Ballarat farmers prepare for looming El Niño declaration

Matt Menhennet has been farming in West Vic all his life. After extensive drought in the region through 2024 and 2025, more than half the dams on his farm are dry. 

“It’s a concern in the middle of June that there’s no water in some of those dams,” Menhennet told the Brolga. 

With an El Niño declaration looming, things could get drier - but it isn’t a guarantee of drought. 

An introduction: Menhennet is the Co-President of Ballarat Agricultural & Pastoral Society (BAPS), as well as an Angus beef farmer approximately 20 minutes outside of Ballarat. The most recent drought remains fresh in his memory. 

🗣️: “That was as bad as some of the droughts experienced over the last 50 years,” Menhennet said. “Probably because it was so widespread.” 

Menhennet’s experience prepared him for future occurrences, stocking a more robust fodder supply and creating a laneway between paddocks to utilise the one dam that is full. 

This preparation may be needed. Experts say a declaration of a 2026 El Niño event is potentially imminent. Indicators are present, and other world agencies are beginning to make the announcement. 

What is El Niño? Andrew Watkins, an adjunct professor with Monash University in the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, explained to the Brolga that an El Niño event isn’t a complete assurance drought will occur, but amplified by climate change it does create a “double whammy”. 

🗣️: “Some people think it means drought, but it’s actually a warming up of the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean,” Watkins said. “Between Papua New Guinea and South America, when the waters in that area start to warm it’s like they drag the clouds and the rain with them.”  

• “It means less clouds for Australia, and you kind of need clouds for rain to happen so we go into these longer stretches of dry.” 

• “It’s like carrying a kettle around and you have the steam following you.” 

Essentially, El Niño raises the risk of extreme heat, bushfires and creates better conditions for coral bleaching and marine heatwaves. 

• “The sad thing about all that is that climate change does all the same things.”

Watkins previously worked with the Bureau of Meteorology in the long-range forecast team, declaring the 2015 El Niño event and going on to lead the National Climate Risk Assessment. 

The declaration: Whether El Niño is officially declared matters because, according to Watkins, it locks us into a guaranteed six month pattern. 

While media outlets have been reporting a possible “super El Niño”, Watkins said this doesn’t actually exist.

“It’s not a one-for-one. One to two degrees [of ocean warming] doesn’t mean heat twice as bad, or dry twice as bad.” 

But it does mean we are in for a fairly strong El Niño event, which the World Meteorological Organisation warned in early June is an 80 percent probability, and has already been declared by the Japan Meteorological Agency. 

Watkins said there’s a 60 - 70 percent chance Australia will follow suit in the coming weeks. 

So what does that mean for West Vic farmers? Menhennet said no matter where you stand on the issue of climate change, the issue for farmers is inconsistency. 

“Green grass through the summer? Inconsistent,” Menhennet told the Brolga. “Didn’t rain for eight months? Inconsistent. Rained for eight weeks straight? Inconsistent.” 

Menhennet said farmers have to use stocking and storage as a buffer to counteract these inconsistent seasons, where the dry goes longer and the wet comes at strange times. 

• “Instead of 500 round bales, I need 1000. That’s where we got caught [in the drought] last year.” 

Finding community: Menhennet said the priority of BAPS during times like this is to maintain connection between farmers, through events like Farmer’s Night Off in Ballarat in 2025, with plans for another similar event this coming July. 

“Get people together while they’re having a beer or a sausage and they can talk about certain things and share solutions. There’s real value in connecting people.”