An exceptionally strong El Niño is happening in the Pacific right now. US forecasters give a high chance that it will become stronger than any El Niño since 1950, and, by one estimate it would be the strongest in 1,000 years.

This recurring warming shifts rainfall across the tropics, temporarily raises global average temperatures, and changes weather patterns around the world. For the UK, the government’s science advisers expect the foods affected to keep reaching us, but warn that ‘reduced global yields are expected to result in higher prices for consumers’.

This El Niño is happening at a time of already high energy prices and rising fertiliser costs due to wars and geopolitical tensions. We have also never seen such a strong event at the same time as such high baseline warming.

Professor Paul Behrens

In general, the UK doesn’t run out of food, but we do pay more. Sometimes a lot more, and we cannot fully avoid this.

While the last El Niño, in 2023, had ‘virtually no discernible impact on UK food prices’, this time is different in two main ways: firstly, this El Niño is happening at a time of already high energy prices and rising fertiliser costs due to wars and geopolitical tensions. Secondly, we have never seen such a strong event at the same time as such high baseline warming.

In the UK we have managed single global shocks before, for example in 2022, when the war in Ukraine drove up energy, fertiliser, and grain prices. Our food stayed available overall, but UK food inflation peaked at 19.1% in March 2023. Industry forecasts for UK food price inflation next year are around 6%, covering all causes.

There is also the chance of multiple shocks coming together at once, which, combined with political responses such as export bans, could push inflation even higher.

Britain tends to assess exposure to each specific product by each specific shock, shifting supply chains as each one comes under stress, and we have few models for how shocks compound. Oxford colleagues have begun building them and find that if a war, an energy price spike, and export bans like those of 2022 struck in a globally poor year for farming, most countries could be hit at once.

What should the government do now?

At home, plan for the rarer case of disrupted supplies, starting with our emergency law. Colleagues and I recently delivered a letter to Downing Street, signed by more than 150 academics, experts, and food and community leaders, asking for changes to the Civil Contingencies Act. The Act currently cites disruption to the food supply as a possible emergency, yet while energy networks and water companies have a duty to work with emergency planners, food suppliers do not.

What can we all do longer term?

Longer term we need more headroom. Eating more plants and less meat frees up land: if a bad year cuts yields, some of that land could be used to grow food for people instead.

Professor Paul Behrens

In September, colleagues and I argued in Nature Climate Change that when an outcome could be severe and irreversible, under-preparing costs far more than over-preparing. National security assessments plan for a reasonable worst case, while economic models tend to focus on central estimates, so policy makers can be given very different pictures of the severity of the same risk depending on who is asked. Governments already use reasonable-worst-case approaches to plan for pandemics. Food deserves the same, starting with ‘no-regret’ actions that pay off even if the worst never comes.

On that note, longer term we need more headroom. The government’s own national security assessment says the UK ‘cannot currently produce enough food to feed its population based on current diets’. Eating more plants and less meat frees up land: in 2022, colleagues and I found that a shift to a healthy, more plant-based diet across the EU and UK would almost save enough crops to make up for the lost production from Russia and Ukraine.

We can see this El Niño coming, the geopolitical tensions continuing and the potential for price spikes months ahead, and most of the fixes are cheap compared with not having them.

This is an abridged version of an article by Professor Paul Behrens. The full, original version can be found here.

This opinion piece reflects the views of the author, and does not necessarily reflect the position of the Oxford Martin School or the University of Oxford. Any errors or omissions are those of the author.