'In for surprises': Aid orgs brace for El Niño's food security impact

A strong El Niño felt worldwide will push additional people into food insecurity next year, experts warn, as too much rain in some areas, while not enough in others, will disrupt agricultural production and livelihoods. El Niño, which officially began in July, is caused by warmer sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean and can alter global weather patterns. It occurs on average every two to seven years and typically lasts about a year. In some areas the phenomenon causes rain and in others, drought. From East Africa to Central America to the Indo Pacific, humanitarian organizations are preparing to respond to increased food insecurity, particularly in rural communities. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, known as FEWS NET, estimates that as many as 110 million people will need food assistance into early next year in the 30 countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East that it monitors. In places such as Somalia, which is recovering from a yearslong drought that killed an estimated 4 million livestock and a narrowly avoided famine, El Niño means the opposite problem for the region: too much rain. Shaun Ferris, senior technical advisor of agriculture, livelihoods, and markets at Catholic Relief Services, said the rains in East Africa are just starting, so it can be incredibly challenging for humanitarian organizations to know the scale of possible emergencies. He also noted it comes on the heels of multiple years of already elevated need globally, partly due to the residual effects of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the debt crisis. “[With drought], you know what you’re looking at: It’s going to be so many months that you have to endure if there’s no rain. I think when it comes to the really severe rainfall that people are expecting with the El Niño, these kinds of flash floods are much more difficult to prepare for, because you’re not really sure where the flooding is going to be,” Ferris said. “The prospect now of El Niño is creating a lot of uncertainty.” Sometimes, he said, people receive an entire year’s worth of rain in just a week. This can wash away crops during the planting season, making the land prone to runoff because nothing is growing yet. “There isn’t a lot of money in government coffers to be able to respond, so if we didn’t have the last three years of multiple shocks and governments were doing reasonably well and they had funding for emergency support in their treasuries, they would be able to respond more easily. But at the moment, everybody is strapped,” Ferris said. “They’re less able to prepare, and there’s less government emergency support on the ground to respond. So people are unfortunately evermore reliant on international systems.” “The prospect now of El Niño is creating a lot of uncertainty.” --— Shaun Ferris, senior technical advisor of agriculture, livelihoods, and markets at Catholic Relief Services FEWS NET predicts that overall, the extra rain will aid the Horn of Africa to recover from the recent drought, which will result in a net decrease in the number of food insecure people. Southern Africa, meanwhile, is expected to experience drought. Latin America also becomes drier during El Niño years, threatening smallholder farmers who don’t have irrigation systems. Most don’t have access to current weather and climate data either, which causes them to be unprepared when erratic weather patterns disrupt their growing seasons. In Guatemala, farmers have been struggling to adapt to changing conditions for years, with the country needing to import two of its dietary staples — corn and beans — because it cannot grow enough domestically to feed the entire population. FEWS NET predicts as many as 1.5 million Guatemalans will require food assistance by April 2024, with some areas of the country experiencing crisis levels of food insecurity. Rene Patal, a program implementation officer at Mercy Corps Guatemala, said domestic prices are only expected to increase, further straining the ability of people to afford a nutritious diet. He said some farmers in the communities that his organization works in no longer see a future in agriculture because growing conditions have become so challenging. He described a widespread feeling of desperation. “I think a lot of people will start to look for other alternatives, suddenly leaving agriculture and migrating to the United States, for example, or going to Guatemala’s capital city to look for another way to earn a livelihood for their families,” Patal said. “We’ve seen this very recently.” To counter the worst climate effects, Mercy Corps is training farmers to conserve soil to prevent it from washing away when it does rain heavily, as well as how to capture rainwater that can be used for irrigation during drought. They have also identified climate-resilient seeds that give farmers a better chance to harvest their crops. In the Asia Pacific region, the worst of El Niño’s effects should hit between December and May, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. But food prices have already become elevated in anticipation of the worst of the weather pattern, with rice, coffee, and sugar more expensive. FAO is working with governments in the region, such as the Philippines, to support anticipatory drought measures. Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea are also likely to experience severe drought, while Fiji is preparing for cyclones. “The primary challenges we face are the need for swift execution and ensuring that our activities are carried out promptly to enable early action and livelihood protection,” said Hang Thi Thanh Pham, senior resilience officer at the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. “The second challenge is achieving scalability, ensuring that we have the necessary and flexible resources to support vulnerable households at risk.” FEWS NET has warned donor governments to expect elevated food security needs, but also says that exact need is incredibly difficult to predict. Laura Harrison of the University of California Santa Barbara Climate Hazards Center, which works with FEWS NET, said record high global temperatures are further complicating things. “We’re looking at a new kind of pace where it’s hard to know what’s going to happen,” Harrison said.” “But we would expect global temperatures to increase further from the record temperatures that they’ve already been recently — the potentially strong, sustained El Niño that we may be facing and historical impacts being variable but … I think we may be in for some surprises.”