As El Niño looms, guard against food inflation

📌 Summary:

• Context: Southwest monsoon (June-Sept) is in serious deficit — cumulative all-India rainfall till June 22 was 42.8% below normal, even before El Niño peaks; monsoon arrived 3 days late over Kerala (June 4) and made no progress June 15-21
• Cause of current deficit: weak monsoon winds, stronger northwesterly dry winds, and absence of an active eastward-moving Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) carrying clouds/moisture
• Core warning: global agencies forecast El Niño intensifying to 'strong' by Aug-Sept and 'very strong' Oct-Jan; the last two strong-to-very-strong events (2023-24, 2015-16) produced drought years, so 2026-27 could repeat
• Causal chain to food inflation: deficient/late rain → trailing kharif sowing acreage; El Niño also raises temperatures → if it peaks Oct-Jan, the rabi (winter-spring) crop bears the brunt → future food inflation
• Cushion: two consecutive good agri years (2024-25, 2025-26) gave bumper global and Indian harvests (wheat, rice, maize, sugar, soyabean, rapeseed, palm oil), so international food prices have NOT followed crude/gas/coal/fertiliser/metals which surged after the US-Israel war on Iran — but this may not last
• Solutions proposed: keep the import window open (preferable to knee-jerk export bans); protect farmers via expedited crop surveys and insurance payments for failed/prevented sowing; make the new rural employment programme (launching July 1) a genuine model

🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS3 — food security, agriculture and monsoon dependence, inflation management, climate-agriculture linkage, buffer-stock and trade policy

📝 Prelims Facts:

• All-India rainfall till June 22 was 42.8% below normal
• El Niño forecast: 'strong' by Aug-Sept, 'very strong' Oct-Jan
• MJO (Madden-Julian Oscillation) is an eastward-moving system that carries clouds and moisture and modulates monsoon activity
• Past strong El Niño years: 2023-24 and 2015-16 were drought years

🔑 Key Term: El Niño — abnormal warming of the central-eastern equatorial Pacific that tends to suppress the Indian monsoon and is associated with drought risk.