For the smallholder farmer waiting on rains that may not come, for the informal trader whose stock depends on harvests she does not control, and for the working-class woman stretching a household budget against rising prices, South Africa’s summer forecast carries real weight. A particularly strong El Niño is expected, and in southern Africa the phenomenon is associated with hotter and drier conditions. For farmers, that means delayed rains, greater water stress and lower crop yields. For consumers, it could mean greater price volatility and increased pressure on household food budgets.
The stakes are highest for those with the fewest buffers. 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. 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 do not, yet they are anything but peripheral to the food system.
Small-scale producers support local food production and rural livelihoods, but 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, yet they are deeply vulnerable to crises. Workers keep food production, processing, distribution and retail functioning, but many face casualised work, low wages and weak protections, so a failed harvest or extreme weather event can quickly become a livelihood crisis. In a context of widespread food insecurity and hunger, working-class women bear the brunt of poverty, rising food prices and climate impacts.
The consequences of climate shocks travel far beyond the farm gate. The food system encompasses everything from agricultural inputs and farming to processing, transport, retail, consumption and waste, and 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. Shocks like El Niño are not a distant risk, and South Africa needs to be well prepared.
There is, in principle, a framework for that preparation. The Climate Change Act, promulgated in 2024, creates a pathway for a more coordinated, legislated national response to both climate adaptation and mitigation. As framework legislation, much of its implementation will be shaped through the plans and processes that follow, including national and sectoral adaptation plans and the incorporation of adaptation into municipal climate change response plans. The Act sets specific timelines for when these plans must be developed and adopted, creating an important opening to embed food-system transformation more firmly in the country’s climate policy architecture. As analysis published at https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2026-10-11-el-nino-highlights-urgent-need-for-climate-resilient-food-systems-in-sa/ argues, the law provides an important framework to embed food systems strongly in climate goals, but this will require coordination across the government departments responsible for various facets of the food system.
Meanwhile, grassroots constituencies have moved to fill that gap. Through the Just Transition in the Food System network, smallholder farmers, farm workers, informal traders, fishers and other food-system constituencies developed a civil society position paper on the priorities that should be embedded in upcoming adaptation plans. Their demands included protecting livelihoods and working conditions, investing in local markets, and improving access to land and water as key climate adaptation interventions. The paper stresses that a just transition in the food system requires a coordinated response, since no single actor can govern the food system alone.
That coordination argument is borne out by the structure of government itself. The Department of Agriculture cannot develop effective adaptation plans without considering water governance, given agriculture’s significant share of national water use. 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 roundtable in August, it gave different departments a chance to engage with the priorities raised 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 showed that departments may not always have the structures, processes or support needed to coordinate effectively, even where there is willingness. Strengthening these mechanisms will be critical to ensuring the food system is properly embedded across climate policy and that resilience is built in practice rather than addressed through isolated sectoral responses.
National coordination is only part of the challenge. National and sectoral plans have to translate into budgets, programmes and decisions at provincial and municipal levels, and this matters especially for grassroots food-system actors. A key point at the roundtable was that municipalities often shape the conditions these constituencies encounter most directly. If climate policy does not travel through these layers of government, adaptation risks remaining abstract.
El Niño is a sharp reminder of what is at stake. Government, civil society and academia are aware that climate hazards become crises when they meet 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: climate scenarios were expected to be developed within a year of the Act’s commencement in March 2025, yet their official release is still awaited, and those delays have knock-on effects for the national and sector adaptation plans that depend on them. Climate policy is complex and requires extensive consultation alongside human and financial resources, but the onset of El Niño and its severe forecast underscore how rapidly threats can materialise. Caught in the middle is the food system, and the vulnerable communities who rely on it. Whether the plans now in motion reach those communities before the next failed harvest is the question the coming summer will answer.