Climate change threatens food production in Nigeria

Changing rainfall patterns and higher temperatures resulting from climate change will threaten food production across the country as more than 50 percent of farmers are yet to commence planting due to inadequate rainfall.

As a result, Nigeria farmers especially those in the north have expressed fears that the change in weather being experienced this year might affect food production in the country.

Africanfarmer Mogaji, chief executive officer, X-Ray Farms in an interview with BusinessDay said, “The sun intensity is very high and the rains are not falling. Most of the farmers ought to have planted the second time for the year but because of the weather about 50 percent have not even harvested their first planting.”

Mogaji further said, “Some farmers have made a loss of 70 percent due to climate change while some have not made any income this year.”

Food prices have also been on the increase across the country and it may even increase further at the end of the year, according to industry watchers. “Tomatoes reached an all time high this year selling between N30, 000 to N34, 000 for a 50kg basket and climate change is part of the problem,” he added.

Consumer inflation rose to 9.2 percent year- on- year in June as a result of bottlenecks observed in the food and beverage sub- index which increased at a faster pace during the period, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Food inflation edged higher to 10 percent year- on-year in June, up 0.2 percentage points from May, NBS said.

Climate change is on the rise in average surface temperatures on earth mostly due to the burning of fossil fuels. This is also called global warming.

According to analysts, farmers started experiencing August break in July which is meant to happen in the month of August. This has caused a lot of fears amongst farmers because they really cannot predict when the rains will start falling again or when it will stop eventually for the year.

“The agricultural sector is the most vulnerable sector of climate change. Agriculture is particularly sensitive to rising temperature,” Chidi Ibe, professor of Geology, University of Port-Harcourt stated at BusinessDay event on effective reporting on climate change held recently in Lagos.

Also global food prices are likely to surge by 10 percent to 20 percent in the next few months as an El Nino weather pattern grips top producers in Asia, heating up the region’s croplands and whittling down of stocks of grains to multi-year lows and also causing heat waves experienced in Asia.

JOSEPHINE OKOJIE