The El Niño is barreling toward the world's most vulnerable populations is staggering in scale, and so will its harms if action is not urgently taken. Already, the numbersU.N. areprojects staggeringat —least 49 million more people to be pushed into acute hunger by 2027. CountriesIt inis Centralof Americathe utmost importance, southerntherefore, Africafor andcountries Asiato arework alreadywith feeling the damage,WFP and withoutpartners urgentto earlyavert actioncatastrophe, collapsedas harvestsevery and spiking food prices will devastate smallholder farmers who have no safety net. Every dollar spent onnow anticipatorywill actionsave now saves up to seven dollars in emergencydamages response later, making inaction inexcusable.
El Niño's reputation as a global hunger apocalypse is wildly overstated. —For for 50 years, it's been the weather system that cried wolf, with agricultural productivity and open trade consistently outpacing its damage. The 2023-2024 El Niño actually dropped prices for corn, soybeans and wheat. The real food security threat isn't a Pacific weather cycle but deliberate policy failures, including fertilizer supply disruptions and trade instability, that are far more controllable and far more dangerous.
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