Super El Niño poses critical threat to 500 million of the world’s farmers, researchers warn

The “super” El Niño weather event could see global agricultural output take a $342bn (£260bn) hit, and pose a critical threat to the world’s 500 million smallholder farmers, new research suggests.

El Niño events affect weather patterns globally — and the stronger they are, the more disruptive they can be to human health, agriculture and infrastructure. Forecasters currently suggest that by the winter, this event will become a “very strong” El Niño, sometimes also know as a “super El Niño”.

The figure for the damage to agriculture, shared exclusively with The Independent, was calculated by market research firm Risilience, which carries out climate risk modelling for multinationals including Tesco, Nestle and Zara-owner Inditex. It reflects the value, in last year's prices, of an average scenario for potential losses across 11 major food commodities.

The research is a timely reminder of the threat to both communities in the Global South that depend on rainfed agriculture to survive, and the vulnerability of UK supply chains to extreme weather as the planet heats, according to Andrew William Coburn, a catastrophe modeller at Cambridge University who is also chairman of Risilience.

For campaigners, it is also a reminder of the need for more effective regulation around supply chain due diligence in the UK, which the UK government was supposed to announce earlier this year, but which is now more than two months delayed.

“The smallholder farmers that we depend on for so many foods can do small things to adapt, but if they happen to live in regions that are worst affected, they are going to be hit by a freight train,” Dr Coburn told The Independent. “We urgently need to create safety nets for them.”

Risilience’s financial forecast is based on analytics that “combine climate science forecasts with agricultural science and machine learning,” Dr Coburn said. It is based on 11 key commodities including grains, oils, coffee, cocoa, dairy and livestock, which have a combined anticipated yield loss of up to 14 per cent during the extreme weather event.

Scientists at the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed this week that 2026 would see an El Niño, which is a climate phenomenon that sees warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, and which results in changing rainfall patterns across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Recent years have seen these weather events become turbocharged by climate change, causing unprecedented temperature spikes and exacerbating both droughts and extreme flooding.

Scenarios foreseen by Risilience include surges in the price of staple crops of 50 to 100 per cent, with possible export bans of rice from the governments of India, Vietnam and Thailand potentially removing millions of tonnes from the global market.

Aid groups are warning that global food crises, which have already been hit hard by plummeting foreign aid flows from wealthy countries, could now worsen further with the super El Niño.

This week, UN food agencies launched a $202m appeal to shield 8.8 million people from El Niño via “anticipatory action” interventions ahead of possible climate shocks, which could include both early warning systems and cash transfers to farmers.

“With El Niño on the horizon, we have a narrow window to act so families are not forced into impossible choices later,’ said Carl Skau, World Food Programme acting executive director. “We cannot afford the fallout of another food crisis.”

Risilience is working with companies to develop contingency plans that can help them prepare for possible supply chain shocks. “They can do things like increase their stockpiles in case there are shortfalls, or diversify their supplies, or integrate crop insurance,” said Dr Coburn.

Smallholders, he added, can be supported with drought-resistant seeds, training schemes, and support towards economic diversification - so long as there is money available to do all of this.

For Marie Rumsby, advocacy director at the Fairtrade Foundation, this new threat for smallholder farmers reflects why the UK needs to introduce a a “mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD) law”, which would see companies compelled to measure and address problems in their supply chain related to human rights and the environment.

As part of the UK Trade Strategy that was announced last year, the government launched a review into responsible business conduct policy that was set to see an announcement around HREDD by the end of March 2026 - but more than two months later, there has been no response.

“We’re entering an El Niño year with food systems already under strain from climate change. The people feeding and powering the global economy are already experiencing the worst impacts of the climate crisis, despite having done the least to cause it,” Ms Rumsby told The Independent.

“It cannot fall to farmers to fix a crisis they did not create. Voluntary action from business is no longer enough. We need the Government to step up with clear, enforceable rules that hold companies to account, protect people and the planet, and ensure the cost of climate change does not fall on those least able to pay.”

Dr Coburn further suggested that further delays to introducing such a policy could be “hugely damaging” to the government.

The chaos caused by the super El Niño is also likely to push up the price of certain foodstuffs for UK consumers.

“Climate change has already made things pretty bad for UK consumers, adding £360 on the average UK household food bill over two years,” Gareth Redmond-King and the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) told The Independent, suggesting that cocoa and coffee prices are key areas of concern.

“The most obvious way to address this is through efforts to get to net zero - the only solution we have to tackling climate change and preventing this getting worse and more dangerous in future El Niño episodes,” he added.

In response to the suggestion that the UK should be moving faster on new supply chain regulations, a Department for Business and Trade spokesperson told The Independent : "This government is committed to rooting out forced labour, human rights abuses, exploitative environmental practices, bribery and corruption. That's why the UK launched the Responsible Business Conduct review.

"The review is progressing at pace, and ministers will update parliament when it is complete."

This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project