A strong El Nino expected later this year, together with the fallout from the US-Israeli war on Iran, may threaten China’s agricultural security as the country’s traditional small-scale farming system lacks sufficient capacity to cope with extreme weather shocks, analysts have warned.

The climate phenomenon also risked disrupting China’s supply of critical commodities, such as copper – essential for renewable energy systems – potentially forcing the energy-intensive economy to lean more heavily on coal, they said.

El Nino is a climate pattern in which sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific rise abnormally, altering atmospheric circulation. It occurs about every two to seven years, and is typically associated with higher global temperatures and weather disruptions across the Pacific Rim.

In China – home to 1.4 billion people, where food security has long been a top policy priority – it tends to increase the risk of flooding in the south and drought in the north. The National Climate Centre has forecast that a moderate to moderately strong El Nino will develop this month and continue through the rest of the year.

“China’s overall capacity to respond remains limited at this stage,” said Liu Bingxin, an agricultural analyst at Huishang Futures.

“Compared with highly scaled and mechanised farming systems in countries such as the United States, China’s agriculture is more fragmented and relatively less resilient to natural disasters.”

She said the impact on Chinese agriculture was expected to fall mainly on spring-sown crops such as rice, corn and soybeans.