Nigerian Farmers Talk About How Climate Change Is Affecting Staple Food Crops - and What Can Help

In Nigeria, agriculture contributes about 40% to national gross domestic product and supports the livelihoods of about 60% of the population. Finding ways to farm through climate change is vital for national development and poverty reduction.

Climate change remains one of the most critical challenges confronting Nigeria's farming sector. The country's agriculture is mainly rain-fed (not irrigated). This makes it highly vulnerable to changes in climate and extreme weather events such as prolonged droughts, erratic rainfall, flooding, and rising temperatures.

These climate-induced shocks reduce agricultural productivity, threaten food security through crop losses, damage rural livelihoods, and create economic stability. The increasing unpredictability of weather patterns disrupts planting and harvesting calendars, shortens growing seasons, and intensifies pest and disease outbreaks. Yet there hasn't been much research into the problems that global warming causes for specific crops.

This creates a gap in understanding how individual crops and households are affected by specific climatic extremes. These insights are needed though, in order for Nigeria to plan how to adapt to climate change.

We are agriculture, climate change and food security researchers who study how crops can be adapted to global warming. We interviewed 480 smallholder farmers from across Nigeria, to find out how their key food crops - maize, cassava, sorghum, rice, millet, soybean and yam - were affected by extreme weather.

These crops are extremely important to Nigeria's food security and rural livelihoods. They're the staple sources of nutrition and income for millions of smallholder farmers.

Our research found that drought is the biggest climate-related threat to food crops. Maize and cassava are most at risk of dying in times of drought. Flooding is also a serious concern, especially for maize. Changes in temperature have a smaller, more short-term effect.

Millet and yam can withstand some flooding but are still susceptible to drought. This means they are also vulnerable to climate change.

We found that rice is very sensitive to floods, which can greatly reduce its yield. Soybean is moderately affected by occasional waterlogging and heat. Sorghum, though usually drought-tolerant, suffers when droughts are long or severe. However, it handles short-term flooding better than other crops.

These results show that each crop reacts differently to climate stresses, so adaptation strategies should be tailored to each staple crop's specific needs.

This is vital because if Nigeria's staple crops are almost wiped out by extreme weather, the country will have less food and these crops will cost more, meaning they may become unaffordable for millions of people.

Nigerian farmers are battling extreme weather

Nigerian farming is marked by two distinct seasons: the wet season, from the middle of April to October, and the dry season, from November to March. We looked at the five major agro-ecological zones in Nigeria - south-east, south-west, north-west, north-east, and north-central regions - and how the farmers cope in the two seasons.

We then asked the farmers how many crops they grew, how big their families were, and how much they sold their crops for in the 2024 agricultural season.

We also asked the farmers what they knew about climate change, how much at risk they thought they were, and what they were doing to adapt. A crop vulnerability scale was developed to assess the sensitivity of major crops to extreme climate events such as droughts, floods, excessive heat, wildfires and dry spells.

Most (62.9%) of the farmers were men. Previous research has found that male smallholder farmers have better access to resources such as land, credit and agricultural extension services compared to women farmers. A large number (72.6%) had developed other ways of earning money to cope with climate shocks.

Membership of cooperative societies was high, with 77.2% of farmers participating, which told us that the support farmers got from each other was very important. Over 80% of the farmers also had contact with government officials from the agricultural department whose job it was to offer support and advice to farmers (extension officers).

However, only 42.3% received information about climate change. This limited farmers' ability to make informed adaptation decisions.

Cassava and maize hit hard by climate change

The study found that climate change is a serious threat to food crop production in Nigeria.

Drought was the most severe risk, particularly affecting maize and cassava. Flooding was the second major threat. It drowned maize and cassava and caused their roots to rot. Millet and yam were able to adapt to different amounts of rain.

High temperatures had a smaller direct effect on the plants. However, prolonged heat increased pest infestations, which damaged the crops.

This is worrying because droughts in Nigeria have become more frequent and prolonged over the past two decades. The number of extreme dry spells has increased by an estimated 28% compared to the 1990s. The number of places in Nigeria that are affected by flooding has increased due to more erratic rainfall and poor drainage.

What needs to happen next

We recommend that proactive adaptation measures are needed urgently. These include:

Drought-resistant crop varieties, such as improved maize or millet varieties that tolerate prolonged dry spells.
Efficient water management, like constructing small-scale rainwater harvesting or drip irrigation systems.

Improving drainage systems by clearing blocked channels and creating raised beds to reduce waterlogging.
Bringing smallholder farmers into cooperatives. These are collectives that can arrange shared resources, collective marketing, and access to inputs (fertiliser, equipment) at lower costs.
Since the farmers have good access to extension services, these officials should be used to provide new technology and training about climate-smart agriculture to the farmers.

Also, early warning systems are essential for reducing climate risks. But in the absence of these, farmers can still adopt practices like crop diversification, staggered planting, and community-based monitoring to anticipate and reduce losses.

Governments, agricultural extension agencies, farmer cooperatives and development partners must collaborate to provide resources, knowledge and support to help smallholder farmers adapt.

Abeeb Babatunde Omotoso, Senior Lecturer at Oyo State College of Agriculture and Technology, Igboora, Nigeria and Senior Research Associate at North West University, North-West University

Mojirayo Ayodele, Postdoctoral research fellow, Olabisi Onabanjo University

This article is republished from The Conversation Africa under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Nigerian Farmers Talk About How Climate Change Is Affecting Staple Food Crops - and What Can Help

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