Rory Green, TS Lombard's chief China economist, has become the latest Wall Street strategist to flag the mounting macro and food inflation risks a super El Niño could unleash. In a note titled "Super El Niño: Famine Follows War?", Green warns that adverse weather, layered atop existing war-related disruptions to energy and fertilizer markets, could forge a perfect storm for global food prices.
War has already strained fertilizer supplies and energy costs, and a powerful El Niño now threatens to exacerbate both drought and temperature extremes in key agricultural regions. The compounding effect could push crop yields sharply lower just as global food stocks remain tight.
Green's analysis underscores the fragile state of agricultural supply chains, already battered by conflict in Ukraine and elevated natural gas prices used to produce nitrogen-based fertilizers. Any further disruption would ripple through commodity markets.
From a geopolitical lens, the warning ties together three volatile threads: war-induced trade dislocations, climate-driven weather anomalies, and input cost inflation. Regions heavily dependent on grain imports—especially in Africa and the Middle East—would face the most acute price shocks.
The counterargument holds that El Niño's impacts are regionally varied; some areas receive beneficial rains. Moreover, fertilizer prices have eased in recent months, and farmers in major exporting nations have boosted planted acreage, potentially buffering global supplies.