NOAA now puts the odds of a “very strong” El Niño at 81% for the October to December period, up from 63% a month ago.
The peak overlaps with the period when US grocers import most of their fresh fruit from South America. A strong El Niño can damage specific crops at key harvest periods, forcing buyers to find substitutes for affected products instead of paying more across the board.
The sourcing gap: Peru, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador supply much of the US winter and spring produce, from avocados and blueberries to grapes, mangoes, asparagus, cherries and bananas.
The forecast: NOAA’s latest ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) update gives the event a 97% chance of persisting into early spring 2027, with the Niño-3.4 index reading +1.2°C. If that holds, NOAA says it “would rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950.” Some trade publications have called the event a “super” El Niño, a label NOAA itself does not use.
The historical record: A strong index reading does not reliably predict the damage on the ground. In the 2023–24 event, northern Peru got hammered: mango flowering losses ran near 90%, avocado output fell more than 50%, bananas nearly 40%, and grapes and blueberries about 30%. Peruvian mango shipments to the US fell to about 35% of normal levels.
Yes the 2015–16 event, one of the strongest on record, did far less damage than feared. A USDA retrospective called it “More of a Mite than a Godzilla,” pegging losses near $80 million against fears of billions. The reason was that Peru's coastal fruit belt tracks “El Niño costero,” a coastal-warming signal separate from the basin-wide index NOAA forecasts.
The move: Buyers are lining up backup supply sources before the October to December peak. They are also booking reefer capacity ahead of the seasonal rush, and mapping supplier concentration at the SKU level. The last step matters most where sourcing is thin.
Fresh Del Monte’s 10-K says Costa Rica alone accounts for 34% of its total fresh produce sales volume. “The question is not whether disruption will occur, but how prepared organisations are,” Neil Dalus, a risk manager at insurer TT Club, told The Loadstar.
Enrica Calonghi, South America director at Air France KLM Martinair Cargo, told The Loadstar there is “no evidence of a broad collapse in perishables exports or airfreight demand.” The 2015–16 event is the reason both can be true: a strong basin-wide reading does not settle what lands in the produce aisle until the coastal harvest data comes in.
