Looming El Niño threatens to shatter SA’s summer harvest triumph

There are still ample supplies in the silos across the country after a record harvest, but concerns about the effects of El Niño on the season ahead seem to be driving up commodity prices.

Wandile Sihlobo is the Presidential Envoy on Agriculture and Land. He is also the chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa and a senior research fellow in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University.

South Africa’s summer grain and oilseed production season will begin next month, and the outlook remains worrying.

South Africa is less than a month away from the typical start of the summer grain season in its eastern regions.

Farmers in these regions will soon start preparing and tilling the land ahead of the 2026–27 season, particularly for yellow maize and soybeans, the predominant crops planted in South Africa’s eastern regions. The excellent soil moisture remains the main comfort for the farming community, even as the rainfall outlook for the year remains worrying, as we have written several times .

In fact, the South African Weather Service (Saws) recently signalled some concerns in its monthly seasonal Climate Watch report at the end of August 2026.

“The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (Enso), which is currently in an El Niño state, has strengthened, and current predictions indicate that it will continue strengthening towards a very strong El Niño state within the next couple of months and last at least until the end of the 2026/27 summer season. The typical signs that El Niño will affect South Africa are starting to materialise over the Pacific Ocean, and it is expected that South Africa will experience the typical impacts of drier and warmer conditions during this coming summer,” it said.

These messages from weather authorities, combined with what we have observed in other countries, have raised concerns about the upcoming season. We also see such concerns partly reflected in the commodity prices.

For example, on 18 September 2026, the white and yellow maize spot prices were up by 9% and 10%, respectively, from a month ago, trading around R3,965 per ton and R3,931 per ton. Moreover, the soybean spot price rose 13% from a month ago to R8,953 per ton.

Ordinarily, grain prices wouldn’t rise this much after a season of abundance, when maize and soybean production were at record levels in the 2025-26 season.

For example, South Africa’s 2025–26 maize production estimate is 17.4 million tons, up 4% from last season and the largest harvest on record – about 9.5 million tons of white maize and 7.9 million tons of yellow maize.

Such a maize crop, combined with likely large carryover stocks from the current season, signals that South Africa will once again be a net exporter of maize in the 2026-27 marketing year (corresponding to the 2025-26 production season).

South Africa’s annual maize consumption is 12 million tons. Exports are more than 3 million tons, with ample carry-over stocks for next year.