Nigerian farmers have disclosed how they suffered huge losses due to delays in rainfall and flooding in this year’s farming season.

They said the devastating climate change caused rain delays and when it started raining, it did so in excess in some parts of the country and resulted in floods that swept farmlands away.

The Chairman of the Federation of Agricultural Commodity Association of Nigeria (FACAN), Osun State chapter, Jayeoba Kamoru Alagbada, explained that the harsh experiences impacted their farm harvest negatively.

He said plantations and crops running to millions of naira were destroyed by climate change that was witnessed in this year’s farming season, saying if such eventuality is not prevented, Nigeria’s food shortage crisis may worsen.

To prevent further losses in the future as farmers prepare for dry season farming, the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture National Resources and Research Centre (ISANRRC) has trained farmers in Osun State on the technicalities of modern ways of cultivating crops.

The institute, in partnership with All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Osun State Chapter, during the two-day free 2024 farmers training in Osogbo, organised extensive training and orientation programmes on cassava, yam, maize, and sweet potato cultivation and their value chains.

At the training, the farmers were urged to move from subsistence method of farming to mechanized one even as different trainers acquainted them with technical skills on how to effectively produce in line with the global best practices, which will also translate to realisation of optimal yield and return.

In his welcome address, the President of the institute, Prof. Sheu Yahaya, said the chosen crops that the farmers were trained on are major and also currently demanded in the export market, adding that they have a very long value chain that can provide wide range of opportunities to the teaming populace.

While calling on the beneficiaries of the free training to ensure the constant study of climate change in order to know what, when, where, and how to cultivate their crops, Yahaya lamented how climate change which includes lack of rainfall and, flooding among others destroyed many plantations and wreaked havoc on people’s farms and created huge losses during harvest.

Yahaya who lectures at the Department of Agronomy, Bayero University, Kano, maintained that climate change has unleashed unpredictable weather patterns, including droughts, floods, and torrential rains, which have ravaged crops and livestock, destroying farmers’ hard work and imperiling food availability.

“This in turn has exacerbated poverty and malnutrition, affecting a significant portion of the population in the sub-region, further entrenching vulnerability and food insecurity,” he said, adding that the inability of farmers to produce foods optimally owing to their losses has triggered soaring prices of food, which has been putting the nation’s most vulnerable citizens at risk of extreme hardship.

Addressing the farmers on the need to put all they have learned into action, Prof. Oluwatuyi Omotoso, a member of Governing Council of the institute, said the knowledge acquired would prevent farmers from incurring further losses in their future farming endeavours.

Dr Abioye Olusegun, the Zonal Director of the institute in South West, said the training is for the farmers to be prepared against next year, adding that if the nation’s agricultural potentials are well utilized, farmers will cultivate food insufficiency and Nigerians would be able to get foods at affordable rates.

Alagbada, while speaking, described the orientation and sensitisation as timely, promising that everything learned would be put into practice in order for food shortage in the country to be tackled.