Why This ‘Supersized’ El Niño Should Be On Every Procurement Team’s Radar

CIPS Global CEO Ben Farrell MBE posted something on LinkedIn this week that’s worth more than a passing scroll. It’s about El Niño — the Pacific weather pattern that rolls around every few years — and why this particular one is already causing real disruption, well before most supply chains have had time to brace for it.

As Farrell put it:

The impacts of this ‘supersized’ El Niño are already being felt.  — Ben Farrell MBE, CIPS Global CEO

He’s not exaggerating. The weakest Indian monsoon in twenty years, a failed maize crop across Central America, and wildfire-fuelled smog settling over Southeast Asia are just some of the effects already playing out. And that’s before winter has properly set in.

A Known Risk, in an Unusually Crowded Year

Here’s the thing about El Niño: it isn’t new, and it isn’t really a surprise. It comes around every few years, and thanks to better monitoring, forecasters now know much earlier when one is forming. On paper, that should make it manageable. In practice, as Farrell points out, every El Niño is different — and every one lands in a different context. This year’s context happens to be particularly loaded.

Supply chains heading into this El Niño were already being stretched and distorted by conflict in the Middle East, what Farrell memorably called “tariff hokey cokey,” and surging demand for AI infrastructure. None of those three things would knock a supply chain off balance on their own. But stack a major climate event on top, and the combined pressure starts to matter in a way that any one of them wouldn’t on its own.

While no individual typhoon, drought or flood would be enough to throw supply chains off, the additional stress they apply can be enough to start breaking things.  — Ben Farrell MBE

It’s Not Just an Agriculture Story

It’s tempting to file this under “food and farming” and move on, especially if your category spend sits well away from agriculture. Farrell’s post is a useful reminder not to. He points to effects reaching as far as the aluminium smelters of China and the fisheries of Peru — sectors that, on the surface, have very little to do with a weak monsoon in India.

That’s really the core message: “even if your business is not directly connected to the primary resources sector, it almost certainly will feel the ripples.” Freight capacity, energy costs, commodity pricing and logistics routes all sit downstream of these disruptions somewhere — and procurement teams tend to find out the hard way, several steps removed from the original cause, when a cost line moves or a lead time slips with no obvious explanation.

Why This Matters for Anyone Studying or Working in Procurement

If you’re partway through your CIPS studies, this is about as live a case study as you’ll find for the supply chain risk and resilience topics that come up across the levels. It’s a genuinely useful one to sit with: a single climate pattern, interacting with geopolitical and economic pressures that have nothing to do with weather, producing effects that show up in sectors you wouldn’t necessarily connect to it at first glance.

It’s also a decent prompt for anyone working in procurement right now, qualified or not, to ask a simple question: if a major climate event hit tomorrow, would you know where your exposure actually sits — not just in your direct category spend, but two or three tiers back in the supply chain? For a lot of teams, the honest answer is still “not entirely.” Building that visibility, and the category strategy and risk monitoring that go with it, is exactly the kind of capability a structured CIPS qualification is built to develop.

You can read Ben Farrell’s original post on LinkedIn here:

Ben Farrell MBE on LinkedIn

Thinking About Where Your Risk Exposure Sits?

Supply chain risk and resilience is a thread that runs right through the CIPS syllabus, from Level 3 through to Level 6. If you’d like to talk through which level’s right for you, or how a CIPS qualification could sharpen how your organisation thinks about risk, our team would be glad to help.

Call us on 01254 945 902 or drop us a line at enquiries@cipsbusinesstraining.co.uk.