We're going to feel this one. So are the farms that grow what's in your cup. Our Green Buyer, Roland Glew, explains why.
If you've been anywhere near a weather forecast lately, you'll have heard the name. Earth Sciences New Zealand, the agency that includes the forecasters most of us still call NIWA, declared El Niño conditions in the tropical Pacific in July, and expects them to shape our weather right through into 2027.
For most of us that lands as a summer story. Dry east coast. Hot spells. Fire risk. Someone's water restrictions.
It's also a coffee story, and that part gets less airtime. So we sat down with Roland Glew, our Green Buyer, to work through what a strong El Niño actually does to the crop long before it reaches a roastery.
First, what it actually is
"El Niño and La Niña are variations in ocean temperature which drive fairly extreme weather," Roland says. "It's a cycle that applies and has always applied across the world. You have periods of relatively more neutral average weather, and years where you're having more extreme weather."
That's the whole thing in one sentence. The Pacific warms or cools, the trade winds shift, and the knock-on effects reach almost everywhere. It runs on an irregular cycle of roughly two to seven years.
Worth saying plainly, because the two get muddled: El Niño isn't climate change. It's a natural cycle that has always existed. The trouble is that it now runs on top of a warmer baseline, so the extremes land harder than they used to.
What it looks like from here
For New Zealand, a strong El Niño usually means stronger and more frequent westerlies, drier conditions through the north and east, and more rain than usual down the western side of the South Island. Forecasters expect this event to peak over the 2026 to 2027 summer, with soil moisture and river flows already leaning below normal across the upper North Island and the eastern side of both islands.
We've been here before. The strong events of 1982 to 1983, 1997 to 1998 and 2015 to 2016 all brought droughts that cost the country hundreds of millions.
Hold that picture, because it's the useful one. Now apply the same force to a coffee farm.
Why plants don't like it
"In general, those more extreme weather conditions aren't good for plants," Roland says. "Most plants are not going to do well in those kinds of extreme weathers that are outside the normal climate and life cycle for those plants. So we're likely to see harm to production."
Coffee is fussier than most. It needs rain at the right moment to flower in sync, then dry weather at the right moment to harvest and dry the cherry. Get the timing wrong in either direction and you lose yield, quality, or both. Too little rain at flowering and the blossom aborts before fruit ever sets.
A Canterbury farmer watching a dry January knows exactly what this feels like. It's the same problem, on a different crop, several thousand kilometres away.
Brazil is the clearest example
"You're having issues at the moment with rain in Brazil, when normally now would be a dry period for the harvesting," Roland says. "Because it's raining, that's hard to harvest whilst it's raining. So you've got a lot of issues playing together."
On paper, 2026 was meant to be a big Brazilian year. The USDA forecast a record 2026/27 crop, up 14% on the year before. Getting it out of the ground was another matter: by mid-July the harvest was 64% picked, behind both the previous year and the five-year average, with rain soaking coffee laid out to dry.
The bigger worry is what comes next. El Niño can delay Brazil's September and October rains, which is exactly when flowering happens. That wouldn't touch the crop being picked now. It would hit the one after it.
Every origin gets a different problem
This is the part that gets flattened in most coverage. El Niño isn't one weather event, it's a redistribution. Same way it dries our east and soaks the West Coast, it splits the coffee world down the middle.
Historically the damage has concentrated closest to us, in the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Drought hit Vietnamese robusta hard through 2015 and 2016, and Indonesian production took a serious knock in the same event. Across the water in Central America, the Pacific-facing regions of Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Colombia tend to get extended drought, while the Atlantic side of those same countries and Peru get too much rain instead. East Africa often gets more rain than usual, which helps yields and simultaneously makes drying harder and disease more likely.
Same event. Six different problems.
It's not arriving on an empty table
"Those producing countries are already under lots of pressure from climate change in terms of less predictable harvests and less predictable rains," Roland says. "Really this is just stacking on top of the other existing pressures of climate change, and labour shortages, and lack of money to invest in farms to help them become more resilient to these things."
That last point matters most. Resilience costs money. Shade trees, irrigation, soil work, replanting with hardier varietals: all of it takes investment years before it pays back. It's the same maths as a farm here deciding whether it can afford more water storage before the dry hits. Some can. Plenty can't. That gap is where the real risk sits.
What the market thinks
Futures move on fear long before anyone counts a single bag.
"If the harvest is badly impacted, that has the potential to mean there's a lack of supply of coffee, and this would push prices up," Roland says. "Right now the commodity market, because it works on a futures system, its prices have gone pretty high. They're looking at this year and next year and into the next year's harvest even, and saying we think there's a good chance the volume produced will be less than what's needed."
You could watch it happen through 2026. Arabica hit a low in early June, then climbed almost 50% inside a month on harvest delays and El Niño worry, with warehouse stocks near multi-year lows amplifying every scare. None of that reflects a single bag failing to arrive. It's the market pricing in what might.
Nobody knows yet
Roland is careful here, and he's right to be.
"El Niño and La Niña is a cycle that is not wholly predictable or consistent. Scientists now are better at predicting it and managing it and understanding it, but we're still talking percentages. We won't really know until next year whether some of these things start to play out, and if so, how severe they end up being."
"As with all of these things in the market, we're all just going to have to wait and see to some extent how some of this actually plays out."
So: an increased risk of poor harvests, on top of pressures that were already there, with a market that has priced in the fear ahead of the fact. That's the honest version.
What it means for your coffee
The thing to hold onto is that El Niño isn't a switch. It won't change every price or ruin every harvest. It's a risk multiplier. Some origins will get hit harder than others, some farms are better prepared than others, and none of it becomes clear until the cherries come in.
What we can tell you is that we're buying the way we always have. Long relationships, prices agreed with producers rather than dictated by a screen in New York, and a willingness to pay what a coffee is worth when a harvest goes against a farm. That approach costs more in a calm year. In a year like this one, it's the whole point.
Roland Glew is the Green Buyer for Ozone Coffee Roasters and the founder of Strategic Coffee Sourcing.