Is the World Sleepwalking Into a Historic Hunger Crisis?
Hormuz, El Niño, and drastically cut funding – the international community and Germany are failing to address the polycrisis.
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According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), acute global food insecurity (phases 3–5) has tripled between 2016 and 2024 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, El Niño events, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, and numerous armed conflicts. Although this figure has improved slightly over the past three to four years – with regional variations, as the FAO highlights in recent publications –, the scale of the deterioration remains.
The rise in food insecurity is accompanied by the escalating climate crisis. Higher temperatures and more frequent heat waves increase evaporation and thus soil dryness, worsening growing conditions for plants. Changing precipitation patterns also reduce the availability of water in some regions – in some cases only seasonally. The accelerated rate of rising temperatures makes it more difficult for plants and farmers to adapt.
The African continent is hardest hit by incidents of droughts. More water evaporating into the atmosphere leads to more heavy rainfall events and flooding. The accelerating rise in sea levels also threatens to flood agricultural areas in coastal plains and river deltas or to cause soil and groundwater salinization.
In the EU, this year’s heat waves alone could reduce total grain production by just under 9 percent by July compared to 2025. For the U.S., the government information service World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) estimates heat-related crop losses at 8–12 percent for corn, 5–10 percent for soybeans, and 3–5 percent for wheat. The Reuters news agency summarizes the expected global heat-related crop losses as a total loss of 40–60 million metric tons of grain (5–7 percent of the global harvest) and anticipates a 15–25 percent increase in prices on the world market. This is significantly higher than the expected annual climate-change-related increase in global food prices, which the European Central Bank and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) estimate at 0.9–3.2 percent per year through 2035.
Three risk multipliers are further fueling the food crisis
Currently, three additional risk multipliers are emerging that are likely to further exacerbate the global food crisis: first, the consequences of the war in Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz; second, the new El Niño event currently building; and third, the drastic cuts in funding for humanitarian aid and the transformation of agriculture.
Hormuz: Until now, the Persian Gulf has also been the source of 20–30 percent of the essential raw materials for fertilizers used in the industrially operated sector of global agriculture. Urea, ammonia, phosphates, and sulfur are among these key inputs. It is already clear that a significant amount of fertilizer did not reach fields in time, which will have delayed consequences for the harvest. It remains unclear when the Strait of Hormuz will be fully reopened, and even then, it will take months for shipping traffic to return to normal. Meanwhile, pro-Iranian Houthi militias in Yemen are also blocking Bab al-Mandab, a strait on the Red Sea, to Saudi ships. This affects the alternative route, particularly for Saudi oil exports to Asia, and thus energy prices.
From a food perspective, the Strait of Hormuz blockade directly affects, above all, low-income countries in South Asia and East Africa that are heavily dependent on imports. In these regions in particular, the costs of fuel, fertilizer, and food are now rising. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that additional population groups in the affected regions will now be at risk of hunger. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) fears that 30 million more people could be pushed into poverty. The WFP and the International Rescue Committee warn that there is very little time left to take timely action.
El Niño: According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on July 31, 2026, the strong El Niño that has already begun is continuing to intensify and will dominate global climate patterns at least from August through October. The GEOGLAM Crop Monitor’s special report predicts that El Niño conditions are likely to persist until March 2027, with a two-thirds probability that they will peak between November 2026 and January 2027.
The resulting changes in Pacific Ocean currents will throw weather patterns worldwide out of balance. Regionally, there is a risk of record-breaking temperatures, heavy rainfall, and droughts. Climate change is amplifying the natural El Niño phenomenon due to the additional energy stored in the oceans. As a result of this interaction, it is highly likely that 2027 will be the warmest year on record globally. The global average temperature is then likely to rise significantly above the 1.5°C limit, possibly reaching 1.7°C or even higher. .(1) New studies suggest that a strong El Niño could – once again – temporarily turn the Amazon into a source of CO2 rather than a sink. (2) El Niño also influences climatic conditions in more distant regions such as the Sahel and East Africa.
On the production side of food systems, Brazil – a major exporter – could face significant pressure regarding its soybean and corn harvests; Australia with regard to wheat, oats, and canola; and Southeast Asia, regarding palm oil. Argentina could benefit from increased rainfall. (3) According to analyses by the asset management firm Goldman Sachs, the emerging El Niño is already causing a drier monsoon season in India; some regions are receiving only a quarter of their usual rainfall, and parts of central India only half. Yields of wheat, rice, and sugarcane could be affected. Rice appears to be well protected in India thanks to irrigation. However, significantly greater risks are emerging for soybeans, corn, cererals, and cotton. (4)
According to the FAO, severe El Niño events in the past have led to price increases of 20 to 40 percent for wheat, rice, and corn. Goldman Sachs estimates that this El Niño will trigger an additional 15.8 percent increase in global food commodity prices. This would affect all consumers to varying degrees. For the eurozone, a 1.3 percent increase in food prices is currently expected. However, analysts suspect that, due to various lag effects, these costs will not be fully felt globally until the second half of 2028.
Risk management urgently needed
In early August 2026, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo called on the world’s governments to use the remaining window of opportunity to anticipate risks and take action before the effects of El Niño materialize. (5)
This new sense of urgency arises against the backdrop of already rising prices caused by the current effects of the climate crisis described here and by the war in Iran. Price increases on this scale have, in the past, led to social unrest, protests, and massive migration. In the Middle East and North Africa, for example, social contracts rely to a large extent on the political guarantee of affordable staple foods through subsidies and imports. In Egypt, for instance, skyrocketing bread and food prices in 2011 – following various extreme weather events around the world – were a key trigger for mass protests by the population.
Funding Crisis: The situation is further dramatically exacerbated by the limited financial capacity of many states, resulting from the cascade of crises in recent years and from rising inflation, driven in part by price shocks in fossil fuels. According to Misereor’s latest Debt Report 2026, nearly 70 countries in the Global South are burdened by very high or high levels of external debt, causing an unsustainably high proportion of public revenue to flow to foreign creditors.
This has reduced the capacity of many poorer countries to act, while at the same time the number of people in humanitarian need has risen by more than half over the past five years – due, among other things, to more frequent and more intense wars, armed conflicts, and extreme weather events.
Humanitarian Aid in a Funding Crisis
Until now, one would have thought that the international community would step in. However, following the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and budget cuts by numerous donors, the gap between humanitarian needs and the willingness to fund them is widening. Funding has fallen back to 2016 levels. According to calculations by the Center for Global Development from June 2025, U.S. cuts alone are already costing more than 5,000 lives every day. According to a Lancet study, global cuts in international development spending could lead to more than 9.4 million additional deaths by 2030 due to poverty, hunger, disease, and climate change.
The leading international agencies addressing the issue of hunger – FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO – warn in their latest joint flagship report (SOFI) that the 2026 war in Iran, combined with extreme weather events and cuts to official development assistance and humanitarian funding, threaten to undermine the modest progress made over the past three years in curbing global hunger. By the end of 2025, only 30.4 percent of the funds needed to address global humanitarian crises had been allocated internationally for 2026. Since then, new crises caused by heat waves, the war in Iran, and El Niño have emerged.
With the U.S.’s complete withdrawal from its previous leadership role, many eyes are now turning to Germany as the largest donor country in development cooperation. Expectations are high not only abroad but also at home: According to a representative Forsa survey, 77 percent of Germans in 2025 urged the new federal government to take more decisive action in the fight against international hunger.
However, the federal government’s draft budget for 2027, presented by the cabinet in early July, continues to prioritize other areas, according to the Association for Development Policy and Humanitarian Aid of German Non-Governmental Organizations (VENRO): Funding for humanitarian aid in the Foreign Office’s budget will be halved compared to 2024. This would bring the total to just 1.05 billion euros for 2027, which corresponds to 0.19 percent of the total budget – a historic low. Funding for international cooperation has also been sharply cut, with funding for the sustainable transformation of food systems, for example, reduced by 33 percent.
Another major problem is that nearly half of all cuts in the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) are being made to the budget line for structural transitional assistance – and thus to the German government’s key instrument for crisis management and reconstruction.(6) The organizations UNHCR, UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, IOM, and WFP have issued a joint warning: The draft budget does not adequately address global crises.
What is the German government doing?
In June, the author wrote to the German ministers at the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, calling for coordinated action in light of the crises that are escalating on multiple fronts. A response came from Development Minister Reem Alabali Radovan. She emphasizes that the three ministries are already working intensively on an interdepartmental coordinated response to the unfolding scenario and are also coordinating internationally. “In this context, we are combining short-term crisis response measures with medium- and long-term approaches to strengthen resilient agricultural and food systems in particularly affected countries, especially in Africa and Asia,” writes the SPD minister. “The planned priorities include both the provision of humanitarian aid and structural transitional assistance.”
However, it is unclear how the significant budget cuts planned specifically for the two areas mentioned by her fit in with this statement. The minister also states that she intends to contribute to multilateral initiatives aimed at securing supply chains (including for fertilizers) and ensuring the market transparency required for this purpose.
Encouragingly, Reem Alabali Radovan emphasizes that the government also aims to work “toward the transformation of agricultural and food systems into structures that are more resilient to crises and climate change, as well as toward increased engagement in the energy sector to make partner countries less dependent on energy imports and external shocks.” Indeed, the escalation of multiple crises – in addition to the urgently needed immediate assistance – should serve as an impetus to promote human rights-based, sustainable, and resilient food systems, as well as regional trade systems as a whole.
But time is running out for these words to be turned into the necessary actions.
Katharina Hierl contributed to this article.
Christoph Bals is Chief Policy Officer at Germanwatch and, among others, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and a member of the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance
Footnotes:
(1) Zeke Hausfather, Climate research lead at Stripe and research scientist at Berkley Earth. https://lnkd.in/p/enguDK4X
(3) Agriculture by S&P Global Energy-Analyse, https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dipanshi-agarwal-6a6322205_el-nino-threatens-crop-production-in-the-ugcPost-7487817045200478209-zx-C
(4) Agriculture by S&P Global Energy-Analyse, https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dipanshi-agarwal-6a6322205_el-nino-threatens-crop-production-in-the-ugcPost-7487817045200478209-zx-C
