News detail | Climate change | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

A new El Niño phase is likely to begin within weeks, putting agriculture on alert around the world. A new analysis from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) maps where El Niño-linked drought is most likely to impact crops and pasturelands, raising risks for agricultural-dependent livelihoods and food security in regions already in crisis.

Scientists have studied El Niño’s impacts for decades, but the warnings have rarely been precise enough to guide action on the ground. As the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) forecasts a stronger-than-usual cycle, FAO’s analysis draws on 41 years of historical satellite imagery from its Agricultural Stress Index System (ASIS), tracing where strong and very strong El Niño events caused the most severe drought.

The findings point to a high probability of agricultural drought across major producing regions during key growing periods, aligning with regional precipitation forecasts showing below-average rainfall in the coming months. The risks are sharpest in the Sahel, across Southern Africa, in South and Southeast Asia, and in Central America’s Dry Corridor and the Caribbean, where some agricultural and pastureland areas face more than a 50 percent chance of drought over the coming months. At the same time, disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz are pushing up energy and fertilizer costs just as farmers prepare for the growing season.

FAO’s analysis echoes patterns seen in previous El Niño cycles. Many of the same regions were hit hard during the El Niño events of 2015–16 and 2023–24, when rainfall shortages reduced harvests and degraded pastureland with direct impacts on livestock. Each El Niño cycle exposes the same vulnerabilities: failed harvests, livestock losses, rising household debt, and migration in search of food and water. In 2015–16 alone, El Niño affected more than 60 million people and triggered USD 5 billion in humanitarian appeals across 23 countries.

With more than 80 percent of projected drought impacts hitting agriculture in low- and middle-income countries, the map offers a chance to act before forecasts become losses. The warning comes as climate extremes increasingly collide with conflict and economic strain. “This isn’t like previous El Niño’s. The planet is much warmer today, and with conflict and food insecurity widespread, this will hit hardest in places that are already vulnerable and have limited coping capacity,” said Jorge Alvar-Beltrán, FAO’s Natural Resources Officer.

Where exposure is highest

Risk is rarely about rainfall alone. A moderate drought can be devastating in places already facing conflict and chronic hunger, where crops depend entirely on rainfall, livestock holds much of a household’s wealth, and families have little else to fall back on.

Across the Sahel, food insecurity has deepened for five consecutive years, while conflict continues to displace people and limit access to vulnerable communities. Even modest rainfall can reduce food production and incomes in places with so little margin for recovery. The maps point to a broad belt of agricultural drought stretching from Senegal and southern Mauritania through Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria, and farther east into Ethiopia and Sudan.

In Southern Africa, the signal is more pronounced. The most recent El Niño cycle brought the region’s worst drought in more than a century, leaving 61 million people in need of assistance, straining livestock, water systems and pasturelands, and pushing more than 8 million people into food insecurity. FAO’s forecast points to a greater than 50 percent probability of agricultural drought across large parts of Namibia and Botswana, extending into Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and some parts of Mozambique and Madagascar. In a region where livestock underpins both food security and household wealth, the loss of pasture quickly becomes a loss of assets and wealth.

Further west, in Central America and the Caribbean, drought risks can quickly translate into human impact. The 2015–16 El Niño left 3.5 million people food insecure across Central America’s Dry Corridor, while in Haiti harvests collapsed by up to 70 percent in some areas, doubling food insecurity in a matter of months. Current forecasts point to a 70 percent probability of below-normal rainfall across the region. The risk of agricultural drought is highest along the Central America Dry Corridor, Colombia and Venezuela and the Caribbean such as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. 

In Asia, the risk extends beyond fields to global markets. El Niño can weaken the summer monsoon across much of India, putting rainfed crops such as rice and maize under stress during the critical growing season. In 2015, India’s maize output fell by 4 percent, and rice by 1 percent, tightening supplies in one of the world’s largest rice producers. Across Southeast Asia, the same event led to losses of around 15 million tonnes of rice, pushing up prices and increasing pressure on import-dependent countries. Agricultural drought risk runs across South and Southeast Asia, from Pakistan and India through to Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Viet Nam and further to the East including the Philippines, Indonesia and Timor-Leste.

When rainfall falls short, agriculture is hit first. The effects then cascade through crops, livestock, household assets and food security. “A farmer might first lose crops, then livestock, and with that their entire livelihood,” said Alvar-Beltrán. “With cascading impacts of multiple crises already evident, there is an urgent need to act early.”

A map for action

For farmers and pastoralists, timing is everything. When risk is identified early and at the local level, they can make critical planting and livestock-management decisions before the growing season is fully underway: delaying planting, choosing drought-tolerant crops, storing fodder for cattle and securing extra water reserves before shortages begin.

Acting locally requires local knowledge, acquired and transmitted over generations. This is where the analysis goes further than past warnings, narrowing the risk in some areas to a single square kilometre. But turning precision into protection means linking national meteorological and hydrological services, agriculture ministries and extension networks, so the warning reaches the farmer in time, said Riccardo Soldan, FAO’s Natural Resources Officer.

“This level of detail changes what a government can do. Instead of spreading resources thinly, it can concentrate support in the hotspots, directing cash transfers, water and irrigation support, livestock feed, and other critical inputs to the places most at risk.”

There is already evidence that acting before losses take hold can work. In Southern Africa, ahead of the 2023–24 El Niño, a regional pre-season effort directed nearly USD 31 million to more than two million people across seven countries, providing seeds, livestock support, and better forecasting through early warning systems.

In Central America, timely distribution of drought-tolerant and short-growing-cycle seeds prior to the 2023-2024 El Niño drought cycle helped families produce vegetables despite the drought, improving household food supplies and reducing the likelihood of families resorting to negative coping mechanisms, such as selling assets or skipping meals.

The new FAO analysis can help governments and partners decide where to move first, what support is most urgent, and which communities are least equipped to handle another failed season.

El Niño is forming, and the maps are clear. Early warning becomes effective prevention when it is acted upon timely and decisively. What happens next depends on how quickly decisions follow.

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