As El Nino looms, guard against food inflation

📌 Summary:

• Context: Southwest monsoon is in serious deficit — cumulative all-India rainfall (June 1-22) is 42.8% below normal, even before El Nino's impact peaks.

• Cause of current deficit: weak monsoon winds, suppression by stronger northwesterly dry winds, and absence of an active eastward-moving Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) carrying clouds/moisture; monsoon made no progress June 15-21.

• Core warning: global agencies forecast El Nino strengthening to "strong" by Aug-Sep and "very strong" over Oct-Jan; the last two strong events (2023-24, 2015-16) produced drought years, so 2026-27 could be a drought year.

• Causal chain to food inflation: deficient rain reduces kharif sowing acreage now; El Nino also raises temperatures, so if it peaks Oct-Jan the rabi crops bear the brunt → future food inflation.

• Cushion: two consecutive good agriculture years (2024-25, 2025-26) gave bumper, record harvests of wheat, rice, maize, sugar, soyabean, rapeseed, palm oil — abundant stocks have so far prevented food price spikes even as crude, gas, coal, fertilisers and metals surged after the US-Israel war on Iran.

• Solutions proposed: keep the import window open (preferable to knee-jerk export bans); protect farmers via expedited crop surveys and insurance payments for prevented/failed sowing or yield loss; make the new rural employment programme (launching July 1) a genuine model scheme.

🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS3 — agriculture, food security and inflation management; climate variability (El Nino) and its impact on the farm economy and supply-side management.

📝 Prelims Facts:

• All-India monsoon rainfall (June 1-22) was 42.8% below normal.

• El Nino is the warm phase of ENSO; associated with weak Indian monsoon and droughts (e.g., 2015-16, 2023-24).

• The Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is an eastward-moving pulse of cloud and rainfall that modulates monsoon activity.

🔑 Key Term: El Nino — abnormal warming of the central-eastern equatorial Pacific that typically weakens the Indian southwest monsoon and raises drought/food-inflation risk.