A Proactive and Urgent Regional Strategy to Address the Threat of El Niño — Muhammad Ibrahim Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA)

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.

Even separately, both factors pose enormous challenges for regional agriculture.
Combined, they could become a perfect storm for millions of producers, affecting food
security in quite a few nations.

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. The common concern is the uncertainty regarding the phenomenon’s
potentially greater intensity.

In the Southern Cone, particularly in Argentina and Brazil, some regions could benefit from
increased rainfall and a recovery in crop yields. In Central America, the Caribbean, and
northern South America, the outlook is less favorable.

There, the risk of lower yields and crop losses, decreased livestock productivity,
disruptions in agricultural markets, and sharp increases in food prices is significant, which
can lead to a deterioration in food security and force producers and consumers to face
costs running into the millions. These are not potential dangers; recent history bears them
out.

These impacts, particularly in rural areas, are often followed by debt, migration, and
nutritional decline.

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. And when fertilizers become more expensive or scarce, many choose to reduce
application rates, decrease the area planted, or switch to less demanding crops, with
immediate and negative effects on yields and production.

Unlike in the past, it is now possible to anticipate the occurrence, impacts, and
consequences of climate phenomena such as El Niño—or its counterpart, La Niña.
Today, it is unjustifiable to act only on the consequences and limit ourselves to reacting
when drought is advanced, floods occur, crops are lost, or prices rise. We must act sooner
to minimize negative impacts.

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.

In this context, international technical cooperation, with its capacity for political and
technical coordination and its relationships with governments, producers, companies, and
international financial institutions, is uniquely positioned to promote regional cooperation
agreements and proactive responses, as well as, if necessary, to coordinate aid and
solidarity efforts to address emergencies.

Among the public-private collaboration mechanisms that can be promoted are regional
platforms for climate and agricultural coordination; agreements with fertilizer and logistics
companies to ensure supply in vulnerable areas; innovative financial instruments in
partnership with public and private banks; the expansion of climate insurance; and joint
technological adaptation programs for small and medium-sized producers.

Private sector participation is crucial for these strategies to be viable and scalable, given
that chemical companies, agribusiness, banks, technology firms, and export chains play a
fundamental role in the shared development of agricultural resilience.
Strengthening early warning systems and transforming climate information into concrete
decision-making tools must become a regional priority. Latin America and the Caribbean
produce meteorological and agricultural data of immense value, but often that information
does not reach producers in a timely manner.

The widespread adoption of drought-resistant seeds and tools for efficient water
management, combined with an agronomic management strategy that incorporates
advanced technologies (such as GPS, drones, and sensors), should be among the other
objectives of this coordination.

The dual challenge posed by El Niño and the fertilizer crisis can also become an
opportunity: that of building a new agri-food governance system based on regional
cooperation, innovation, and foresight.
Latin America and the Caribbean produce food for billions of people, both within and
beyond their borders. Protecting this productive capacity is not merely an economic
challenge. It is a strategic issue for development, rural stability, and global food security.

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