How Two Wars and El Nino Could Fuel World Hunger

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A potentially record-strength El Nino is now intensifying across the Pacific, bringing either drought or flooding to the world's key farming regions.

Earlier this month, the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted a 63% chance that the unusual weather pattern could be "very strong" this year.

JP Morgan, meanwhile, warned last week that El Nino, combined with $100 (€88) oil prices, could spike food inflation by up to 1.5%.

The arrival of El Nino follows two major conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, during which global food supplies have held up remarkably well.

So, could this third crisis bring the perfect storm that tips the balance?

Triple blow to global food security

Russia's war in Ukraine still hangs over one of the world's major grain-exporting regions, where repeated attacks on ports and farmland continue to threaten one of the planet's key breadbaskets.

The Iran war has driven up energy and fertilizer prices, raising the cost of growing food worldwide and causing temporary supply disruptions for key soil nutrients.

El Nino, which shifts rainfall and temperature patterns worldwide, is expected to be so strong that the World Bank warned recently it could cut rice output by 20% to 50% in affected regions.

Maximo Torero, chief economist of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), warned of a "compound effect" that could create "a very complex situation" by the end of the year.

"We are very concerned about El Nino and the delay of the monsoon ... in India," Torero told DW.

El Nino is expected to slow down and weaken India’s monsoon season, a vital time for rice planting. June already saw around 40% less rainfall than normal, according to local media.

India produces nearly a third of the world’s rice, the vast majority of which is consumed domestically.

Aside from South Asia, the FAO thinks the El Nino risks are highest in Africa's Sahel region, southern Africa, Southeast Asia and in the Dry Corridor of Central America.

The UN food agency warned this month that some of these regions face a more than 50% chance of drought in the next few months.

World producing more food than ever

Despite the geopolitical strife, food prices remain nearly 20% below their 2022 peak, according to the FAO Food Price Index.

The world brought in the biggest grain harvest in history last year. This is because farmers planted more land, the weather has been favorable and the crops produced more per acre.

While this year is expected to be slightly smaller, the harvest will still be the second-largest ever. 

“We are seeing improvements in agricultural productivity," Simone Bunse, senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told DW, citing India and Latin America as notable examples.

"These have helped sustain food production and reduce undernourishment. And this is balancing some of the localized impacts of conflict.”

Millions still go hungry

War is a major barrier to getting hunger under control globally. The UN says 266 million people are still facing acute hunger, more than half of them due to conflict.

The worst of it is concentrated in just a handful of conflict-hit countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Yemen, where supplies cannot reach the people who need them.

"We have enough calories produced in the world to feed everybody," Torero said. "Those calories are not distributed in the same way across the world, and that's the challenge."

War often destroys local food sources, displaces millions of people, damages infrastructure and severely cuts humanitarian access. In some hotspots such as Sudan and Gaza, experts say hunger is increasingly being used as a weapon.

"Parties deliberately destroy farmland, livestock, water systems, food storage facilities, and transport routes. They jeopardize access to markets and obstruct humanitarian assistance," SIPRI's Bunse told DW.

Farmers pinched by elevated fertilizer prices

Another risk to global food supplies is fertilizer, around a third of which normally passes through the Strait of Hormuz. The strait remains heavily disrupted after a failed ceasefire between the US and Iran, along with attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

Some farmers have been paying substantially more for fertilizer, delaying purchases or switching to crops that require less fertilizer. If they ultimately apply less, yields could suffer in the next harvest.

Food security experts believe the Middle East conflict alone could leave millions more people hungry by 2030 — and that projection does not yet account for the effects of El Nino.

With temperatures in the Pacific Ocean expected to rise by 3.6 degrees Celsius (38.4 degrees Fahrenheit) — almost double the 2015/6 El Nino — climate think tank Berkeley Earth now predicts this year's weather pattern will be strongest on record.

If oil prices leap past $120 a barrel again, if grain exports from Ukraine are successfully blocked, or if El Nino bites harder into next year’s crops as farmers plant less, then the world could face a spike in hunger, experts predict.

If all of those happen at once, the impact would be far worse, with JP Morgan predicting that food inflation will surpass 5% in 2027 and that emerging markets would take the biggest hit.

Read: BMKG Ramps Up Support as Indonesia Faces Drought and El Nino

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