Latin America and the Caribbean, a region that underpins global food security, is facing an unprecedented dual threat that puts agricultural output, rural livelihoods, and regional social stability at grave risk: the extreme El Niño event forecast for 2026, paired with the ongoing global fertilizer shortage. What makes this confluence of crises particularly dangerous is that each challenge alone is enough to upend regional farming, but together, they threaten to create a catastrophic perfect storm that will impact millions of agricultural producers and undermine food access across dozens of nations. Meteorological forecasts have placed the probability of a strong El Niño developing this year at exceptionally high levels, and the phenomenon is expected to bring wildly uneven impacts across the region: catastrophic flooding and torrential rainfall in some zones, and prolonged, crippling drought and water scarcity in others. What keeps climate and agriculture experts up at night is the deep uncertainty around just how intense this extreme event could ultimately be. For the Southern Cone, particularly parts of Argentina and Brazil, the El Niño event may bring a silver lining: increased rainfall that could help replenish parched soils and support a rebound in major crop yields. But the outlook is far grimmer for Central America, the Caribbean, and large swathes of northern South America. Across these vulnerable areas, the risks are stark: massive crop yield declines and outright harvest failures, reduced livestock output, broken supply chains that disrupt agricultural markets, and sharp, sudden spikes in staple food prices. These impacts are not abstract hypothetical risks—they are patterns that have played out repeatedly in recent El Niño events, and the economic costs to producers and consumers already run into hundreds of millions of dollars. Beyond immediate production losses, the crisis tends to ripple outward into long-term hardship for rural communities: overburdened producer debt, outmigration from struggling rural areas, and widespread nutritional decline as households are forced to cut back on quality food. For small and medium-sized producers, who make up the backbone of regional food production, this overlapping uncertainty creates impossible planning choices. When climate patterns are unpredictable, it becomes nearly impossible to decide which crops to plant, how much capital to invest, or what level of fertilizer to apply. Add skyrocketing fertilizer prices and persistent supply shortages to the equation, and many producers have no choice but to cut fertilizer application rates, reduce the total area they plant, or shift to less nutrient-demanding, lower-yield crops—all changes that immediately drag down total production and output. Unlike past decades, however, today’s science and technology give the region the unique ability to anticipate the arrival and potential impacts of climate events like El Niño and its counterpart La Niña. In this day and age, it is no longer acceptable for governments and regional bodies to take a reactive approach, waiting to act until drought has already parched fields, floods have destroyed homes and crops, and food prices have spiraled out of control. The only way to meaningfully reduce harm is to act ahead of the event. That is why regional agricultural leaders are calling for an urgent shift to a coordinated, proactive regional resilience strategy. It is critical that the region convene a broad hemispheric dialogue focused on building agri-food resilience, bringing all key stakeholders to the table: national governments, multilateral international organizations, producer associations, the global financial sector, academic institutions, and private industry. The shared goal of this collaboration must be to build robust anticipation capacity that protects both agricultural production and rural livelihoods across the region. In this effort, international technical cooperation bodies have a uniquely important role to play: they already have established frameworks for political and technical coordination, deep working relationships with national governments, producers, private companies, and international financial institutions, putting them in the perfect position to negotiate regional cooperation agreements, coordinate proactive preparedness measures, and organize emergency aid and solidarity responses if a crisis does unfold. A number of concrete public-private collaboration mechanisms can be advanced immediately. These include cross-regional climate and agricultural coordination platforms, pre-negotiated agreements with fertilizer producers and logistics firms to guarantee steady fertilizer access for the most vulnerable areas, innovative climate-focused financial tools developed in partnership with public and private banks, widespread expansion of accessible climate index insurance for small producers, and joint technology adaptation programs designed to bring modern tools to small and medium-sized farming operations. Private sector participation is non-negotiable for these strategies to become viable and scalable across the region. Fertilizer manufacturers, large agribusiness operators, financial institutions, technology firms, and agricultural export chains all hold core responsibilities and critical resources that make them essential partners in building shared agricultural resilience. Another top regional priority must be strengthening early warning systems and turning raw climate data into actionable decision-making tools that reach producers directly. Latin America and the Caribbean already generate an enormous volume of high-value meteorological and agricultural data, but too often this information fails to reach the producers who need it most in a timely, usable format. Beyond early warning, the coordinated strategy should prioritize widespread adoption of drought-resistant crop varieties and efficient water management infrastructure, paired with updated agronomic management practices that leverage cutting-edge technologies such as GPS mapping, agricultural drones, and soil moisture sensors to boost productivity and resilience. Importantly, leaders frame this dual crisis not just as a threat, but as a unique opportunity to build a new, more resilient agri-food governance system rooted in cross-regional cooperation, technological innovation, and proactive forward planning. As a region, Latin America and the Caribbean produce food for billions of people across the globe, feeding their own populations and meeting critical demand in global markets. Protecting this vital productive capacity is not just a domestic economic priority for the region—it is a strategic priority for global development, rural stability, and global food security. This commentary comes from Muhammad Ibrahim, Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA).
OP-ED: A proactive and urgent regional strategy to address the threat of El Niño
