How 3.6 degrees of warm water in the tropical Pacific is about to redraw the map of global hunger and why, this time, no one in power can claim they were not warned.
Excellent, thorough article. It aligns with my understanding of the coming/underway El Niño and adds much from your expertise on food and famine issues. Last I looked, the US had around 650,000 homeless. Now the SNAP cuts alone threaten to increase that number. There won't be any sensible, proactive action as you sensibly recommend coming from America. We're in a multi-pronged storm of agricultural collapse.
And under the present American leadership the world's political systems are least prepared to develop a comprehensive preventive approach to mitigating the oncoming humanitarian disaster 🙄.
So true! Dismantling USAID, defunding the World Food Programme, cutting SNAP and stalling the Farm Bill and trying to gut the provisions for funding American farmers adaptation to the changing climate are compounding factors that are going to increase hunger domestically and abroad.
"It starts with a comparable rundown of all the terrible statistics and dire prognoses, and then adds preparations we could make for what will crest later this year."
Dear Mark. This is so well described and explained. Exelent job! I am from Denmark - in XR and have shared it on the page on FB i admin; An EMERGENCY declarance; I have profed for YE A R S being increasingly more desperate. I shared it there and honour You! You may se it on; and jon; Earth, Science and I declare Climate- emergency : Id like to tag you to thank you, but there are more than a few Mark ROberts out there; but voila; i compared this with .. well; read. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61565699637497
Thank You so much dear Mark. I - and others are trying really hard to evoke a throughly shift in the way we (ab)use land. So hop you will follow. I will from now on - follow you.
Global warming & a large El Niño means 2027 crop failures, hunger, high food prices, famine & migrations to northern countries. Countries could be planning & acting now, stock piling foods, increasing safety nets like SNAP, decreasing pollution. Instead US/Israel increase wars & military spending. Stop this insanity.
Great information, very grateful. This will be the first truly global challenge if we are committed to working together. That is unlikely, at least for the US. But even if there is a small bit of success there is little to be happy about. This cycle will continue to amplify and crops will become less predictable. Everything about life on earth will be less certain.
"Hunger forecast" and "market panic" prevention can do with less attention here. It's a much bigger topic that Russia had record wheat exports in 2023. Inviting riots with fear mongering that wars are stimulated and restarted to avoid the world ending with a whimper, and preferably a bang. Those politically engaged aren't expected to cone around in a few years and say, “told you so, should have supported the right winner in war and conflict in agricultural areas”. While natural and historically where problems crop up first, pun intended. May not be possible to help that. It's a train wreck in slow motion to major catastrophe, where the problems is how damaging ut is to cry wolf. Last decades gave clear trends here, and Somalia and Ethiopia abd Tigray is notable. Now it's just globally important marine and agricultural regions with major wars in advance of forecasted catastrophe.
The fact that conflicts drive hunger is exactly why this forecast matters: El Niño is a shock multiplier, and the worst outcomes in the historical record come precisely where a climate shock lands on top of a war. The piece argues the danger isn't a global production collapse, but that it's a policy cascade.
Russia's record 2023 wheat exports actually prove the point: 2007–08 and 2010–11 both turned into crises without any worldwide supply failure, because export bans and hoarding did the damage that weather alone couldn't. On your implication that I might be "crying wolf," the reason to publish probabilistic forecasts loudly is that early warning has a track record: the 2017 Somalia famine was largely averted because donors moved on the forecast, while 2011 killed a quarter of a million people because they waited for confirmation. The asymmetry is stark: acting on a forecast that undershoots costs money; ignoring one that verifies and costs lives.
Absolutely, felt this wasn't expressed dramatically enough, there is a serious problem now that its expected to hit super powers and developed countries. Humanitarian aid and relief could be the first to go in for subsidized food to avoid food riots. Unemployment and food security problems tend to be explosive. Like Sri Lanka in 2022, except that it's more likely to be about olive oil, tomatoes, onion, oranges, butter and milk rather than grain and potatoes which there is some buffer for. These issues converge towards famine and war. Modernization in Ethiopia involved deforestation and cessation of tree planting that got replaced with civil war and seizure of food infrastructure.
Excellent, thorough article. It aligns with my understanding of the coming/underway El Niño and adds much from your expertise on food and famine issues. Last I looked, the US had around 650,000 homeless. Now the SNAP cuts alone threaten to increase that number. There won't be any sensible, proactive action as you sensibly recommend coming from America. We're in a multi-pronged storm of agricultural collapse.
All around the world!
Yes, it's frightening, and food insecurity is going to affect people who never gave it a thought. Thank you for trying to connect the dots.
And under the present American leadership the world's political systems are least prepared to develop a comprehensive preventive approach to mitigating the oncoming humanitarian disaster 🙄.
So true! Dismantling USAID, defunding the World Food Programme, cutting SNAP and stalling the Farm Bill and trying to gut the provisions for funding American farmers adaptation to the changing climate are compounding factors that are going to increase hunger domestically and abroad.
Kudos 👏 to you Mark! Glad you are doing the wonderful service to aid the hungry.
2027 will be a small taste of what’s to come. If I’m counting on the Oligarchs/Epstein Class to save me….ouch.
Necessity is the mother of community.
Be ready to cooperate with others that share your values.
We need to create pressure so politicians act before and not after the famines!
I included this excellent rundown in my Substack, which is devoted to getting real about seeing what is going on and what we can do now!!!!!
Around the bend is civilization still here?
Making it to 2027 depends on choices in 2026
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/around-the-bend-is-civilization-still
"It starts with a comparable rundown of all the terrible statistics and dire prognoses, and then adds preparations we could make for what will crest later this year."
Dear Mark. This is so well described and explained. Exelent job! I am from Denmark - in XR and have shared it on the page on FB i admin; An EMERGENCY declarance; I have profed for YE A R S being increasingly more desperate. I shared it there and honour You! You may se it on; and jon; Earth, Science and I declare Climate- emergency : Id like to tag you to thank you, but there are more than a few Mark ROberts out there; but voila; i compared this with .. well; read. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61565699637497
You can find me at:
4Hunger.org
Mark W. Roberts
122 Kirkland Dr
Stow, MA 01775
6177228222
mark@ecopolicyadvisors.com
Thank You so much dear Mark. I - and others are trying really hard to evoke a throughly shift in the way we (ab)use land. So hop you will follow. I will from now on - follow you.
Global warming & a large El Niño means 2027 crop failures, hunger, high food prices, famine & migrations to northern countries. Countries could be planning & acting now, stock piling foods, increasing safety nets like SNAP, decreasing pollution. Instead US/Israel increase wars & military spending. Stop this insanity.
Agreed, US and other donor countries are dismantling these exact programs right when they are needed the most.
Great information, very grateful. This will be the first truly global challenge if we are committed to working together. That is unlikely, at least for the US. But even if there is a small bit of success there is little to be happy about. This cycle will continue to amplify and crops will become less predictable. Everything about life on earth will be less certain.
"Hunger forecast" and "market panic" prevention can do with less attention here. It's a much bigger topic that Russia had record wheat exports in 2023. Inviting riots with fear mongering that wars are stimulated and restarted to avoid the world ending with a whimper, and preferably a bang. Those politically engaged aren't expected to cone around in a few years and say, “told you so, should have supported the right winner in war and conflict in agricultural areas”. While natural and historically where problems crop up first, pun intended. May not be possible to help that. It's a train wreck in slow motion to major catastrophe, where the problems is how damaging ut is to cry wolf. Last decades gave clear trends here, and Somalia and Ethiopia abd Tigray is notable. Now it's just globally important marine and agricultural regions with major wars in advance of forecasted catastrophe.
As I have written bout before (https://www.4hunger.org/p/the-three-cs-of-hunger-how-climate?r=1mi3pt&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web) you're right that conflict is the number-one driver of modern famine and that Somalia, Tigray, and now Sudan make that case. However, in many of these conflicts the original reason for conflict was caused by climate change.
The fact that conflicts drive hunger is exactly why this forecast matters: El Niño is a shock multiplier, and the worst outcomes in the historical record come precisely where a climate shock lands on top of a war. The piece argues the danger isn't a global production collapse, but that it's a policy cascade.
Russia's record 2023 wheat exports actually prove the point: 2007–08 and 2010–11 both turned into crises without any worldwide supply failure, because export bans and hoarding did the damage that weather alone couldn't. On your implication that I might be "crying wolf," the reason to publish probabilistic forecasts loudly is that early warning has a track record: the 2017 Somalia famine was largely averted because donors moved on the forecast, while 2011 killed a quarter of a million people because they waited for confirmation. The asymmetry is stark: acting on a forecast that undershoots costs money; ignoring one that verifies and costs lives.
Absolutely, felt this wasn't expressed dramatically enough, there is a serious problem now that its expected to hit super powers and developed countries. Humanitarian aid and relief could be the first to go in for subsidized food to avoid food riots. Unemployment and food security problems tend to be explosive. Like Sri Lanka in 2022, except that it's more likely to be about olive oil, tomatoes, onion, oranges, butter and milk rather than grain and potatoes which there is some buffer for. These issues converge towards famine and war. Modernization in Ethiopia involved deforestation and cessation of tree planting that got replaced with civil war and seizure of food infrastructure.