By Aminu Alhussaini
It is 9.11 am on Monday morning, and Abubakar Bandar, a local farmer in Lugga village of Dange Shuni local government area of Sokoto state, is already harvesting his farm produce on his farmland located near Rudu Village.
“The farm produce I harvested this year is just 50% compared to what I previously produced from my farmland, I think this is as a result of the shortage of rainfall and climate change”.
Bandar narrates his experience on the impacts of climate change on his farm yield.
Aside from insecurity challenges that has bedeviled parts of the region, climate change is one of the major challenges of great concern to many peasant farmers in the northwestern states of Nigeria.
The leading negative impact is environmental stresses affecting crop productivity, which has led to decreased crop yields and soil fertility due to insufficient water in the soil, increased soil erosion, and contributef to the spread of pests.
Although the change of rain patern in Nigeria is experienced throughout the year, the rainfall occurred from April to October, and minimally occurred from November through March.
In Sokoto, rainfall lasts through a period of three to four months, usually from June to September. But due to climate change, the situation has deteriorated with lesser rainfalls experienced compared to the previous years.
A vegetable farmer, Anas Umar reveals that the situation is continuously getting out of control over time.
“Actually, due to the climate change being experienced, alot has been affected, especially our the sources of livelihood. Prior to now, the world was under our feet; we sold our various farm produce like tomatoes, pepper, okra, vegetables, etc at thousands of Naira. Take a look at the situation we are in now. I don’t think it will be easy to get our capital, let alone any profit compared to the old good days.”
How extension workers are giving services to farmers
The acting programme manager of the Agricultural Development Project (SADP) Sokoto state Malami Magaji, who spoke on the climate change situation in the state, said the situation didn’t just occur out of the blues. According to him, it has been a gradual occurrence about which they have tried to sensitize and encourage farmers to embrace new methods and improved seeds for farming.
“Most of our farmers use local variety of seeds, which is known to have low resistant to pests, some environmental factors such as heat and diseases. We most atimes advice farmers to go for improved varieties, which are so easy to use and have shorter duration for yield; they are resistant to certain pests and diseases and very high in productivity (return after harvest).
He further advised that farmers to make use of the knowledge that is being taught to them by extension workers for their desired goals to be achieved.
“The Agric extension workers programme was designed to guide the farmers on ways to improve their farm products and outcome”.
A renowned agricultural extension service provider who is also the National President of Onion Farmers, Producers and Marketers Association of Nigeria, Aliyu Samama, appealed to the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) to provide timely annual weather information to farmers so as to help them plan appropriately, and for government to ensure the deployment of more extension workers and their services to various communities so that farmers can be well informed and guided on seed varieties to be used. He called on government to provide improved and higher yielding seed varieties to farmers.
“It is not too late for government to provide seed varieties that suits the weather to farmers and information on weather forecast for the year. The dry season is approaching, so government should support with improved varieties so that farmers can support the economy through reduction of inflation.”
