For years, Ainul Islam grew rice, potatoes and vegetables on eight bighas of family farmland in Sakharia, a village in Bogura. He invested about 400,000 taka in farming, expecting that profits from potatoes and vegetables would supplement the meagre returns from rice.
Instead, the weather became an increasingly costly variable.
Cyclones damaged crops. Rain arrived during winter. Heatwaves struck at critical stages of cultivation. After repeated losses, Islam mortgaged his farmland and borrowed from a bank to keep farming.
In 2023, he used the loan to plant potatoes. Rain during the winter contributed to widespread rot, he said, and his harvest fell to roughly half of what he would normally expect.
He stored what remained in a cold storage facility, hoping prices would improve. They did not.
“The price fell so much that selling the potatoes did not even cover the cold-storage charges,” Ainul told Daily Waadaa. “Everything I spent on production was a loss.”
Eventually, he sold 12 decimals of land to repay his debts. He has not grown potatoes since.
“There was no other option,” he said. “I borrowed to cultivate, lost money again and finally had to sell land to repay the loan.”
His experience reflects a problem spreading across rural Bangladesh, where farmers are confronting weather that increasingly fails to conform to established seasonal patterns.
Early floods have arrived before the monsoon. Long dry periods have interrupted the rainy season. Weeks with little rain have been followed by intense downpours concentrated into a few days. Winter rain and unusually high temperatures have complicated the cultivation of crops adapted to cooler conditions.
The risks are particularly acute for small farmers, who account for about 91% of Bangladesh’s farmers and generally have limited savings to absorb a failed harvest. Some are taking on debt. Others are leaving agriculture altogether.
Now another threat is developing.
El Niño, the recurring warming of surface waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, has strengthened this year and is expected to intensify further.
The World Meteorological Organization said in July that the phenomenon was developing rapidly and could become a strong event, increasing the likelihood of heatwaves, drought and extreme rainfall in different parts of the world. Its latest outlook points to an increased likelihood of below-normal rainfall over the Indian subcontinent from August through October.
For Bangladesh, agricultural economists and climate specialists say the concern is not simply whether the country receives more or less rain. It is increasingly about when the rain comes, where it falls and how intensely.
The country has already experienced damaging floods in the haor wetlands and later in Chattogram and other regions this year. The next concern is whether lower rainfall and higher temperatures could affect Aman rice, winter crops and, eventually, the next Boro rice season.
“We can see flood damage with our eyes,” Professor Jahangir Alam Khan, former president of the Bangladesh Agricultural Economists Association, told Waadaa. “But excessive rainfall, lack of rainfall, heatwaves and cold waves reduce productivity and increase production costs. Their impact may not be immediately visible, but eventually both farmers and consumers pay the price.”
Bangladesh’s agriculture has long been structured around a relatively predictable seasonal cycle. Farmers plant and harvest according to expectations about the arrival of rain, winter temperatures and the timing of floods.
That predictability is weakening.
From the second week of November 2025 until the first week of March this year, Bangladesh received little significant rainfall, according to meteorologists. The prolonged dry period was followed by a sharp reversal.
Rainfall in March was 38% above normal. April recorded 78% more rain than normal, while May was 7.5% above normal.
Then came another reversal. June, normally firmly within the monsoon period, received 30 percent less rainfall than usual.
July finished 37% above normal, but much of that rain fell within a short period.
“April is normally a heatwave month, but we had excessive rainfall,” Md Bazlur Rashid, a meteorologist and climate researcher at the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, told Waadaa. “Then in June, during the monsoon, there was a rainfall deficit and a prolonged heatwave.”
The change became particularly stark in Chattogram.
The region receives an average of about 2,918 millimetres of rain annually. But from July 5 through July 12, it received 1,454 millimetres — roughly half the annual average in eight days, Rashid said.
“There was a time when the monsoon meant regular rainfall over several months,” he said. “Now there can be no rain for a long period, and then within several hours or several days we receive what would normally be a month’s rainfall.”
For agriculture, rainfall totals alone can therefore be misleading. A season may finish with normal or above-normal precipitation while crops still suffer because the rain arrived too late, too early or all at once.
The developing El Niño adds another layer of uncertainty.
El Niño changes atmospheric circulation around the world and can alter temperature and rainfall patterns far beyond the Pacific. The World Meteorological Organization has warned that the current event is expected to strengthen and that above-normal temperatures are likely across much of the globe.
Its August-to-October outlook indicates an increased probability of drier-than-normal conditions across the Indian subcontinent.
Earlier this year, the South Asian Climate Outlook Forum also projected below-normal monsoon rainfall across much of South Asia and above-normal temperatures during the 2026 southwest monsoon season.
Rashid said Bangladesh could receive below-normal rainfall in August and September, increasing farmers’ dependence on irrigation and pushing up production costs.
Temperatures of 35 to 37 degrees Celsius would create additional stress, he said.
If El Niño persists for 12 to 18 months, the effects could extend into winter and the next Boro season. A warmer winter could reduce yields of potatoes, onions and other cool-season crops. Continued heat and dry conditions could then affect Boro rice.
Forecasting the weather itself has also become more difficult, Rashid said.
“Last month, almost every weather model predicted rain in northern Bangladesh,” he told Waadaa. “But the rain actually fell in the south.”
For farmers, the warnings are arriving after a year in which weather-related losses are already substantial.
Between April 26 and May 4, continuous rain, upstream runoff and flooding damaged crops across seven haor districts.
According to Agriculture Ministry figures, crops on 49,073 hectares were destroyed. Nearly 213,000 tonnes of Boro rice were lost, affecting about 236,000 farmers.
Other estimates put the losses considerably higher.
The Centre for Policy Dialogue estimated that roughly 339,000 tonnes of rice were lost in the haor region — about 125,000 tonnes more than the official figure.
For some farmers, the losses continued after harvesting. Rain prevented them from threshing harvested paddy, causing grain to rot or germinate before it could be processed.
Then came the July floods.
According to the Department of Agricultural Extension, crops on about 82,000 hectares were affected, including approximately 53,000 hectares of Aus rice, 9,000 hectares of Aman seedbeds and more than 20,000 hectares of vegetables.
The damage extended beyond crops.
The Department of Fisheries estimated losses of about 4000 crore taka after roughly 34,000 fish farms and ponds, 3,889 fish enclosures and 46 fishing vessels were affected.
The livestock sector sustained another 810.5 million taka in estimated losses. The Department of Livestock Services said 4,819 livestock farms, more than 6,000 poultry birds and about 12,000 tonnes of concentrated animal feed were affected.
Combined preliminary losses in fisheries and livestock were close to 4.88 billion taka.
Agricultural economists say such disasters present only part of the financial risk. Floods leave visible evidence: submerged fields, dead livestock and washed-away fish farms. Temperature changes and irregular rainfall can be less dramatic while still reducing yields and increasing costs across entire growing seasons.
Khan said that was why the government needed a coordinated response involving agricultural, meteorological and disaster-management agencies.
“This year’s El Niño is not being discussed very much,” he told Waadaa. “Farmers need early warnings in language they can understand. Most farmers do not know what ‘El Niño’ means, but they are the ones who have to bear its effects.”
The Food and Agriculture Organization has also warned agricultural authorities internationally to prepare for the developing El Niño, using historical satellite data to identify areas where crops and pasture are particularly vulnerable to El Niño-related drought.
Bangladesh has a recent example of how unusual weather can move from farms into food markets.
During 2023-24, potato prices climbed to about 70 to 80 taka a kilogram at their peak, and Bangladesh resorted to imports. Onion and vegetable prices also rose sharply.
Farmers and agricultural specialists attributed part of the disruption to unusual weather.
Rain fell during winter. Dense fog persisted for extended periods. Potato and onion crops became more vulnerable to disease and rot.
Although official statistics did not show a major fall in potato production, the Bangladesh Cold Storage Association estimated that output declined by roughly 2 million to 2.5 million tonnes.
Heat created separate problems for rice.
Prolonged high temperatures placed Boro crops under stress during flowering and grain formation, reducing productivity in affected areas.
The 2023-24 El Niño was among the five strongest on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Bangladesh experienced prolonged heat, irregular rainfall and unusual winter weather during the period.
Rashid said the country endured a 35-day stretch of heatwave conditions in 2024 after El Niño developed the previous year. Winter rainfall and extended cold conditions also damaged crops, he said.
Professor Abu Noman Faruq Ahmmed of the Department of Plant Pathology at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University said the previous episode offered a warning for the current one.
“We saw the effects of El Niño and La Niña in 2023-24,” he told Waadaa. “This time international organisations are forecasting an even stronger impact, but the government does not have preparations on that scale.”
The effects, he said, can pass quickly through the food system.
If rainfall declines between August and October while temperatures rise, heat could interfere with pollination in Aman rice and increase the proportion of unfilled grains. Farmers would also have to spend more on irrigation.
A warmer winter could reduce the productivity of potatoes, onions and other seasonal crops. If heat persists into the Boro season, rice yields could again be affected.
“These will hit the market directly,” Ahmmed said.
The Department of Agricultural Extension says it is trying to reduce some of those risks.
Md Abdur Rahim, the department’s director general, told Waadaa that farmers in flood-prone haor areas were being encouraged to cultivate BRRI dhan118, an early-maturing rice variety that can be harvested 10 to 15 days earlier and may allow farmers to bring crops in before flash floods arrive.
The government is also building shelters to protect farmers from lightning and coordinating with agricultural research institutions to provide advice when disasters threaten, he said.
“We have no control over climatic conditions,” Rahim said. “What we are trying to do is reduce the damage as much as possible.”
For farmers like Ainul in Bogura, however, adapting often requires money they do not have. Rice remains on his land, but he has stopped growing potatoes after the losses that forced him to sell part of his property.
And the calculation is increasingly common among small farmers like him…whether another planting season offers a chance to recover, or simply another risk they can no longer afford.
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