World News in Brief: El Niño’s $11 trillion price tag, Mozambique and Yemen updates

The new IFAD report identifies El Niño as one of several overlapping climate and economic shocks affecting small-scale food producers and rural economies, warning that agricultural disruptions can ripple through the wider economy.

In 2026 alone, global energy and fertiliser shocks drove up costs across food systems within a single planting season – from production and processing to transport and distribution.

Comprehensive protection

To strengthen rural economies’ resilience to overlapping shocks, the report calls for bundled investments that help farmers access markets, agricultural inputs, technologies, and financial services, including credit and weather insurance.

“Resilience is not built by investing in single interventions, but by connecting investments in inputs, markets and finance so that gains in one area are not lost in another,” said Alvaro Lario, President of the International Fund for Agricultural…