A record El Niño climate phase will unleash unprecedented heat and extreme weather, and the UK food system is vulnerable, climate minister Katie White told .

At the same time, she pushed back against “panic and fear” after environment minister Angela Eagle told Britons they should “store a bit of food that can keep you going for a while” in case of El Niño storms and flooding.

“Look, am I going out and buying loads of extra beans? I’ve always got a few cans of beans, but that’s mainly so I’m ready for when I’ve not had a chance to go to the shop,” said White. “So I’m not going out and doing that.”

The UK Met Office, the national weather service, has warned that the UK is likely to face an unusually warm, wet and stormy autumn and winter due to El Niño, which occurs every two to seven years. While late winter in the UK has often been cold and dry during El Niño, the current event is so strong that it could remain warm and rainy into spring.

If fields become too muddy, tractors may not be able to sow crops like winter wheat, as happened in the 2023-24 El Niño, or the plants could fail to sprout. Continued wet weather could undermine spring barley. Farmers could be forced to spend more on livestock feed and housing, raising meat and dairy prices as well.

Closer to the tropics, crops like rice could fail due to heat, drought and weakened monsoons. A UK government report last week warned that El Niño could increase UK prices for imported foods such as rice, cocoa and coffee. This comes after heatwaves and drought linked to global warming reduced crop yields in the northern hemisphere this summer, resulting in the worst-ever wheat, barley, rape and oat harvest in the UK.  

“We will have a wetter start to this winter… On the back of a very dry summer, that is difficult,” said White. “The food system is vulnerable.”

Large countries including China, Brazil and Germany have been building up stores of key foods like wheat, rice, corn and sugar. But the UK doesn’t keep substantial public food reserves.

White argued that the UK would be better off helping local farms and groceries to become more resilient to climate shocks. A task force she established that includes military experts and scientists will meet in October to scrutinise readiness for climate security threats, including to food.

“I don’t think we need to be in a position of grain stores, but I do think we do need to be looking at where the vulnerabilities are in the food system and how we support local production in the most sustainable way,” she said. “That’s going to be working with farmers and also on local supply chains.”

Farmers will probably have to plant more weather-resistant varieties or different crops entirely, according to Monika Zurek at the University of Oxford. The UK also needs to reduce its reliance on imports for 40 per cent of its food. But “grain storage is definitely part of the answer” as well, she says.

El Niño flooding could also threaten housing and infrastructure, and these risks will continue as climate change makes most of the world warmer and wetter. The UK should not only build anti-flood engineering works such as the Thames Barrier, but also restore ecosystems like wetlands to absorb excess water, said White. Extreme heat, which killed at least 35,000 people in Europe this year, is likely to bake the continent again next summer.

The long-term solution is for the UK and other countries to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, she said, a goal that right-wing parties have been increasingly attacking in the UK, the European Union and the US.

Yet the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which White is a part of, is reportedly set to approve the Jackdaw gas field off Scotland, and may consent to the Rosebank oil field as well. These would result in at least 275 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over their lifetime, equivalent to about three-quarters of the UK’s current annual greenhouse gas emissions.

White said she couldn’t comment as the approvals are up to energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh, but noted that “oil and gas is part of our mix going forward”.

She argued that the growth of renewable energy, which now generates more than half of UK electricity, would reduce fossil fuel emissions over time, pointing out that the UK has almost twice as many public electric vehicle chargers as petrol pumps. Her department also just launched £30 million of funding for 1000 community-owned solar, hydro and wind projects.

This month, the UN said the world will soon fail the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and will have to rely on CO2 removal – ranging from tree planting to carbon-sucking machines – to bring temperatures back down in the future. The UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency is funding £57 million of research into geoengineering techniques like spreading sun-blocking particles in the atmosphere.

White said the UK has no plans to deploy geoengineering and she is concentrating on reducing climate impacts in the near term.

“My focus as climate minister is… adaptation and resilience because I know that next summer is likely to be very, very hot,” she said. “But also for this winter, how do we accelerate electrification? Because that is the best way to bring people’s bills down.”