Farmers count losses as heavy wind ravages crops in Sokoto communities

From Abdulwaheed Sofiullahi, Sokoto 

Farmers in some Sokoto communities are groaning, following staggering losses due to climate change, particularly tempest, which ravages their cereal crops.

 Daily Trust Saturday captures the plights of the affected farmers who have been hit by poverty, hunger as well as food inflation risk that the ravages pose.

• Ekiti gov’ship: Badaru submits APC primary election report
• Hanifa: A peep into the life of Abdulmalik Tanko, proprietor-turned-killer

One of the major occupations and means of livelihood of the people of Sokoto is farming, but the activities are under siege due to tempest occasioned by climate change and its negative impacts which lead to decline in crop yields.

Our correspondent  gathered that heavy winds ravage growing cereal crops on the farms, especially rice, maze and millet so much that farmers record huge losses during harvest.

The implication of the ravage is a sharp drop of crop production and lack of food which has resulted in poverty and famine in many homes.

In a chat with our correspondent, a duo of local farmers, Muhammadu Awual and Bello Umaru, shared  bitter experiences on the devastation that tempest has wreaked on their farms and crops as well as famine that has hit their families due to lack of food.  

When our correspondent visited his farm at Gidan Ariju in Kware Local Government Area in Sokoto State Northeast, Muhammadu Awual, 38, and his three children were making do with a small portion of rice served in a bowl.

Awual attributed the inadequacy of the meal to poor harvest caused by ravage wreaked on his farm crops by heavy wind.

According to him, he usually plants millet, rice and maze and used to record good harvest and gains, but heavy winds which ravaged his crops, had robbed him of all the fortune and landed him and his family in poverty and famine.

Despite Auwal’s efforts to survive the poverty by engaging in more farming activities, he was not able to record appreciable harvest  to sell and use part of it to feed his family for months before another farming season.

According to him, his farmland used to be filled with a lot of crop yields which attracted a good number of small-scale food business owners.  But the fortunes plummeted with time due to the damage done to his crops.  

“ Last year, I couldn’t even sell 50 per cent of what I used to sell. Things became so difficult to the extent that the food items that I stored in our store didn’t last for  five months before they finished, unlike some years back when they used to last for 10 months,” he said.

“We don’t have another means than to buy food stuff, despite that they are very expensive as we couldn’t save much from our farm income. The one  ‘mudu’ of rice we usually buy at the rate of N500 in the last two years is now N1,300.  It wouldn’t have happened to me like this if I was able to harvest my farm produce without losing anything to wind,’’ he said.

Bello Umaru who is based in Gidan Fati in Wammako Local Government Area,  who also feeds his family from his farm produce, particularly millet and rice, also lamented the huge loss of harvest that  would have lasted for four months due to ravaging heavy winds.

‘Every year, I used to store about three big bags of millet, rice and maze for my family to survive before another rainy season. I also used to sell my gains after we had stored enough food for family use. But in recent times, it is not favourable because wind destroyed almost half of my farm produce.

According to him, farmers are always delighted during the rain season because it is the period they conserve food items that would sustain their families for a year before another  rain season.

Our correspondent gathered that Bello and his fellow local farmers used to plant rice, millet, maize, which are the commonest and largest crops planted in the Northwestern Nigeria. But before the crops ripe for harvest, heavy wind destroys a lot of them.

“If we plant the crops, we rely on rains for their growth. It could be within one or two months. But when our millet and maize mature, we face a lot of damage by heavy winds  which blow them from one side to another  and ruin all our gains,’’ Bello said.

“Another painful aspect is that after the loss, we can’t plant again because of low rainfall,’’ he added.

Another local farmer, Murtala Musa, 40, while recounting harvest fortune, said that he gained a lot before he later converted his three plots of land for millet and other plants. But while lamenting losses, he said  that he had a horrible experience when he spent the minimal rainy season to plant  millet but lost most of his gains to heavy wind.

He said that he, however, did not give up planting the crop during another rain season because of  its importance to his family’s diet.

“I prefer to have millet in my food store at home rather than other food items because it’s useful for different classes of meals. We use it to make masa, kunu, fura, tuwo, and millet cake,’’ Musa said.

From the same three plots of land where he used to harvest between seven and 10 bags of millets three years ago, only four bags were harvested in 2021 due to the losses.

“This loss brought down my income and the money I am gaining from it is not enough take care of  me and my family’s needs. That’s why I used the land to plant tomatoes, onions and pepper,” he said.

Dahiru Mahmudu whose farm is in Gidan Ariju in  Kware Local Government Area said he learnt a lesson from a fellow farmer on the kind of crops to plant after the rain, after recording losses in  rice, millet, and maze due to heavy wind.

“I used to plant millet, rice, and maze whenever the rain started, but  I lost most of my income due to damage to my crops by a heavy wind  when the crops get to maturity stage. But a friend advised me to plant cassava, sugarcane, tomatoes, onions, and pepper because they can adapt to the wind.  Most of these plants, especially sugarcane, are planted along the river valleys  closer to the farmers’ areas,” he said.

While noting that local farmers require more climate change education as well as government intervention to overcome the challenge, he said: “We need concerned leaders who can help us in a bad scenario like this before the next planting season.”

With the decline in farm output, there are worries that food production and security are on the edge, as Northwest that contributes largely to the prospects is being hit by climate change.  About 70 per cent of rice, millet and maize produced by the region is under serious climate risks.

Climate agencies and authorities, however, offered  some  explanations on climate change impacts.

The Status of the Development of Wind Energy in Nigeria (MDPI), the government agency that documents wind energy, said that  the North, especially Sokoto, records  the highest wind density.

“The maximum value of wind speed from April to August,  2020, for all the sites in the Northwest Zone is over 12,000 megawatt-hours. The mean wind speed obtained ranged from 1.5 meters per second to 4.1 meters per second, with a power density of 5.7 to 22.5 wind meters. Annual mean energy produced was 2.24 to 12,521.55 measured in megawatt-hours,”  the agency said.

Sokoto Energy Research Centre and  the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET), using a cup nanometer, also said: “Between 1999 and  2015, the then highest wind speed values in Sokoto State were between 9.60-1 meter wind speed power density, using the Weibull scale parameter and reduced to 5.84ms-1 later in October.  Seven years later (in 2021), the wind began with the rate of 4.40 wind speed and raised to 7.89-meter scale. Its mean-power density later resulted in 92.90.”

“The average wind that the maze can survive with is 3.5meter-1 and the maximum speed that can damage it at its maturity stage starts from a 28.0-meter scale,”  Biomed Central also said.

“Nigeria has 70.8 million hectares of agricultural land area with maize, cassava, guinea corn, yam, beans, millet and rice being the major crops,’’ it said.

While expressing worries over declining productivity in farming of which climate change is a major factor, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, quoting a report by Statista Nigeria, said: “Over 70 per cent  of Nigerians work in the agriculture industry, primarily for subsistence. Despite its economic contributions, Nigeria’s agriculture sector confronts numerous obstacles that reduce productivity. Poor land tenure, low irrigated farming, climate change  and land degradation are only a few of them.”

Others, it added, included low technology, high production cost,  poor distribution of inputs, limited financing, high post-harvest losses as well as poor access to markets.

FAO reported that by 2100, Nigeria and other West  African  countries  would likely have agricultural  losses  of  up  to  four per cent due  to  climate change. Cereal crops or grains are members of the grass family (Poaceae) grown for  their hard seeds  or  kernels,  which  are  used primarily  for food.

Data Africa said that in 2005, 99 per cent  of crops produced in Sokoto had enough rain, compared to one per cent irrigated crop.

“Eight years ago, millet was the most extensively harvested crop in Sokoto with 751.76k harvested and a total production value of  $174.45 million,’’ it noted.

 The damage done to crops by tempest  and accompanying decline in the crop yield account for a spike in prices of food items.

Against this background, the National Bureau of Statistics disclosed that  Nigeria’s food inflation hit 27 per cent in February, 2021, the highest level since 2005. It said that rice, maize, sorghum and millet have all seen price increases of 44.4 and 117 per cent.

Similarly, the study confirmed that the prices of key cowpeas such as beans and soyabeans grew by 159.3 and 76.7 per cent, respectively, while the prices of groundnuts jumped by 63.64 per cent in 2021.

It added that the prices of all types of food items have risen and keep growing on a daily basis, leaving Nigeria’s enormous population of poor residents unable to acess food and essential materials for survival.

Effects of climate change

Daily Trust Saturday gathered that wind damage to crops, woods and urban trees could have significant economic impacts. Management that is attentive to the particular site and climatic conditions which also account for the ability of plants to acclimatize to their local wind climate can help lessen this. The wind is a major disturbance in many plant habitats and can play an important role in plant regeneration and successional stage transitions.

With increasing droughts and heat waves that follow climate change, Nigeria has set an ambitious goal in its nationally determined contribution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the number of undernourished individuals in drought-prone Sub-Saharan African countries, where Nigeria falls, has climbed by 45.6 per cent since 2012.

On the economic front, the Department for International Development (DFID) discovered in April 2016 that climate change would cost Nigeria between six per cent and 30 per cent of its GDP by 2050 which amounts to $100 billion to $460 billion, according to its assessments.

According to the State of the Climate in Africa 2019 Report, these alterations are affecting human health and safety, food and water security as well as  socioeconomic development in Africa.

“There will be a 13 per cent reduction in crop yield in West and Central Africa, 11 per cent in North Africa and eight percent in East and Southern Africa. Rice, one of the staple foods in Nigeria and many African countries, will be parts of the most affected crops with a yield loss of 12 per cent by 2050.’’

Sokoto Government  empowers farmers

Sokoto State Government, through the Commissioner of Agriculture, Professor Aminu Abubakar,  told Daily Trust Saturday that government had stepped up efforts to empower farmers with a view to promoting farming activities in the state.

“Climate change is the only problem. The Sokoto State Government is subsidizing farm inputs such as fertilizers, chemicals, provision of improved seeds to farmers as well as provision of adequate extension services. Another intervention by the state is an annual spray to control quelea birds affecting rice fields and other cereal crops,’’ Abubakar said.

He also disclosed  that government was about to offer some incentives to  beneficiaries across  all the local governments in the state to stimulate their commitment to farming.