When The Rains Betray You: How Climate Change Is Quietly Destroying Farming And Food Security In Adamawa

In 2024, Adamawa State experienced nearly thirty consecutive days without rain at a time when farmers had already planted their seeds in the ground. The drought arrived without warning and stayed long enough to cause damage that no amount of subsequent rainfall could reverse. Crops that should have been growing were wilting. Soil that should have been feeding roots was cracking. And farmers who had already spent their limited savings on seeds and fertiliser were standing in fields calculating losses they could not afford.

This was not a once-in-a-generation weather event. It was the new pattern.

“The most noticeable change is the drop in the agricultural year and the change in the pattern of rainfall,” says Mr. Yohanna Moses, founder of the Environmental Care Foundation and Special Assistant to the Governor of Adamawa State on CSO and NGO coordination. “Sometimes we experience early rainfall, sometimes late rainfall, sometimes drought, and the drought takes on different times. In Adamawa State in 2024, we experienced drought for almost 30 or 40 days, which really affected agriculture.”

Moses speaks about climate change the way people who work close to the land speak about it: not in abstractions or projections, but in the specific, accumulated losses of a specific place, measured in failed harvests and disrupted planning and farmers left without a framework for the most basic decision of their working year — when to plant.

What Adamawa’s farmers are experiencing is not a local anomaly. It is the frontline of one of the most documented and most devastating challenges facing Nigeria as a whole. And the evidence from the world’s most credible scientific and institutional bodies makes clear that without urgent, well-funded, and genuinely implemented action, what is happening now is only the beginning.

Nigeria Is Among the World’s Most Climate-Vulnerable Agricultural Nations

About 70 percent of Nigeria’s workforce has jobs in agriculture, which contributes approximately 25 percent of the country’s GDP. However, the combined problems of droughts and floods, both of which have increased in frequency and severity as a result of climate change, are posing an increasing danger to this vital sector. These climate-related disasters have enormous effects on food supply, economic stability, and human well-being as they often result in decreased agricultural production.

Nigeria’s agricultural sector, heavily reliant on rain-fed farming, is particularly vulnerable to climatic shocks. The increasing frequency of extreme weather events disrupts the seasonal rhythms of food production, creating instability in food supply chains. Climate change poses a significant threat to Nigeria’s agricultural sector, which is a cornerstone of its economy and food security. The increasing frequency of extreme weather events, erratic rainfall patterns, and rising temperatures have disrupted agricultural productivity, threatening the livelihoods of millions of Nigerians.

More than half of Nigeria’s population, precisely 152 million people or 68 percent, live in highly vulnerable conditions, exposed to the combined impacts of climate change and other socioeconomic deprivations. Food inflation surged to rates exceeding 34 percent as of May 2024, driven by rising prices of staples due to supply shortages. According to the World Bank, this rising inflation caused the number of impoverished Nigerians to rise from 89.8 million at the beginning of 2023 to a staggering 104 million by 2024.

Between October and December 2024, 25.1 million people experienced acute food insecurity even at the peak of the harvest season. Of these, 3.8 million lived in the northeastern states, which include Adamawa. Persistent violence in the northeastern states of Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe hinders food availability and access, compounding the climate-driven crisis already affecting those communities.

From October 1 to 15, 2024 alone, FAO recorded that floods affected over 9.2 million people and submerged 4.5 million hectares of land, including approximately 1.6 million hectares of farmland. The potential annual production losses for maize, sorghum, and rice combined in the flooded areas were estimated at approximately 1.1 million tonnes, enough to feed 13 million people for a year. In financial terms, the potential cereal crop losses amount to almost one billion US dollars in economic losses.

In Adamawa specifically, the crisis combines both extremes: the drought that Moses describes from 2024, and the flooding that has repeatedly devastated communities along the state’s river corridors. Farmers in the state are not choosing between too much water and too little. They are navigating both, often within the same growing season, with no early warning systems adequate to their scale, no crop insurance to absorb the losses, and no government response fast enough to prevent those losses from compounding into year-on-year destitution.

The Calendar No Longer Makes Sense

The agricultural calendar is the farmer’s most fundamental tool. It tells them when to prepare the soil, when to sow, when to expect the rains to carry their crops through critical growth stages, and when to harvest. Across Nigeria’s north, that calendar has been disrupted in ways that peer-reviewed science has documented with increasing precision.

Climatic changes have led to reduced crop yields, increased pest and disease pressure, and significant land degradation, particularly in vulnerable regions such as the semi-arid north. The cascading effects of these disruptions are evident in rising food prices, increased food insecurity, and heightened socioeconomic vulnerabilities, especially among low-income households and smallholder farmers. Nigerian farmers have demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of these challenges by leveraging indigenous knowledge and adaptive practices such as crop diversification, drought-tolerant varieties, and adjustments in planting schedules. However, these practices, while beneficial on a small scale, require broader institutional and financial support to achieve significant impact.

Moses describes what this looks like in practice on Adamawa’s farms. “When there is not much rain, it affects crop yield. When the rain starts too early or ceases unexpectedly, it affects crop yield. We also experience new insects that we did not see before. They are dangerous and very destructive to crops, affecting farmers from cultivation all the way to storage.”

The appearance of new and more destructive pests is consistent with what climate science predicts and documents. Approximately 80 percent of the world’s population dependent on agriculture is in danger of crop failures caused by climate change. Climate change causes increases in food prices due to drought, low water supply for crops, and areas becoming unsuitable for farming, with sharp drops in agricultural production following each climatic extreme event. In northern Nigeria’s rain-fed farming communities, where there are no irrigation systems to buffer against dry spells and no cold storage to protect post-harvest produce from heat and pest damage, each of these effects strikes with its full force.

About 307 million people in Africa, corresponding to 20.2 percent of the continent’s population, were affected by hunger in 2024. Climate change is one of the main factors contributing to food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa, as the majority of smallholder farmers rely on rain-fed agriculture, which is particularly vulnerable to its effects. Adamawa’s farmers are among the most exposed members of this already vulnerable population. They grow guinea corn, maize, groundnuts, and beans in soils that are increasingly unpredictable, with rainfall that no longer follows the calendar their parents and grandparents handed down to them.

The Government Money That Disappeared Into the Ground

Nigeria has not been entirely absent from the effort to support its farmers. It has spent at extraordinary scale. The question that Moses and a growing body of audited evidence raise is whether that spending has reached the people it was supposed to reach.

The Anchor Borrowers Programme, launched in November 2015 by the Central Bank of Nigeria, was designed to link smallholder farmers to agro-processors, provide inputs in cash and kind, boost production of key commodities, and address Nigeria’s food import dependence. The CBN disbursed approximately ₦1.12 trillion through the ABP to 4.67 million farmers involved in maize, rice, and wheat farming through 563 anchor companies. NIRSAL disbursed an additional ₦215 billion to facilitate agriculture and agribusinesses.

A Premium Times investigation revealed that the programme has been marred by loan default, even as food prices rose significantly during the years it took effect. According to an audit report, the CBN reported ₦629.04 billion as outstanding loans under the ABP as of December 31, 2022, down from ₦949.18 billion in 2021. The 33 percent reduction was not accompanied by adequate disclosure on the number of beneficiaries or the programme’s impact during the review period. The audit report urged the Public Accounts Committees of the National Assembly to compel the CBN Governor to account for the outstanding loans.

The suspension of the ABP with no replacement had devastating consequences. Rice paddy prices, which never crossed ₦20,000 per 100 kilogrammes during the ABP era, reached ₦25,000 in 2023 and nearly ₦100,000 per 100 kilogrammes by the end of 2024. Farmers can no longer afford high input prices, particularly fertilisers, leading to widespread anxiety and uncertainty about their agricultural future.

The president of the Association of Organic Agriculture Practitioners of Nigeria stated that the control of the CBN in agricultural interventions must be removed if the government truly wants to record success, and that corruption must be eliminated from its programmes. Poor monitoring systems made it difficult to track loan utilisation and ensure accountability.

Moses delivers the same verdict from the ground level in Adamawa. “In the last few years in Nigeria, they have spent trillions of naira, but there has been no impact. The government should be sincere and consistent. If they really want to achieve the goal, the goal must show on the ground.”

He points to a structural flaw that goes beyond corruption into the logic of programme design itself. Government agricultural support in Nigeria has consistently ignored the comparative advantages of specific regions, applying generic solutions to contexts that require specific ones. “If Adamawa State is good in guinea corn, maize, groundnut, and beans, this should be the focus of the Anchor programme. If Maiduguri is better at wheat or fishing, then support should be tailored accordingly.” A maize farmer in Fufore and a wheat farmer in Borno do not have the same needs. A support programme that treats them identically serves neither.

Research examining the implementation of the Anchor Borrowers Programme in Nasarawa State found that while the programme effectively increased rice accessibility in some areas, several barriers persisted. Farmers are required to repay loans with harvested produce delivered to designated collection centres, a requirement that becomes impossible to meet when the harvest itself has been destroyed by climate-induced drought or flooding. The study identified implementation challenges including poor coordination between programme administrators and beneficiaries and inadequate monitoring of outcomes at the community level.

The Capacity Gap That Makes Good Intentions Useless

Moses raises a dimension of the crisis that is less discussed but deeply important. Even when government resources do reach farmers, the absence of technical training renders those resources significantly less effective. “Even though just yesterday I saw that the government has slashed down the cost of agricultural input to help farmers,” he says, “but without education or capacity, at the end of the day the farmer will be left with nothing to do.”

Nigerian farmers have demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of climate challenges by leveraging indigenous knowledge and adaptive practices. Crop diversification, the use of drought-tolerant crop varieties, and adjustments in planting schedules have proven effective in mitigating some adverse effects of climate variability. However, these practices, while beneficial on a small scale, require broader institutional and financial support to achieve more significant impact.

The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, the most comprehensive global scientific assessment of climate change ever produced, specifically identifies farmer capacity building and access to climate information as among the highest-return investments that governments in climate-vulnerable regions can make. In Adamawa, where farmers are navigating both drought and flood within the same agricultural year, and where new pest species are appearing that older knowledge frameworks do not recognise, the absence of structured agricultural extension services is not a minor administrative gap. It is a primary driver of crop losses.

Community-Based Adaptation initiatives in Nigeria have proven effective when implemented with genuine community involvement, focusing on diversifying income sources, embracing climate-resilient agriculture, and managing natural resources responsibly. Community-based early warning systems have been among the most effective local tools for reducing climate-related agricultural losses. However, scaling these approaches requires both government commitment and the kind of community-level interface that civil society organisations are uniquely positioned to provide.

The SDG 2 Obligation Nigeria Is Failing to Meet

Nigeria is a formal signatory to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. SDG 2 commits member states to ending hunger, achieving food security, improving nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture by 2030. SDG 13 calls for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.

The FAO predicts that approximately 26.5 million people in Nigeria will face food shortages by the end of 2024. Nigeria still imports substantial quantities of farm inputs like fertiliser, pesticides, and staple foods, including rice, where only 57 percent of the 6.7 million metric tonnes consumed annually is produced locally. Nigeria’s food and beverage import bill increased by 30 percent from ₦1.21 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2023 to ₦1.59 trillion in the first three months of 2024.

A country that grows only 57 percent of the rice it consumes, that has seen its food import bill rise 30 percent in a single quarter, and that has 25 million people facing food shortages while spending over a trillion naira on agricultural programmes that a national audit has been unable to fully account for, is not on a trajectory to meet SDG 2 by 2030. It is on a trajectory to deepen a crisis that climate change is already accelerating.

What NGOs Can Do That Government Has Not

Moses does not frame the failure of government agricultural programmes as an argument for government withdrawal. He frames it as an argument for a different model of government engagement, one in which civil society organisations serve as the critical interface between policy and people.

“Most citizens do not believe in the government now in Nigeria. Most people believe more in the NGO than the government. NGOs can make programmes beautiful because they help the government and the people. The one key is engaging the state and NGOs. NGOs can help interface between the government and the people so that what is given will be productive.”

This is not a novel observation. It is a well-documented finding of development economics research across multiple countries and contexts. The EU’s System for an Enabling Environment, in which is a participating partner, is specifically designed to build the civil society capacity that can translate government resources into community-level outcomes. ICNL’s analysis of civic space and development consistently identifies independent civil society organisations as among the highest-return investments that both governments and international donors can make in building transparent, accountable, and effective development delivery systems.

The farmers of Adamawa, growing guinea corn and groundnuts on land where the rains now arrive and depart without predictable schedule, where drought can take thirty days from a single growing season and floods can take the rest, need both resources and the trusted intermediaries who will ensure those resources reach the soil rather than disappearing into an audit finding.

Moses states the requirement as plainly as it has been stated from any level of this conversation. “The government should be sincere in their policies, engage the real farmers, and involve NGOs. This is how we can ensure that farmers can adapt and continue producing food for the nation.”

What Adaptation Actually Requires

The path from where Nigerian agriculture currently stands to where it needs to be for the country’s farmers and food security to survive what climate change is already delivering is not a mystery. It has been documented by the FAO, the IPCC, the World Bank, UNDP, and a growing body of peer-reviewed Nigerian agricultural science.

Climate-smart agricultural practices including soil and water conservation, mulching, drought-resistant crop varieties, zero tillage, crop diversification, and agroforestry are the main climate adaptation strategies with documented effectiveness in sub-Saharan Africa. These practices require broader institutional and financial support to scale beyond individual farm-level adoption into community-wide and regional agricultural transformation.

That support requires a government that is sincere, consistent, and transparent in how it spends the resources it allocates to agriculture. It requires monitoring systems that track where money goes and what it produces. It requires agricultural extension workers in Adamawa’s rural communities who can translate climate science into practical planting decisions for farmers navigating a calendar that no longer behaves the way their fathers taught them it would.

And it requires the genuine engagement of the civil society organisations that have earned the trust that government programmes have consistently failed to secure, so that the interface between policy and farmer is not a procurement process in Abuja but a trusted relationship in a community in Fufore or Song or Jada.

The rains in Adamawa are no longer predictable. The farmers who depend on them deserve a government response that is.