The Sudano-Sahelian Ecological Zone (SSEZ) is regarded as the most vulnerable region to climate change which extends across many West African countries, including Nigeria. Agriculture is the most widely practiced economic activity, dominating major livelihoods for smallholder food crop farmers and pastoralists in the Nigerian part of this region. However, the region is faced with recurring floods and drought leaving large number of smallholder farmers impoverished. Extreme climatic events such as heat waves, droughts, floods, and wildfires combined with long-term trends such as higher temperatures, rainfall variations, and changes in precipitation patterns, pose threats to all agriculture subsectors. Given this background the AGNES with the support of the Adaptation Research Alliance (ARA) together with the Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation (BMGF) convened a 2-Day multistakeholder sub-National Workshop in Kano, Kano State, Nigeria. The aim of the workshop was to identify the existing locally led adaptation practices, gaps in practices and knowledge, and to pinpoint priority areas for action-oriented research in a bid to accelerate smallholder agriculture adaptation in the Sudano-Sahelian zone.
Climate Change risks and impacts on Sudano Sahelian Agriculture
The Sudano Sahelian region of Nigeria traverses eight states including Bomo, Yobe, Kano, Jigawa, Katsina, Zamfara, Kebbi, and Sokoto, all facing climate risks that heavily impact agriculture their main economic activity. This region experiences extreme drought and significant flooding during dry and rainfall seasons respectively, affecting their rain-fed agricultural activities. In addition, farming has been hit hard by heatwaves, strong winds and abnormally high temperatures as well as disrupted weather patterns. Other risks include, waterlogging, soil erosion, hailstones and unpredictable and unevenly distribution of rainfall.
These climate change risks have led to high evaporation/transpiration rates consequently leading to water shortage in the ground reservoir. Consequently, emergence of new weeds, pests and diseases, declining crop yields or total crop failure, deterioration in animal health and low productivity have resulted. Hence, farmers experience significant losses as the cost of production inevitably rises while the harvest and produce are meagre which has posed a great threat on the food security in the region.
Gender dynamics in agriculture adaptation
Gender roles and responsibilities have changed in the face of climate change. Many of the farming activities are currently taken place women’s responsibility as opposed to men’s work In the face of climate change, more men engaged in non-farm activities considered more profitable and reliable, therefore agriculture has been crippled and now less-profitable resulting into migration of able-body men in search of better economic activities out of the rural communities.
On the other hand, this shift in responsibility has granted women a chance to make decisions about their farming improvements. However, as weather conditions continue worsening due to climate change, many women are moving from farming to other more profitable non-farm economic activities, thus opportunities for women to thrive in the agriculture sector is threatened.
Successful locally led adaptation techniques in Nigerian’s Sudano Sahelian
Farmers in this region have been devised ways of coping with climate change, some of which include among them being diversification of their agricultural practices intercropping, agroforestry, and crop rotation while at the same time switching to planting drought-resilient crops such as yams. In the livestock and fisheries sector, farmers are practicing mixed farming, i.e. rearing mixed types of livestock, poultry and fish species to cut on losses that can be experienced in case of a climate-caused outbreak of diseases, among others. More importantly, many smallholder farmers are currently practicing crop-livestock integrated agriculture. They have further learnt to manage water through using efficient and effective irrigation systems which include rainwater harvesting and flood water diversion to supplement their rainfed agriculture with irrigation during dry seasons. Integrated pest management, weed management, and climate-resilient crop breed varieties have also been found as key component of smallholder adaptation.
Call to action: Priority areas for action-oriented research
In the effort to accelerate smallholder agriculture adaptation certain research areas have been prioritised. There is need for innovative approach to weather information communication at local scale, capacity building and training on adaptive practices for farmers improvements on animal and fish breeds, and drought and pest resistant crop varieties, to face incessant threats from climate risks in the Sudano-Sahelian region.