How Will Agriculture Weather El Nino?

Tornados hurtle through Mexico, leaving a trail of death and battered crops. Floods wash over East Africa, rooting people from their homes. Drought stretches across Indonesia, sparking fires in national forests and a famine in the east. While Peru and Zimbabwe are bracing for dry weather, Ethiopia and Kenya are deluged by rains.

By now, the culprit behind these climatic seesaws is almost a household name: El Niño, the boy or Christ child—the appearance of a vast body of warm water in the Pacific Ocean that wreaks havoc with the world’s weather and that earned its name nearly three centuries ago with its Christmastime recurrences.

In developing countries, where agriculture provides not only food but also most of the jobs, how El Niño affects the agricultural system can be a matter of life and death. A severe El Niño can bring famine and malnutrition to thousands and cripple local economies. But science and hindsight may prove powerful weapons in mitigating El Niño’s destructive effects on agriculture. Countries in Africa and Latin America are learning from their past mistakes and drafting strategies to help farmers cope with El Niño well before it hits.

To develop their strategies, countries are relying on better predictions of El Niño and its effects. Climatologists have built models to predict El Niño’s behavior with an accuracy unimaginable a decade ago. And now researchers are proposing to make El Niño forecasting more agriculture-specific and to narrow predictions to individual countries, or even regions within a given country.

But humans cannot control El Niño, a complex phenomenon rendered more unpredictable by its relationship with other weather patterns, perhaps including global warming. And without accurate El Niño forecasts, experts say, farmers, researchers, and policymakers will be hampered by insufficient and possibly erroneous information.

A More Brutal El Niño

Recent El Niños have taken a heavy toll on the world’s agriculture, particularly in developing countries. A mix of storms and droughts in 1982 and 1983 was responsible for more than 1,000 deaths and US$8 billion in economic losses worldwide. The 1991–92 El Niño triggered one of the century’s worst droughts in Southern Africa, halving cereal production and forcing countries to take in an unprecedented US$4 billion in food aid.

This year’s El Niño promises to be the century’s most brutal, experts say, leaving its destructive mark on the world’s agriculture, fisheries, and forests. But it also finds many countries better prepared.

Southern Africa, battered by dry weather that swept across the region in 1991 and 1992, learned its lessons the hard way. Five years ago, timely forecasts were either unavailable or not believed. Agricultural agencies failed to warn farmers early on to diversify their crops, plant early, or conserve water. Zimbabwe actually exported grain reserves it desperately needed later on. Overall, the drought reportedly affected some 30 million people in Southern Africa and drove down the region’s grain production by about half.

This El Niño is another story. Forecasts for dryer conditions for the 1997/98 planting season began trickling in in spring 1997. In September, experts from across Southern Africa drew up a regionwide drought strategy that included warning farmers early to plant drought-resistant crops, monitoring weather during the growing season, and bringing in government water and food experts to work with agricultural officials to mitigate the drought’s effects.

Other important changes from 1992 have also helped, said Robert Clement-Jones, senior environmental economist for the World Bank. Fighting has ended in Angola and Mozambique. South Africa is part of the international community. Borders are freer, easing the flow of communication and transportation. And many countries have liberalized their agricultural policies.

Malawi is a case in point, Clement-Jones said. For years, the country’s farmers were told when and what to plant—maize. Other crops were taboo. That began to change four years ago, he said. This year, Malawi’s extension agents are issuing El Niño advice. The message: “Plant early, plant crops other than maize, but don’t give up on the agricultural season,” Clement-Jones said.

Once weather forecasters and governments have done their jobs, the rest is up to the farmers, according to Reginald Mugwara, food security coordinator for the Southern African Development Community. How well the strategy will work is still unclear. Southern African countries will be most vulnerable to El Niño’s effects in the upcoming months.

Other Countries Respond

Southern Africa is not the only region to move quickly on El Niño. Peru is among several Andean countries that have already incorporated El Niño predictions into agricultural planning.

When forecasts last May indicated that El Niño might cause heavy rains in the north of Peru and droughts in the south, the government declared a state of emergency for some areas—months before harsh weather was expected to hit.

More accurate forecasting in recent years helps, said Carlos Emanuel, a Lima-based agricultural consultant, remembering the government’s more sluggish response to the 1982–83 El Niño. “Now everyone knows when El Niño will come,” Emanuel said. “So the government took provisions against El Niño.”

So far, the country has spent US$20 million on flood prevention and another US$2–$3 million on drought mitigation, including installing small wells and creating a seed program, according to the World Bank.

Other countries, though, are struggling to respond.

The Philippines, which is suffering from drought, is being hampered in its reaction by the country’s old and inefficient irrigation systems. Now, water is being rationed in Manila as part of the government’s water conservation campaign, said Mercedita Sombilla, a researcher at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Manila. Farmers have delayed their December rice planting, and many farmers in nonirrigated areas cultivated only small portions of nonrice crops such as beans. As a result, Sombilla expects Philippine rice imports to double this year. Meanwhile, no one is sure when the dry weather will end.

“To prepare for future El Niños, the country should definitely renovate its irrigation systems to improve their efficiency, construct more dams, and invest in tube well irrigation,” said Gurdev S. Khush, an IRRI rice breeder and winner of the 1996 World Food Prize. “Developing rice varieties with drought tolerance should be a long-term project.”

Forecasting Still New

In other cases, lack of knowledge limits the extent to which countries can prepare their agricultural systems for El Niño. Despite its great potential, El Niño forecasting is still new. Weather models are unable to predict major temperature swings associated with the phenomenon. Honing forecasts to specific countries is also tough, scientists say, particularly where weather patterns are more complex, as in Kenya.

Early last year, Kenyan meteorologists predicted El Niño would bring drought. Although they soon revised their forecasts, they were ill prepared for the heavy rains that have displaced villages, washed away roads, and destroyed crops. According to a report by the Famine Early Warning System of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in the Rift Valley Province, the nation’s breadbasket, maize production from the most recent cropping season was 31 percent below normal in part because of the high moisture content of grain. This drop in production will result in higher prices for consumers across Kenya. Although relief activities are planned to help the poorest, large-scale relief will not be possible until roads closed by the heavy rains are open again.

Unlike Southern Africa, where El Niño can be fairly easily forecasted, Kenya has a complex and unpredictable climate, making the effects of this year’s El Niño more difficult to forecast, said Peter Usher, the Nairobi-based head of the Atmospheric Unit of the United Nations Environment Programme. “It would have been nice if this had been anticipated, but I don’t think it could have been,” Usher said of Kenya’s worst rains in more than 30 years.

How El Niño reacts with other climate patterns throws another wrench into predictions. In the case of Kenya, for example, climatologist Vikki French of USAID believes the deluge of rainfall was triggered not only by El Niño, but also by dramatic temperature changes in the Indian Ocean. Even some parts of Southern Africa, such as southern Mozambique, have received unexpected and heavy rainfall.

Perhaps most troubling to experts is El Niño’s possible relationship with global warming. Meteorologists and agricultural scientists alike point to more intense, more frequent, and longer-lasting El Niños in recent decades. Is this the influence of global warming? Or have fires related to El Niño in Brazil and Indonesia, for example, contributed to global warming?

During the climate change conference in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997, leaders worldwide charged climatologists to come up with answers to those kinds of questions. But climatologists are stretched for money and resources to do the job, Usher said.

“There are vast areas of the globe where observations aren’t being made, and they’ve got to be made to predict what’s happening,” said Usher.

Tougher Years Ahead?

Meanwhile, farmers in developing countries may find it harder to deal with longer and more devastating El Niños. USAID’s French, for one, argues that the 1992 El Niño lasted five, not two years in Sub-Saharan Africa. She predicts this year’s El Niño will do the same. “It’s huge, and it’s going to hang on longer than April,” she said. “Some countries in Africa can hold their breath and hang on for one season, but if this extends for several seasons, we’re going to have some real problems.”

No matter how long El Niño lasts, it threatens food production in developing countries already facing the prospect of a growing food gap.

Mark Rosegrant, an IFPRI research fellow who led the development of IMPACT, a model of global food demand, supply, and trade to the year 2020, said that, leaving aside the possible effects of El Niño, the gap between food demand and production in developing countries could more than double in the next 25 years. Many low-income countries, including most of those in Sub-Saharan Africa, will not be able to generate the foreign exchange to purchase needed food on the world market, even in non–El Niño years.

Moreover, El Niño is just one of a number of factors contributing to bigger swings in cereal prices on world markets, which can cause severe problems for poor countries facing production shortfalls. According to Rosegrant, for most developing countries, holding large public stocks of grain or encouraging food self-sufficiency to cope with price hikes are unsustainably expensive strategies. “Rather, these countries should hold small stocks of grain to help bridge price spikes, but rely primarily on imports from world markets. The risk can also be reduced by the use of world grain futures markets,” he said.

For the poorest people in developing countries, who will be hardest hit by short-term rises in food prices caused by El Niño, countries may need to consider targeted assistance programs such as food coupons and food-for-work programs, Rosegrant suggested.

Helping Farmers Do the Right Thing

Still, the forecast is not all bad.

Researchers are proposing to study optimal coping strategies for farmers under El Niño–created conditions. “The idea is to explore how farmers can react better to forecasted climate changes,” said Sherman Robinson, a researcher at IFPRI, who is developing a research initiative on the economic effects of improved forecasting in Southern Africa. “Better planning at the farm level, given better forecasting, could make a big difference in production—by billions of dollars.”

But better forecasting alone cannot do the job of maintaining agricultural production during El Niño years. Farmers must also have the tools to take advantage of the more accurate predictions. For example, they need access to markets in which to sell their products, credit to allow them to make farm investments, well-functioning communication and transportation infrastructure, and the right technology to help them sustain production during unusual weather conditions. In the long term, agricultural research is needed to provide them with crop varieties that can survive the tough conditions produced by El Niño.

There is little doubt that future El Niños will be highly disruptive phenomena. But with better preparation by governments, researchers, and farmers—based on lessons learned during recent episodes— they may not be the agricultural disasters they have been in the past.

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Photo credits: Page 1, Wernher Krutein, PHOTOVAULT; Page 6, David Steinke, NREL/USFS.

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