultural insurance, reliable infrastructure, social protection and the financial capacity to respond before vulnerable households are forced into destructive coping strategies.

Climate change makes that resilience more valuable because extreme events are occurring within systems that are already under pressure. Conflict can disrupt trade. Energy prices can affect fertiliser. Drought can reduce harvests. Inflation can make food unaffordable. Funding cuts can weaken the systems designed to identify the problem. Each shock can magnify another.

The danger therefore lies less in one extraordinary weather event than in the possibility that several pressures arrive together.

The real race is against the clock

The most important lesson from the current warning is that food crises should be treated as preventable risks rather than unavoidable disasters. The WFP already has forecasts identifying regions where drought, floods and agricultural disruption could intensify, and FAO and WFP programmes are designed to act before the worst impacts occur. The window for preparation exists precisely because El Niño’s effects can be anticipated months in advance.

What happens next will depend on whether governments and international institutions use that window. If early warnings lead to timely investment in farmers, water systems, food reserves, social protection and humanitarian assistance, millions of people could avoid falling into deeper insecurity. If action waits until harvests have failed and food prices have already risen, the cost of responding will be substantially higher.

The world therefore does not have to accept the projected increase in hunger as destiny. But it does have to recognise the nature of the threat. Climate shocks are increasingly transmitted through economic and geopolitical systems, and the most vulnerable households often have the fewest resources with which to absorb them.

The next food crisis, if it develops, may not have a single cause. It could emerge from the interaction of weather, conflict, energy, agriculture, trade and poverty.

That is precisely why preparation matters.