Food & Farming · Friday, 4 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

The strongest El Nino since 1950 is building. In Sri Lanka it takes the crop and the money to replace it.

Food & Farming 1 min 46 sources

The UN's weather agency says this Pacific warming may be the strongest for more than 70 years, and the World Food Programme expects about 50 million more people to face acute hunger. In eastern Sri Lanka the wells and the farm incomes are drying together.

50 million

more people the World Food Programme expects to face acute hunger

its August estimate, made before the latest forecast landed [2]

85-100%

less rain than normal in Sri Lanka's worst-hit farming districts

Sri Lanka's government is now trucking water to tens of thousands of people [3]

4C of 3.1C

the expected November peak against the highest reading ever measured by satellite

the 3.1C record was set in the 2015 event [2]

29.9m tonnes

of wheat Australia now expects, 12% above its June figure

strong winter rains put it on course for its eighth-biggest crop [11]

The lead story — what happened

The World Meteorological Organization, the UN's weather agency, says this El Nino could be the strongest for more than 70 years and last until at least February 2027. [1]
El Nino is a warming of the Pacific Ocean that shifts rainfall worldwide. Sea temperatures in the central Pacific are already well over 2C above average. [1]
Forecasters expect the peak near 4C above average in November. The highest reading in the satellite era so far was 3.1C, in 2015. [2]
The World Food Programme, the UN agency that feeds people in emergencies, said in August the event was likely to push about 50 million people into acute hunger. [2]
In Sri Lanka some farming districts have had 85% to 100% less rain than their long-term average, and Sri Lanka's government is delivering water to tens of thousands of people. [3]
A.M. Pathmasena, 48, a farmer in Ampara district, says his well has not run this low in more than 30 years. It now barely waters his family and two cows. [3]
Farmers there are losing the crop and the income together, because the crop was the income. [3]
Food is not scarce everywhere at once. Australia lifted its wheat forecast 12% to 29.9 million tonnes after strong winter rains. [11]
El Nino moves weather rather than only worsening it: drought across parts of Asia, greater fire risk in Australia, heavier floods in South America. [2]
Indonesia is burning inside the same event. Millions of people in Sumatra and Kalimantan are breathing haze from the fires and thousands have gone to hospital with chest infections. [4]
South Africa's weather service expects below-normal rain and above-normal heat this spring, and says the event is very likely to pass 3C. [5]
Nearly 200 governments finished UN talks on drying land in Mongolia last Friday without agreeing a binding drought treaty. [6]

Who is involved

The World Meteorological Organization

the UN's weather agency; it published the forecast that this event may be the strongest since at least 1950 [1]
Celeste Saulo

the agency's secretary-general; she said El Nino could deliver a massive blow to communities and economies [1]
The World Food Programme

the UN agency that feeds people in emergencies; it put the extra hunger at about 50 million people [2]
A.M. Pathmasena

a farmer in Ampara district in eastern Sri Lanka; his well no longer waters his family and two cows [3]
Yasmine Fouad

head of the UN body for drying land; she says droughts are now appearing where nobody thought them likely a decade ago [6]

What is pushing on this

Pacific heat High↑

the central Pacific sat 2.6C above its 30-year average on Monday, with months to the peak [2]

Farm incomes in the dry belt Easing↓

Sri Lankan farmers are losing crops and earnings together as the wells stop filling [3]

Warnings reaching people Building↑

the UN weather agency says it has mounted a major push to get forecasts to communities [1]

Binding action on drought Steady→

nearly 200 countries postponed a legally binding drought agreement for another two years [6]

How it unfolded

2015 the last record Pacific warming peaked at 3.1C above average [2]
August the World Food Programme estimated about 50 million more people would face acute hunger [2]
Last Friday UN land talks in Mongolia closed with no binding drought agreement [6]
Monday the central Pacific measured 2.6C above its 30-year average [2]
November forecasters expect the peak, near 4C above average [2]
February 2027 the earliest the UN weather agency expects the event to end [1]

Where this points

Watch whether money moves on the forecast rather than on the damage. The warnings are out, but the drought agreement that would have funded early action was put off again last week. [1][6]

The rest of the day

36 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
UN drought talks end with no treaty

Nearly 200 countries closed UN desertification talks in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on Friday without deciding whether to create a legally binding global drought agreement. The decision goes to talks in Egypt in two years, having already been deferred once. Up to 40% of the world's land is degraded. [6]

Why it matters — The forecast arrives everywhere at the same time; the money to act on it does not.
03
England's rivers ran too low to irrigate

England's Environment Agency stopped thousands of farmers taking river water in July. Daniel Sizer, who farms 300 hectares in Suffolk, got a text one August evening allowing a single night of irrigation, and says half his crop is ruined. [9]

Why it matters — The same shape as Sri Lanka in a rich country: the water stops before the harvest does.
04
Two big US reservoirs hit record lows

Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the United States, both hit record lows this month, and eight other federal reservoirs recorded their lowest levels in at least 30 years. California, Nevada and Arizona must cut 1.25 million acre-feet a year between them. [10]

Why it matters — Farmers there are deciding which crops are worth planting at all.
05
Australia raises its wheat forecast

Australia's agriculture department now expects a 2026/27 wheat crop of 29.9 million tonnes, about 12% above its June forecast and the eighth-biggest on record, after strong winter rains. Buyers cut off from the Black Sea are turning to Australian grain. [11]

Why it matters — Proof that the world is not short of wheat this year, only short of it in particular places.
06
US farm agency turns to satellites

The US Department of Agriculture will pilot satellite imagery with NASA, plus crop models and machine learning, alongside its farmer surveys. It follows complaints from farmers and traders about unusually large gaps between its first and final 2025 corn figures, after deep staff cuts. [12][13]

Why it matters — Its crop reports move grain prices, so an error in them is money out of a grower's pocket.
07
US acts to hold back breeding cattle

The US agriculture secretary announced a package on 31 August that includes new support for ranchers who keep young breeding females instead of selling them. The national cattle herd is at a 75-year low. [14]

Why it matters — The only way to have more beef in three years is to sell less of it now.
08
US farm profits forecast to slip

The US farm agency's economists forecast net farm income of $153.4bn for 2026, down $1.2bn on 2025 before inflation and $4.1bn after it. Net cash farm income is forecast up 3.0% to $158.5bn. [15]

Why it matters — Two measures of the same year pointing opposite ways, which is why farm groups argue about whether things are getting worse.
09
Sweetener effects showed up in mouse grandchildren

In mice, sucralose and stevia altered the gut microbiome, cut helpful compounds made by gut bacteria, and changed the activity of genes involved in metabolism and inflammation. Some of those changes appeared in later generations that had never eaten the sweeteners. [17]

Why it matters — The animals were mice, not people, but the finding is about inheritance rather than dose.
10
A freezer replaces the protein factory

Researchers turned whole legume purees into firm, fibrous gels by freezing them in one direction, so growing ice crystals push the solids into aligned channels. It worked on chickpeas, soybeans, peas, lentils, lupins, beans and mung beans, covering 96% of world legume production, with no additives and no separating out of protein. [18]

Why it matters — Meat substitutes are normally made by pulling a bean apart first; this skips that whole factory step.
11
Hybrid rice that breeds true

A study identified HUAXU, a gene switch active only in sperm cells, which together with clonal egg formation produced near-complete clonal seed in hybrid rice with little loss of yield. [19]

Why it matters — Hybrid vigour normally vanishes when you replant the seed, which is why farmers buy new seed every year.
12
Maize learned salt tolerance while being tamed

Modern maize survives salty soil far better than teosinte, its wild ancestor. Researchers traced it to a repressor called MYB28 and a single letter change that early farmers selected for, which raised yields in salt-affected fields. [20]

Why it matters — A trait nobody was deliberately breeding for came along with domestication.
13
A more reliable way to insert a gene

Engineered docking sites raised targeted gene insertion to 51.9% in human cells and 35.6% in rice cells, several times the previous rate. A 5.8 kilobase herbicide-resistance cassette landed at the chosen spot in 24% of regenerated rice plants and was passed to the next generation. [21]

Why it matters — Most gene editing cuts DNA; this puts a whole block of it exactly where it was aimed.
14
Breeders told to pair prediction with editing

A review argued that yield, drought tolerance and water use are controlled by many genes at once, so single-gene editing keeps falling short. It set out five ways to combine genome-wide prediction with editing. [22]

Why it matters — The traits that matter most to a farm are the ones least suited to a one-gene fix.
15
Protein bar maker valued at $2.25bn

Medici Brands, which owns David Protein, raised $250m and expects more than $300m of revenue this year, from a standing start in 2024. Its bar carries 28 grams of protein in 150 calories, using a patented ingredient that behaves like fat but is barely metabolised. [23]

Why it matters — The fastest-growing thing in American groceries is a food designed around one number on the label.
16
Yeast grown on food waste raises money

MOA Foodtech, a Spanish firm, raised 3.3m euros to grow yeast on agrifood waste streams and turn it into food ingredients, scaling its tanks from 120,000 to 225,000 litres. [24]

Why it matters — Waste is the cheapest raw material there is, if something will eat it.
17
A weekly roundup remembers Wendell Berry

AgFunderNews led its weekly roundup with a Civil Eats piece remembering the Kentucky farmer and writer Wendell Berry. The same roundup records France putting 3.7m euros into a firm scaling cell-cultured breast milk, Dutch researchers winning 4m euros to turn wasted protein into food, and California passing a seal for foods that are not ultra-processed. [25]

Why it matters — Three of the four are attempts to make food out of something that was not food before.
18
US funds school meal pilots

The US health department launched DEPEND, $32.5m for schools and districts to test replacing highly processed foods with whole ones. Grants run from $75,000 to $2.5m and the first awards are expected in October. [26]

Why it matters — School kitchens buy in bulk, so what they specify moves what manufacturers make.
19
Food makers are removing, not adding

European manufacturers are stripping out seven common ingredients, led by modified starch. Chemically modified starch must be listed as an additive with an E number, while the enzyme-treated version can be declared as plain starch, so makers are switching to citrus fibre, pulses and seaweed extracts. A fungi-fermentation firm making natural colours won this year's Americas food tech award on the same trend. [27][46]

Why it matters — Taking an ingredient out means paying to rebuild what it was quietly doing.
20
Two thirds of breakfasts take five minutes

Two thirds of American breakfasts have to be prepared in five minutes or less, the research firm Circana found. People increasingly eat whenever hunger strikes, replacing meals with snacks, mini meals and drinks. [28]

Why it matters — A five-minute limit decides what a factory can sell long before nutrition does.
21
Shopping agents will pick the groceries

Retailers are building AI assistants that ask a household its size, tastes and allergies and then choose the products, according to the consultancy Bramble Intelligence. [29]

Why it matters — A brand that has spent a century persuading shoppers now has to persuade software.
22
Doctors' group sues over US diet advice

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is suing the US agriculture and health departments, alleging an undisclosed panel rewrote January's Dietary Guidelines. It says eight of the nine members were tied to industry bodies including the beef, dairy, egg and pork boards. [30]

Why it matters — The guidelines set what schools, hospitals and armed forces are fed.
23
US FDA nominee faces outbreak questions

Heidi Overton, picked to run the US Food and Drug Administration, faces Senate confirmation after a summer in which confirmed cyclospora cases linked to one lettuce grower passed 17,000, against 1,180 last summer. No hearing date is set. [31]

Why it matters — The agency has lost much of its leadership, and the outbreaks kept arriving anyway.
24
Ten salmonella outbreaks so far this year

The US disease agency has logged 10 salmonella outbreaks in 2026, traced to jalapenos, backyard poultry, shell eggs, moringa powder and pet reptiles. Salmonella infects about 1.35 million Americans a year, hospitalises about 26,500 and kills about 420. [32]

Why it matters — The outbreak count is flat, which is the point: this is the normal rate, not a bad year.
25
Meat inspectors widen screwworm drug testing

The US meat inspection service is expanding its residue tests to cover the veterinary drugs used against New World screwworm, across more livestock species. [33]

Why it matters — Treating the parasite puts new chemicals into animals that end up as food.
26
Flood and drought aid opens in two US states

The US farm agency opened disaster assistance for Indiana livestock and crop producers hit by flooding, with claims due by March 2027. Many Montana counties have triggered grazing-loss payments because of drought. [34][36]

Why it matters — Two opposite weather failures, one payments desk, in the same fortnight.
27
Small grants for drought and flood research

The US agriculture research funder awarded nearly $600,000 to two projects, on drought in Florida and flooding in Hawaii, through a programme meant to respond to weather events quickly. [35]

Why it matters — The sum is small enough to show how thin fast-response research money is.
28
Nobody counts America's urban farms

There is no official national count of urban farms in the United States, so the growth that everyone describes cannot be measured. City farms now serve as food security, cooling and drainage as well as food production. [37]

Why it matters — A thing nobody counts is hard to fund and easy to zone out of existence.
29
Southern Africa blocks its neighbours' produce

Namibia, Botswana and now Mozambique have signalled limits on fruit and vegetable imports from South Africa, an agricultural economist writes. A regional summit in August had put farming at the centre of the bloc's growth plans, and farming is about 10% of GDP in many member countries. [38]

Why it matters — New farmers need somewhere to sell, and the nearest markets are the ones closing.
30
AI watches for disease crossing from animals

Conservation Through Public Health, working around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda, is using AI models to predict disease spilling between people, livestock and mountain gorillas, instead of responding after an outbreak. [39]

Why it matters — People and livestock live along the park's boundary, which is where pathogens cross.
31
Exported plastic returns as microplastic

A review found that the global trade in plastic waste increases microplastic pollution, because importing countries often burn, dump or informally recycle it, spreading particles through water, soil, air and food. [40]

Why it matters — The waste leaves on a ship and comes back in the food chain.
32
A pregnancy diet study sorts four patterns

Among 1,404 pregnant women in a German cohort, researchers found four eating patterns. Those in the high ultra-processed group had the highest weight before and during pregnancy; babies of the vegetable-rich group were born later and longer than those of some other groups. [41]

Why it matters — An association, not a cause, but it splits the population by how food is made rather than by nutrients.
33
One in eight US households ran short of food

In 2024, 13.7% of American households, about 18.3 million, could not always provide enough food, with 5.4% at the severe end. Food stamps served an average of 41.7 million people a month in 2024, at $187.20 each. [42][43]

Why it matters — The programme is a cash top-up, which is the same mechanism failing in Sri Lanka.
34
Nepal asks $5bn after floods

Nepal has asked for $5bn to recover from a glacier collapse and flash floods that killed more than 1,200 people. Rebuilding could cost close to a tenth of the country's economy, the Nepal country director of an aid organisation wrote in a letter to the New York Times. [8]

Why it matters — The UN loss and damage fund was created for exactly this and has not paid at this scale.
35
Somalia's early warning held up as a model

The UN food agency is promoting two Somali systems, a food-security dashboard and a water and land information programme, as a way to turn data into action across Africa. An official at the agency put the number of acutely food-insecure people worldwide at 266 million. [7]

Why it matters — The gap is rarely a missing forecast; it is the step from forecast to money.
36
New Zealand raises rates against a food bill set abroad

New Zealand's central bank has raised its official cash rate again, after lifting it to 2.50% in July, its first rise in three years. Annual inflation reached 4.1% in the year to June, and much of it comes from imported fuel, food and fertiliser that a domestic interest rate cannot reach. [44]

Why it matters — The rate is being raised against prices set outside the country.
37
A cattle crossing from Mexico reopens

The Agua Prieta crossing from Sonora into the United States is due to reopen on 8 September after exports were suspended for repairs. [45]

Why it matters — American feedlots have been short of imported cattle all year.

02 Lesson why it matters

A drought takes the food and the money that would replace it

A farming family's harvest is both its food and its income, so a dry year removes the meal and the means to buy anyone else's at the same moment.

The twist

A drought takes the harvest and the earnings in one stroke, so a family goes hungry beside food it can no longer buy.

How it works

A farming family eats part of its harvest and sells the rest
So one thing is both the food and the income
A drought destroys both at the same moment
Food elsewhere is unaffected, or better than usual
But buying it takes money the drought just took
So hunger arrives without the world growing less food

Where you've seen this

A one-factory town

the plant pays the wages and fills the shops, so closing it empties both at once

A taxi driver's car

it is the tool that earns the money and the thing the money has to repair

A flooded high street

the shopkeepers who lost their stock are also the customers the other shops needed

The catch

It breaks for a grower who sells into a distant market and buys food with cash. A local drought can raise the price of the crop they still have.

And the whole of it

Most of us are paid by something we also depend on, and never see the join until it breaks. The farmer in Ampara, the grower in Australia and the shopper reading a price are inside one weather system, each seeing only their own square of it.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

This El Nino was forecast months ahead, and the governments who met last week to agree a binding drought deal put it off for another two years.

Why it works on us — One farmer beside a dry well is easier to picture than 50 million people, so the small story travels and the large one is the one that has to be paid for.

Who gains

Australian wheat growers — Strong winter rains lifted their forecast crop 12% to 29.9 million tonnes, while buyers cut off from the Black Sea look for grain. [11]
American ranchers who keep their heifers — The US farm agency's new package pays them to hold breeding females back, with the national herd at a 75-year low. [14]
Citrus fibre, pulse and seaweed suppliers in Europe — Food makers dropping modified starch are buying their ingredients to do the same thickening job. [27]
Medici Brands — It raised $250m at a $2.25bn valuation on bars built around a patented ingredient that behaves like fat with few of the calories. [23]
Satellite and modelling suppliers to the US farm agency — A new pilot puts imagery, crop models and machine learning alongside the farmer surveys the agency has run for generations. [12][13]

Who pays

Farmers in Sri Lanka's Ampara district — Rainfall is 85% to 100% below the long-term average, wells have stopped filling, and the crop was also the income. [3]
People breathing haze in Sumatra and Kalimantan — Fires burning in the dry weather have sent thousands to hospital with chest infections. [4]
Farmers in eastern England — The Environment Agency stopped river irrigation in July, and one Suffolk grower says half his crop is ruined. [9]
Water users around Las Vegas and Phoenix — Lake Mead and Lake Powell hit record lows this month, and three states must cut 1.25 million acre-feet a year between them. [10]
New farmers in southern Africa — Namibia, Botswana and Mozambique have signalled limits on South African fruit and vegetables, and growers need those nearby markets to survive. [38]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

How many people this El Nino actually pushes into hunger.

The 50 million figure is the World Food Programme's August estimate, published before the UN weather agency's latest forecast of a near-4C peak. [1][2]
02

Whether US farm profits are rising or falling this year.

The farm agency's own pages disagree. One forecasts net farm income down 0.7% to $153.4bn with net cash income up 3.0% to $158.5bn; another states inflation-adjusted net farm income falling 5.5% to $158.4bn. [15][16]
03

When any country will be bound to prepare for drought.

Nearly 200 governments left Mongolia without a legally binding agreement and deferred it to Egypt in two years, having already deferred it once. [6]
04

Whether the sweetener results mean anything for people.

The gut and gene changes, including those in later generations, were measured in mice. Nothing equivalent has been shown in humans. [17]
05

How many urban farms the United States has.

There is no official national count, so the growth everyone describes cannot be checked. [37]
06

How wrong the US crop estimates were.

The agency is testing satellites and AI after unusually large gaps between its first and final 2025 corn figures, but has not published the size of those gaps. [12][13]
07

Why this summer's US foodborne outbreaks were so much larger.

Confirmed cyclospora cases went from 1,180 last summer to more than 17,000, and specialists quoted say officials were slower than usual to identify the contamination. [31]
08

How much exported plastic waste becomes microplastic in the countries that receive it.

The review names burning, dumping and informal recycling as the routes but puts no figure on the share. [40]

04 Hope carry this

Sri Lanka's government is already trucking water to tens of thousands of people in the worst-hit districts. The peak of this El Nino is still about two months away.