FEWS NET: El Niño Sets Up an Early Lean Season Across Madagascar's Grand South

Madagascar's Grand South is heading into a lean season that will start earlier than usual and last longer than households can cover, according to a Key Message Update published by FEWS NET covering July 2026 to January 2027. The famine early warning system says the ongoing El Niño event is expected to delay the start of the October rainy season, push temperatures above average and hold rainfall below average — a combination it expects to undercut the modest gains from the mid-year harvests.

Crisis outcomes emerging, then spreading

FEWS NET expects Crisis (IPC Phase 3) outcomes to appear in the districts of Toliara II and Amboasary Atsimo in July, as poor households run down food stocks atypically early after below-average production and become increasingly dependent on markets just as seasonal food prices rise.

From October 2026, the agency projects those Crisis outcomes will widen, covering several areas of Atsimo-Andrefana and Androy and parts of Anosy, as more households deplete stocks and find themselves without the resources to meet essential food and non-food needs.

Across the remainder of the Grand South, FEWS NET expects Stressed (IPC Phase 2) outcomes to persist through September. Cassava and sweet potato harvests, concentrated between July and August, will temporarily support consumption and provide income from crop sales. But the agency cautions that production is expected to be significantly below average because of forecast below-average and erratic rainfall, which will limit both how much the harvests help and how long the improvement lasts.

How El Niño enters the food security picture

El Niño shifts rainfall patterns across much of the tropics, and in FEWS NET's assessment the practical consequence for southern Madagascar is a late and weaker rainy season. The agency says the forecast weather shocks are expected to hinder the establishment of key staple crops — rice, maize and cassava — in both the Grand South and the Grand South East.

That has a second-order effect on incomes. Because below-average crop production reduces demand for agricultural labour, FEWS NET projects labour earnings will stay 20 to 40 percent below average. With limited household food stocks and reduced purchasing power, the agency expects poor households to face widening food consumption gaps during the lean season and to lean more heavily on borrowing, asset sales, temporary migration and the consumption of wild foods.

Readers can find background on how the Pacific pattern propagates to distant rainfall regimes on our science page.

Prices squeezed from two directions

FEWS NET also flags a cost channel that is independent of the weather. Food prices are likely to face additional upward pressure from rising international fuel, freight and import costs, the agency says.

Domestic fuel prices have remained broadly stable under the government's price adjustment mechanism and emergency subsidies, according to the update. Even so, FEWS NET assesses that higher costs for imported fuel and essential commodities — associated in part with renewed tensions in the Middle East — are likely to raise food prices over the outlook period, and that government price stabilization measures are unlikely to fully offset the pressure. The result, in the agency's analysis, is further erosion of poor households' purchasing power and an intensification of lean season effects, particularly in the Grand South.

What the update is, and is not

A Key Message Update is a high-level product: FEWS NET describes it as a summary of current acute food insecurity conditions together with any changes to the organisation's most recent projection of acute food insecurity outcomes for the area concerned. It sits alongside the fuller Food Security Outlook for Madagascar covering June 2026 to January 2027 and earlier updates issued in March, April and May 2026. The July update is available from FEWS NET.

The document does not give an ENSO index value or a probability for the event's continuation; its El Niño reference is qualitative, describing an event already under way and the seasonal consequences FEWS NET expects to follow from it. For a wider view of how the current event is being tracked, see our news coverage.