El Niño highlights urgent need for climate-resilient food systems in SA

Climate risks are intensifying faster than policy responses, and the food system is bearing the consequences. A particularly strong El Niño is forecast for the coming summer in South Africa. In southern Africa, this climate phenomenon is associated with hotter and drier conditions. For farmers, this means delayed rains, greater water stress and lower crop yields. Rain-fed crops such as maize, a staple food in South Africa, are particularly vulnerable. 

For consumers, this could mean greater price volatility and increased pressure on household food budgets. This points to the need for transformative interventions in the food system to ensure the system overall, and households in particular, are better prepared to deal with the long-term impacts of climate change. 

The Climate Change Act provides an important framework to embed food systems strongly in climate goals and plans, but this will require coordination across the government departments responsible for various facets of the food system.

The consequences of climate shocks are far-reaching, as the food system encompasses everything from agricultural inputs and farming to processing, transport, retail, consumption and waste. A shock at one point is felt across the entire system. 

Lower production can affect jobs and incomes, while supply disruptions can push up prices, with the effects ultimately reaching households already struggling to afford nutritious food. In a country already facing high levels of poverty, unemployment and food insecurity, lower-income households are far less able to absorb rising food prices or disruptions to livelihoods. Shocks like El Niño are not a distant risk, and so South Africa needs to be well prepared.  

Unequal shocks

Proactive climate adaptation planning for the food system is critical, but the effects of shocks will not be felt equally. Large commercial producers generally have greater access to finance, technology and insurance to manage climate risks. Smallholder farmers, informal traders, workers and low-income households have far fewer buffers, but this does not mean they are peripheral to South Africa’s food system. For instance:

• Small-scale producers support local food production and rural livelihoods, yet often operate with limited resources and institutional support, leaving them particularly exposed to climate-related shocks. 

• Informal traders bring food closer to where people live and work and are an important source of affordable food for low-income households, but are deeply vulnerable to crises.

• Workers keep food production, processing, distribution and retail functioning, yet many face casualised work, low wages and weak protections. A failed harvest or extreme weather event can therefore quickly become a livelihood crisis.

• In our existing context of widespread food insecurity and hunger, working-class women bear the brunt of poverty, rising food prices, and climate impacts.

Climate shocks deepen existing inequalities in the food system, hitting people with the fewest resources to cope the hardest. Adaptation planning therefore needs to build resilience among the most vulnerable and strengthen their capacity to prepare for and recover from climate impacts.

An opportunity to change course

South Africa has entered an important period of climate policy development. The Climate Change Act, promulgated in 2024, creates a pathway for a more coordinated, legislated national response to both climate adaptation and mitigation (lowering emissions). The Act is a framework legislation, and so much of its implementation will be shaped through the plans and processes that follow.

For adaptation, this includes the development of national and sectoral plans, as well as the incorporation of climate adaptation into municipal climate change response plans. The Act also sets specific timelines for when different plans have to be developed and adopted. This creates an important opening to ensure that food-system transformation is more firmly embedded in South Africa’s climate policy architecture.

Putting grassroots demands on the table

Recognising this gap, grassroots food-system constituencies, through the Just Transition in the Food System network, came together to develop a civil society position paper on what food-system priorities should be embedded in upcoming adaptation plans for a truly just transition. 

The process brought together perspectives from smallholder farmers, farm workers, informal traders, fishers and other food-system constituencies. Their demands included protecting livelihoods and working conditions, investing in local markets, and improving access to land and water, as key climate adaptation interventions in the food system. 

The position paper highlights that a just transition in the food system requires a coordinated response, as no single actor can govern the food system alone. 

Building food-system resilience depends on different parts of government working together with other stakeholders. The Department of Agriculture, for example, cannot develop effective adaptation plans without considering water governance, particularly given agriculture’s significant share of national water use. 

Similarly, protecting livelihoods is closely linked to labour policy and social protection. Fisheries depend on environmental governance and informal food economies are shaped by transport, infrastructure and local economic policy.

When grassroots groups presented the position paper to policymakers at a policy roundtable in August, it created an opportunity for different departments to engage both with the priorities raised in the paper and with one another. 

Policymakers broadly agreed that climate planning needs to become less siloed and more collaborative, particularly where responsibilities overlap across sectors. 

The discussion also highlighted that departments may not always have the structures, processes or support needed to coordinate effectively, even where there is willingness to do so. Strengthening these mechanisms for collaboration will be critical to ensuring that the food system is properly embedded across climate policy and that resilience is built in practice, rather than addressed through isolated sectoral responses.

Better coordination at the national level is only part of the challenge. Policies can be ambitious on paper and still fail to change conditions in which people experience climate risk. 

National and sectoral plans have to translate into budgets, programmes and decisions at the provincial and municipal levels. This is especially important for grassroots food-system actors. A key discussion at the policy roundtable was that municipalities often shape the conditions grassroots constituencies encounter most directly. If climate policy does not travel through these layers of government, adaptation risks remaining abstract. 

A sharp reminder 

El Niño is a reminder of what is at stake. Key actors, including government, civil society and academia in South Africa, are aware that climate hazards become crises when they encounter weak infrastructure, precarious livelihoods and poorly coordinated institutions. Waiting until crops fail, incomes disappear, or food prices rise is not adaptation. 

There is already concern about the pace of implementation. The Climate Change Act sets timelines for key adaptation processes, yet some of the steps needed to unlock subsequent planning are still under way. Climate scenarios, for example, were expected to be developed within a year of the Act’s commencement in March 2025, yet their official release is still awaited.

These delays have knock-on effects for the national and sector adaptation plans that depend on them. While climate policy is complex and requires extensive consultation alongside human and financial resources, the onset of El Niño and its severe forecast underscore the scale of climate shocks and how rapidly threats can materialise. Caught in the middle is the food system – and the vulnerable communities who rely on it. DM