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https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-el-nino-could-scramble-commodity-markets-8d5e36ba

How El Niño Could Scramble Commodity Markets

Climate pattern’s forecast is pushing up sugar prices and could threaten some U.S. farmers

Farmers are bracing to find out what El Niño will bring.

Farmers are bracing to find out what El Niño will bring.

By David Uberti

and Kirk Maltais

| Photographs by Jamie Kelter Davis for The Wall Street Journal

May 15, 2023 8:00 am ET

El Niño hasn’t even landed yet. That hasn’t stopped it from moving commodity markets around the world.

The hard-to-predict climate pattern, when powerful, can usher in intense drought or rainfall, upend output from the world’s breadbasket regions, and whipsaw the prices of commodities. Brazilian sugar producers, American grain farmers and international traders are bracing for the phenomenon. But the cyclical shift in ocean temperatures can just as easily be a dud.

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