A proactive and urgent regional strategy needed for El Niño threat

Published on June 1, 2026

The extreme variant of the El Niño phenomenon predicted by international weather forecasts, combined with the global fertilizer crisis, poses a dual threat to rural economies, social stability, and agricultural production in Latin America and the Caribbean a region critical to global food security.

Forecasts indicate a high probability of El Niño developing this year, with potentially uneven effects: heavy rains and flooding in some regions; prolonged droughts and water stress in others.

For agricultural producers, especially small and medium-sized ones, climate uncertainty makes it difficult to decide what to plant, how much to invest, or what level of fertilization to apply.

For all these reasons, the time has come to move toward a proactive regional strategy.

It is imperative to promote a broad hemispheric dialogue on agri-food resilience that brings together governments, international organizations, producers, the financial sector, academia, and the private sector around a common agenda: developing anticipation capabilities to protect both agricultural production and life in rural areas.

SOURCE: Opinion article written by Muhammad Ibrahim, Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA)