The United Nations Food Agency (FAO) is preparing a response to a food emergency involving the arrival of "El Niño", scheduled for the end of the summer according to the WTO.

The climate phenomenon known as "El Niño" would be related to increased warming of the eastern Pacific waters of the equator and could pose problems for places in Africa, Central America and the Far East Asia, according to FAO.

Thus, the emergence of "El Niño" between 2015 and 2017 had devastating effects on food security, vital resources, nutrition and health of nearly 100 million people in 23 countries around the world.

The main features of this event were wild droughts in Central America, Colombia, Venezuela, California, Vietnam, Ethiopia, East Timor and Southern Africa; extraordinary floods in Somalia, Tanzania, southern states of the United States, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil and Argentina, which could affect the new geographical area of Surtan, Australia.

Thus, the sharp reduction in the area devoted to agriculture in developing countries would create a worrying deficit in the supply of cereals, estimated at one billion tonnes per year, reflecting a 56% increase in the price of cereals in 2022, according to FAO.

Also, due to the intensive consumption rates of Chinese maize, soy, barley and wheat importers, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), in 2022 the Chinese colossus absorbed more than 50% of global cereal production.

If we add to this the need to set limits on the export of agricultural commodities from countries such as India to ensure their self-sufficiency and the intervention of speculative brokers in the future market of agricultural commodities, the result would be the progressive lack of supply in world markets and the spiral of commodity price increases that the economies of the First World cannot accept, which will represent the cancellation of the Third Millennium to reduce world hunger.

Germán Gorraiz López, Analyst.