It is hard to go a day without thinking about the strange weather that has graced this winter so far. In 2015, major cities across the Northeast had much higher than average temperatures for the month of December, with some experiencing record highs. Boston’s average temperature in December was 45.4 degrees, which was 11 degrees higher than long-term averages for December. Much to the disappointment of those wishing for a “white Christmas,” Christmas day was also abnormally warm; in New York City, the temperature reached 66 degrees.
The surprising weather is primarily due to El Niño. El Niño is an often misunderstood weather pattern that occurs every two to five years and reverses the usual weather cycle that causes frigid Northeast winters. Aside from preventing much of the US from living in an Irving Berlin-inspired dream, El Niño has wide-reaching consequences for agriculture; dealing with these often negative consequences is a difficult task to accomplish, as El Niño is volatile and has varying effects on different parts of the United States, not to mention the world.
During non-El Niño years, snowfall over a wide region of Eurasia results in an accumulation of cold air and high pressures, leading to a change of pressure in the Arctic. This is the cause of the polar vortex that brings cold air down and across the Northern United States. However, El Niño battles these pressure shifts by weakening the western trade winds in the Pacific Ocean, resulting in a rise in sea surface temperature. The western flow of winds reverses eastward, and with that, warmer water travels east as well. This leads to disparate weather changes in parts of the United States. In expansive regions of the central and eastern United States, winters become more temperate, while in California and Gulf states major flooding and even tornados can occur.
Like any large weather event, El Niño hit the agricultural industry hard. While some crops that thrive in milder temperatures, like corn and soybeans, flourish as a result of El Niño, many major crops are damaged by the excess rainfall, bacterial diseases, and insects that survive longer in the moderate temperatures. Shortages caused by El Niño can quickly push food prices up; both sugar prices and dairy prices increased over 30 percent in October. By comparison, poor weather conditions in Brazil in October of 2013 caused sugar prices to rise only 1.3 percent. In addition to rising food prices, Ancha Srinivasan, principal climate change specialist at the Asian Development Bank, estimated that the effects on agriculture worldwide will result in more than a $30-45 billion economic loss, as drier conditions in Southeast Asia and Australia affect the cultivation of critical crops such as palm oil, rice, cotton and sugar. In the United States, this economic loss will affect tourism, transportation, and agricultural industries, with the Midwest being hit particularly hard.
Fortunately, the Department of Agriculture and many farmers are taking extra steps to try to protect themselves from the economic impacts of El Niño, in addition to innovative products that have been created to predict the occurrences of droughts. At some Californian vineyards, farmers are taking a variety of steps to protect their crops, including planting cover crops, digging drainage ditches, and harvesting the crop more frequently, to control the extra rainfall and prevent it from washing away the topsoil. In addition, new products such as the Heat Stress Analyzer have the potential to more efficiently predict when a drought will occur. The Department of Agriculture has mandated total cloud seeding, a process that introduces silver iodide into the atmosphere in order to cause rainfall.
Due to El Niño’s drought effect on three countries who have great agricultural significance—Brazil, Indonesia, and India—the agriculture sector of the economy could see greater returns. As a result, some believe that it is a good time to invest in the agricultural sector, as the volume of crops produced in these countries will be significantly lower. It is estimated that returns on agricultural commodities could be between 10 and 25 percent higher. For context, the 1997-98 El Niño resulted in an approximate $15 billion benefit to the agricultural sector.
There is no running away from this phenomenon. Agriculture is a vital industry in the United States, and the only way to prevent the collateral damage of El Niño is to educate the public, especially farmers, on techniques that will maximize crop yields. There are some financial opportunities that arise from El Niño, such as investing in the agriculture market sector, although some may consider this merely reaping benefits from people in places like Brazil and India who will suffer from tougher harvests.