Chronicles of Pain (ii)
Felix Feyijimi was a successful fish farmer until September 2019, when his fish farm in Kelema, Ondo state, was submerged under flood water.
Before his fortune changed, an average harvesting period for Felix yielded as much as 5,000 pieces of fish. Felix lost everything, including investments running into millions of naira.
Felix managed to start again, on a far smaller scale, but even that has been taken away by the September 2022 flooding disaster. So great was businessman Felix’s loss that he, who had dependents and supported his community, has become dependent, needing support from family and neighbours. What used to be his fish farm is now overtaken by weeds.
Like Felix, like Abiwo Omowole, who used to own a five-acre farm in the Kelema area of Ondo state before flooding sent him out of the farming business. He planted and sold cassava and cocoa, among others, on a large scale, but today, his plantation is no more; in its place are bushes fed by the floods that took over the farmland.
Between Felix and Abiwo, they had a staff strength of about twenty persons who all lost their jobs after flooding decimated the agricultural enterprise of their bosses.
The agricultural sector is a crucial contributor to Nigeria’s gross domestic product and a key player in the country’s economy. The sub-sectors of the agricultural industry include crop production, livestock farming, fishery, and forestry.
According to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) report published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), at the end of Q4 2021, Nigeria’s agricultural sector was worth 18.738 trillion. Between Q1 and Q2, 2022, the sector commanded a value of N7.897 trillion.
In 2020, the agricultural sector contributed an average of 26.21% to Nigeria’s GDP, 25.8% in 2021, and 22.8% as of Q2 2022. This development shows a steady decline in the sector’s contribution to the country’s GDP. In five years, between 2018 and 2022, the average value of Nigeria’s agricultural sector stood at N23.157 trillion.
Two of the most affected sub-sectors by flooding (crop production and fishery) account for over 80% of the value of Nigeria’s agricultural sector.
The Nigerian government stated that 108,392 hectares of farmlands are affected by the 2022 flooding.
Many farmers who spoke to Dataphyte said that flooding has made it hard to invest or maintain investments in farming as their crops get washed away, and their fish do not survive the surge that takes over ponds.
For Seye, who lives and farms in the Ebiseni area of Ondo State, what was left of his multi-million naira fish farm after the 2019 floods were utterly destroyed by the 2022 sequel.
The impact of the floods on Nigeria’s farmers is likely also to impact Nigeria’s unemployment figures because the agricultural sector accounts for a substantial percentage of Nigeria’s employed persons.
National Bureau of Statistics data shows that there are 950,000 male crop farmers and 10,000 female crop farmers. Another 8000 males are paid employees working with crop farmers across Ekiti state.
The most recent data by the NBS shows that across select seven states, a total of 11.044 million persons are either crop farmers or persons employed in the farming field and unpaid family members.
Ekiti and Ondo states, part of the seven sampled states, have 1.484 million persons in crop production who are now faced with the threat of constant flooding.
Nigeria’s Crop of Small-Scale Farmers Face More Difficulties
The majority of Nigerian farmers are smallholder farmers, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) puts the percentage of smallholder farmers in Nigeria at 88%. This category of farmers are less equipped to deal with shocks such as this flood has brought.
Irrigation is one of the major ways of tackling flooding on farms but it comes at a major cost. Findings show that irrigating an acre of land, it would cost between N250,000- N1,000,000. Nigeria’s crop farming is largely rain-fed and dependent on the weather no matter how inclement it might be.
Unlike other countries where farmers receive support for facilities that can aid their businesses and mitigate risks such as flooding, Nigeria has not been able to effectively support its farmers to tackle issues of facilities that extend to flooding.
A Dataphyte report had noted that Between 2014 and 2021, the highest commercial bank loan the sector had gotten in 7 years was N1.04 trillion in 2020 which was only 5.15% of the total commercial bank loan.
The issue of equipment also remains a core concern for farmers, a situation worsened by the flooding situation.
The United States of America has different programs to help farmers access facilities and funding that could help prepare them in the event of unusual occurrences.
India, where smallholder farmers account for 78% of its agricultural sector (a similar situation to Nigeria), has a Crop Insurance program for its farmers. Losses arising from post-harvest and localised calamities are covered by this insurance. In 2019, the country launched a scheme to provide income support to all landholder families with cultivable land.
In the same 2019 when floods hit farmers in the United Kingdom, the government announced a 500-25000 pounds scheme to help affected farmers recover in line with the Farming Recovery Fund program set up by the government.
Although there have been programs such as the Anchor Borrowers’ Scheme, and the National Young Farmers initiative; Nigeria does not have enough institutionalised support for vulnerable smallholder farmers against risks such as flooding.
Any Hope for Farmers Against the Flood’s Menace?
The Nigerian government has promised that it would support farmers affected by flooding, vowing to ensure that the flooding does not lead to food shortages.
A policy expert, Samuel Atiku, told Dataphyte that government intervention is needed to help farmers recover their loss. According to him, many jobs are at stake in the agricultural sector, and Agriculture’s contribution to the economy is also at risk.
Samuel expressed worry that an absence of such intervention can lead to worsened food scarcity, inflation, and imminent danger for the all-important sector.
This report was completed as part of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development’s 2022 Climate Change Media Fellowship in West Africa with funding support from the Centre for Investigative Journalism’s Open Climate Reporting Initiative (OCRI).