Episode #7
Greg Oddo: What El Niño Means for Coffee, Cocoa and Commodities
Weather is becoming a market signal you can’t ignore. Greg Oddo, Weather Strategist at Sucafina, joins Henry Walsh to break down how El Niño, record heat and tight supply-demand balances could shape coffee, cocoa, grains, cotton and other agricultural markets heading into 2027. Greg and Henry go beyond the headlines to explore why not every weather event is tradable, why timing matters as much as the event itself, and how investors and physical buyers can get caught out by assuming the impact of a weather shift will show up all at once. They unpack the delayed effects of El Niño, which markets and growing regions are most exposed as the pattern develops, and why some regions may only now be starting to feel the real pressure. They also discuss how weather interacts with supply-demand balances and market positioning, the differing El Niño risks across key growing regions, how extreme heat can intensify crop stress, Brazil’s evolving coffee outlook, the varied response across cocoa, cotton, grains and other soft commodities, and the practical implications of rising input costs, farmer decision-making, hedge lifting and procurement during periods of elevated volatility. Greg Oddo is a Weather Strategist at Sucafina, combining meteorology with futures trading and physical market experience to analyse how weather translates into commodity-market risk. His career has included roles across Noble, Engelhart and Sucafina, giving him direct exposure to both the physical and futures sides of agricultural markets.
