El Niño and rising fertilizer costs: How vulnerable is Malawi in 2027?
Malawi faces significant economic and food security risks from overlapping El Niño impacts and Iran war fuel and fertilizer price shocks, a modeling exercise shows.
- fertilizer prices
- El Niño
- food security
- food crises
By Chris Hillbruner, Karl Pauw, and Weston AndersonSeptember 11, 2026
Key takeaways
- Malawi faces significant economic and food security risks from overlapping El Niño impacts and Iran war fuel and fertilizer price shocks, a modeling exercise shows.
- Possible impacts include weaker growth, declines in agricultural production, and higher food prices, though the outcomes are uncertain.
- Food security could deteriorate sharply in 2027. In the average scenario, nearly 500,000 more people fall into poverty and about 4.6 million more become undernourished.
First in a series.
El Niño events are extended periods of warmer-than-usual sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific that alter global atmospheric circulation, affecting seasonal rainfall patterns in many parts of the world. Currently, El Niño is strengthening rapidly. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center forecasts a greater than 90% chance of a very strong El Niño in 2026-27 and a nearly 70% chance that its peak strength will exceed that of all previous El Niño events since 1950. Meanwhile, the Iran war and disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz have driven up prices of fuel and fertilizers.
Together, these overlapping shocks pose potentially serious threats to food production and food security, though the specific impacts vary by geography and timing. This is the first in a series of blog posts focused on impacts in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, and India and on the global food system as a whole. These posts will reflect a combination of economic modeling and policy research and inform an early October policy seminar.