ABARES revised Australia's winter crop up 12% to 61 million tonnes, the fourth largest on record. BMKG expects a delayed rainy season across about 61% of Indonesia's land area, with rains now due in early November across most of the country. Two risks this series has tracked since July finally produced results, and they went opposite ways.
CPC holds an El Niño Advisory, with a greater than 90% chance of a very strong event and a 75% chance that October to December exceeds every event since 1950. The ocean signal keeps strengthening and keeps leaning east.
What has changed this fortnight is on land. Two of the risks this series has tracked since July have finally produced testable results, and they went in opposite directions.
| Risk | Status | What moved it |
|---|---|---|
| Australian wheat | Weakened | ABARES revised the national winter crop up 12% on a wetter southern winter |
| Indonesian planting calendar | Strengthened | BMKG forecasts a delayed onset across about 61% of the land area, with rains due in early November across most of the country, and a shorter wet season |
| Ivory Coast cocoa | Unresolved | Real dryness and pod loss reported, but West African rainfall has no clean El Niño relationship |
| Indian edible oils | Not an El Niño story | Currency, freight and biofuel policy dominate the current increase |
| Panama Canal | Continuing | No new official restriction since our 18 September edition |
| Corporate disclosure | New | Malaysia's regulator planning to move El Niño exposure into listed-company reporting |
In Edition 1 on 17 July we ran a stat card reading −26% Australian wheat forecast vs last season (ABARES), from the June crop report: wheat at 26.7 million tonnes and a national winter crop of 54.5 million.
In Edition 2 on 1 August we declined to refresh it, and said why: "ABARES publishes its next crop report in September, so there is genuinely no new Australian data this fortnight, and saying so is more useful than dressing up the old number as news." We named the September report as the checkpoint.
The checkpoint has resolved, and it resolved upward:
| 2026-27 forecast | June | September |
|---|---|---|
| National winter crop | 54.5 Mt | 61 Mt, fourth largest on record |
| Wheat | 26.7 Mt | 29.9 Mt |
| Barley | 14.1 Mt | 16.4 Mt |
| Canola | 6.19 Mt | 7.3 Mt |
ABARES attributes the revision to much better than expected winter conditions across the southern growing regions. The national number improved by 12% because the feared dry pattern did not cover the continent uniformly: Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and southern New South Wales did well, while northern New South Wales and Queensland stayed poor.
ABARES released the revision at the beginning of September. We flagged the report in August, but missed the result in our 18 September edition. It should have led that issue.
One thing worth saying in our own defence, and only because it is checkable: Edition 1 never pinned the June downgrade on El Niño alone. It recorded ABARES also citing reduced planted area, weak wheat margins, sharply higher fertiliser costs and soil moisture that was already low before the event was declared, and noted that ample carry-in stocks watered down the export impact. A hedged call resolving toward the hedge is not a reversal. But the timing miss is ours.
BMKG expects the rainy season to be delayed across about 61% of Indonesia's land area, with the rains now expected to begin in early November across most of the country rather than in October, and a shorter wet season overall. That is an official forecast of delayed rainfall, not a projection of damage, and it is the strongest new physical signal in this edition.
A delayed start compresses the planting calendar. Rice is the exposure that matters most, because roughly 30% of Indonesian paddy land lacks irrigation and depends directly on rain arriving on schedule.
Industry estimates of consequence are circulating, and they are not equally strong. Sorted by what they actually are:
| Estimate | Source | What kind of claim |
|---|---|---|
| Cocoa output during August and September down as much as 15% compared with June | APKAI chairman Arif Zamroni | Observed comparison against June, not a forecast |
| Sugarcane output down about 25% | APTRI | Estimate of this year's drought and wildfire damage |
| Rice possibly down 10% in 2027 | KTNA official Zulharman Djusman | Industry projection |
The cocoa figure is the firmest of the three because it looks backward at a comparison already made. The rice number is a projection about a crop not yet planted. We are reporting them with their names attached so readers can weight them accordingly.
A fourth figure is circulating, a 2% to 8% reduction in 2027 palm oil production, attributed only to an unnamed analyst at a global trading house. It goes in the watch list below as an unverified market estimate and nowhere else. Palm oil remains a slow fuse in any case: biological effects of a dry planting season show up months later, not in this quarter's output.
Farmers in major Ivory Coast growing areas report below-average rainfall, small pods dropping, and a risk that the main crop finishes early if the dryness persists into October. Cloudiness and intermittent rain are complicating bean drying and quality.
That is a genuine physical problem, and it is more than cocoa had the last time we looked at it.
It is still not an El Niño story. West African rainfall does not carry the clean, reliable ENSO relationship that the Indonesian archipelago or the Peruvian coast do. The honest formulation:
Cocoa has acquired a physical weather concern. It has not acquired a proven El Niño explanation.
We made the same point in the August cocoa check, and the passage of time has not improved the attribution. A crop problem and an ENSO diagnosis are separate things, and a market that wants a narrative will merge them.
Malaysia's Securities Commission intends to ask large listed companies, particularly palm oil businesses, to disclose their El Niño preparedness and exposure.
This is the most genuinely new item in the edition, because it is a market consequence that does not require any crop to fail first. If it proceeds, companies have to quantify water management and fire prevention spending, lenders and insurers get comparable disclosures to reassess, and investors can rank plantation operators on preparedness rather than on reassurance.
Climate risk moving from the weather page to the financial statements is a different transmission channel from anything else in this series, and it can move valuations before it moves production.
Would confirm the Indonesian risk: BMKG's next seasonal update holding the November start, followed by observed planting delays in the Ministry of Agriculture's rice sowing data through November and December. The test is sowing area, not price.
Would weaken it: rainfall arriving in the second half of October across Java and Sumatra, which would compress rather than displace the planting window.
Would settle the cocoa question either way: Ivory Coast and Ghana arrivals data from October onward. A genuine shortfall would still not establish El Niño causation, and we will not claim it does.
Our next Australian checkpoint: the ABARES December crop report, which carries the first harvest-based estimates rather than forecasts. We are naming it now so it can be held against us.
Australia is the checkpoint that improved. Indonesia is the risk that strengthened. Cocoa has a real weather problem but still lacks a convincing El Niño attribution. The useful development is not that El Niño might affect everything, but that the early forecasts have started producing results, and the results are diverging.