El Niño speeds climate crisis and tests Latin America’s food security
This story by Connectas originally appeared on Global Voices on 2026-10-08. Republished under CC BY 3.0. Text only, shown without changes.
As the climate pattern intensifies, Latin America faces a growing food security challenge
Originally published on Global Voices
Illustration made by Connectas. Used with permission.
This article by Fabiola Chambi first appeared in CONNECTAS , in Spanish, on September 2, 2026. An edited version is being republished on Global Voices under a content partnership agreement.
“We are sad, completely desperate. We have lost llamas, alpacas, sheep — we haven’t even been able to count them all yet […] That is how we make a living. We put our children through school and sell our products in the city.” The last heavy snowfall René Luna could remember had caught him by surprise nearly 25 years ago, but never anything like this . A blanket of snow covered the landscape, and hundreds of animals were buried in his municipality in central Bolivia, which has now been declared a disaster zone.
According to experts, this situation is a consequence of the phenomenon scientifically known as El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) , which in Latin America causes extreme temperatures or a lack of rainfall during the rainy season. This, in turn, leads to crop losses in rural communities, where farmers helplessly watch as months or even years of work are wiped out.
The livelihoods of Latin American families depend on hard work in the fields, distribution systems, and access to food. Unfortunately, this chain is becoming increasingly vulnerable as climate-related events disrupt it and worsen conditions in some subregions.
In the 2026 edition of “State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World,” five international organizations reported that “25.8 percent of the world’s population (around 2.1 billion people) experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2025, meaning that at times [they] were forced to choose lower-quality or smaller quantities of food.” Paradoxically, the data showed a decline in hunger for the third consecutive year, meaning that improvements are possible, but they remain fragile and uneven.
Lena Savelli, Regional Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), explains that, to understand this phenomenon in relation to food security, three factors must be taken into account: first, conditions in the fields; second, prices and availability in the market; and third, families’ purchasing power and diets.
“What we will probably see over the coming months,” she predicts, “is that droughts or extreme rainfall […] will reduce the yields of key crops such as corn, beans, rice, and even cocoa and coffee, which will see their supply shrink and prices rise in markets and stores […] So, this means eating more expensive food with less variety, especially for those who already have low incomes. Families may find that the cost of their household’s basic food basket increases and that shopping becomes more difficult.”
However, Latin America and the Caribbean face a paradox, Savelli says: “It is an exporting region, but at the same time it has the highest cost in the world for a healthy diet: almost five dollars — exactly USD 4.91 — for each person per day. And people in this region do not have the income needed to feed their families; millions cannot afford to eat well. That is why we face a double burden of hunger, but we also have obesity, which impacts the economy.”
According to monitoring conducted by the WFP , several countries have already declared emergencies , and El Niño is expected to intensify during the second half of the year. For Jhenifer Mojica, an agricultural expert and former Colombian ambassador to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), “smallholder family farming, including that of Indigenous peoples and local communities, is the backbone of food supply, but there is little awareness of how dependent we are on them.” She says that 80 percent of food security in Latin American countries depends on small-scale producers like these.
“An individual producer can hardly cope with this alone, and what we are going to see is an enormous amount of losses, as we are already seeing,” Mojica adds. “For example, the forest fires here in Tolima , a predominantly agricultural region where coffee, cocoa, fruits, and vegetables are grown. For a farming family, a harvest is not simply a harvest — it is the loss of their family’s assets.”
This phenomenon comprises three phases: El Niño, when the surface waters of the equatorial Pacific experience anomalous warming, which occurs on average every two to seven years and typically lasts nine to 12 months; La Niña, when those waters become colder than normal; and a third phase characterized by the transition between the two, with average temperatures — or temperatures within their usual range — lasting between one and six months.
For Christian Domínguez, a researcher at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México’s (UNAM) Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Change, this phenomenon has always existed because it is part of natural climate variability. Over time, however, it has undergone increasingly intense changes.
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the areas at greatest climate risk will be the Central American Dry Corridor (a belt stretching across Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala), the Caribbean, and northern South America, which will be particularly affected by droughts, water shortages, and heat waves.
Meanwhile, Ecuador’s and Peru’s Pacific coasts could be affected by extreme rainfall and flooding, and doutheastern South America will experience above-average precipitation and severe storms.
Many governments are moving fast to handle emergencies , but when it comes to effective prevention, there is a long road ahead. Savelli argues for tackling the structural causes: “It’s not just about producing more. We have to confront persistent inequality, weak social mobility, and poor diets. Several countries in the region still struggle with high rates of child malnutrition, and we need to strengthen local food systems to make sure production actually reaches markets.”
Some encouraging examples have emerged in Central America’s Dry Corridor, where alert systems now tell farmers when to plant, paired with practical prevention messaging . Climate insurance is another option, shielding people, businesses and governments from the economic losses that extreme weather causes.
The risks extend to access to basic services, health (as mosquito populations spread), infrastructure, transportation and jobs. As per the International Labour Organization (ILO) report “ El Niño 2026-2027 and the World of Work in Latin America and the Caribbean ,” informal, rural and outdoor workers are among the most exposed. As the report puts it, “El Niño 2026-2027 is, above all, a test of Latin America’s institutional resilience at a moment when external shocks keep piling up.”
El Niño regresó en junio y sus efectos ya son visibles desde el espacio.
Nuevos mapas muestran concentraciones de clorofila mucho más bajas que en otros años en el Pacífico ecuatorial, una señal de cambios en el fitoplancton que sustenta la red trófica marina. https://t.co/vJlP0v0XYQ
— NASA en español (@NASA_es) August 25, 2026
El Niño returned in June and its effects are already visible from space. New maps show concentrations of chlorophyll in the equatorial Pacific that are much lower than in other years, a signal of changes in the phytoplankton that sustains the marine food web.
As Domínguez adds, “We also have to consider that climate change is intensifying phenomena we already knew: droughts, heavy rains, heat waves, even cold waves. These existed long before, but by altering our environment, our atmosphere, we now face the consequences. So how do we live with this? We need to learn to adapt and respond through early-warning systems.”
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