El Niño Southern Oscillation or ENSO, an anomalous warming of the surface waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean, is famous for producing months-long unusual weather patterns across the globe.

The world’s dinner tables are seeing the impact of climate change.

Scientists released a report on global climate change this October that comes with the starkest warning yet: We have just 12 years to make radical changes in nearly every sphere of society if we are going to limit the average world temperature rise to 1.5°C.

Agriculture has become a carbon-intensive endeavour. Crop, livestock and fossil fuel use in agriculture account for about 25 per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

In 2015, Parties to the UNFCCC adopted the Paris Agreement, to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping the global temperature rise this century well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.

Johan van den Berg -Independent Agricultural Meteorologist -(M.Sc Agric, Agricultural meteorology, UFS)