HARARE, ZIMBABWE — A drought brought on by El Niño could reduce Zimbabwe’s maize production to 1.1 million tonnes in 2024, a precipitous drop from the projected 2.3 million tonnes harvested this year, Reuters reported, citing Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube.

Ncube, who was speaking on the sidelines of a World Bank briefing on Zimbabwe’s 2024 economic prospects in Harare, said the deficit threatens food security in poor households of the southern African nation. With a population of about 16 million people, Zimbabwe requires about 1.8 million tonnes of the staple grain annually for human consumption.

El Niño, a natural climate phenomenon in which surface waters of the central and eastern Pacific become unusually warm, causing changes in global weather patterns, is expected to hit crop yields during the 2023-24 farming season.

Farmers in Zimbabwe, where frequent droughts have compounded a lengthy economic crisis, have delayed planting maize amid high temperatures and dry conditions linked to El Niño. Only 95,156 hectares of land had been put under summer crops, mainly grains, by Dec. 10, a sharp decline from 465,707 hectares by the same time last year, Zimbabwe’s cabinet said on Dec. 12.