Before we miss dry season farming

At a time when preparations for the dry-season farming should have been completed or gone far, media reports indicate that many farmers are still reluctant to engage in it. This was not the practice even in the last two dry seasons. This is even as the Minister of State for Agriculture and Security, Dr. Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, said recently that the government is implementing a dry-season programme that targets 500,000 hectares of land.

A few weeks ago, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, also stated that the federal government was aiming for an output value of almost N160 billion from wheat production for the 2025/2026 dry season. Kyari said the ministry, through the NAGS-AP Programme, has earmarked 40,000 hectares of land for 2025/2026 dry season wheat production and had registered 80,000 farmers.

During this period of the year in 2023, a large number of farmers engaged in dry-season production, which is largely done through irrigation. “We are implementing a dry-season initiative for all-year-round farming on 500,000 hectares. The first phase started with a focus on wheat in 15 wheat-producing states. The second phase covers rice, maize, and cassava,” Sabi Abdullahi said.

At the moment, the wet season dominates agricultural production in Nigeria, restricting farmers’ yearly output in spite of the many dams, irrigation sites, and inactive river basins in the country. Nigeria currently uses less than half of the 3.1 million hectares that could be used for irrigation farming. Nigeria has a total of 408 dams consisting of 142 large dams, 59 medium dams, and 207 small dams, making it the country with the highest number of dams in Africa, according to the Compendium of Irrigation Schemes in Nigeria. The country also has 12 river basin development authorities with a potential of 154,000 hectares of irrigable land, but many of these areas will see little activity this season if support is not provided to farmers.

Government’s support for irrigation farming should be a matter of priority. For instance, it increases food supply and helps to improve the quality of the land used. The process improves moisture status of the soil through the liquefying of soil nutrients and making them available to plants. Also, there are fewer pests and diseases during the dry season.

Besides boosting agricultural production and tackling inflation in food prices, dry-season agriculture could effectively alleviate poverty and promote economic transformation of the rural population. Indeed, the utility of dry-season farming goes beyond mitigating floods impact in flood-prone areas of the country.

Crops that could be cultivated in dry-season in Nigeria include rice, maize, cassava, groundnut, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, onions, watermelon, cucumber, carrots, pepper, garden egg and several other fruits. To accelerate self-sufficiency in food production particularly in a country where population grows exponentially with a below-average GDP growth rate, the potentials of dry-season farming driven by irrigation schemes must be explored. Dry-season in Nigeria is usually between the month of October and March.

The same concerns that informed the establishment of river basin authorities in the country five decades ago including the consequences of the Sahel drought of the early 1970s and a decline in agricultural output following the country’s oil boom cannot be more compelling for irrigation schemes than today’s emergent threats of climate change and the recurring decimal of devastating floods. Thus, the reactivation of moribund river basin authorities in the country is more critical and most relevant today than when they were created.

The story of river basins in Nigeria began with the Sokoto River and Chad River basin authorities were created in 1973. Thereafter, nine more river basin development authorities were created in 1976; bringing the total number of such agencies to eleven. For the almost one decade that these river basin development authorities functioned, their impact on food production was visibly felt across the country.

Government needs to galvanise research institutes and centres including the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan, the Nigerian Agricultural Extension Research and Liaison Services (NAERLS) in Zaria, and the National Cereals Research Institute (NCRI) at Badeggi in Niger State to increase their outreach activities on dry-season farming in Nigeria’s rural communities.

With the country’s abundant water resources and naturally-endowed vegetation all of which make dry-season farming friendlier to farmers in Nigeria, the government has no excuse to miss out of irrigation schemes on a national scale. While we call on the government to support irrigation farmers by subsidising farming equipment and inputs including tractors, irrigation pumps, fertilizers, hybrid seeds and seedlings, the support should target genuine irrigation farmers, not ‘boardroom’ farmers. We urge government to offer irrigation farmers such equipment that they can afford to pay for, either as individuals or as co-operative groups.

Daily Trust also calls on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to ensure that interest rate on credit facilities for irrigation does not go beyond one digit. While we encourage states and local governments to collaborate with development partners to support irrigation schemes, we urge the Bank of Agriculture to support increased participation and investment of farmers in dry-season agriculture.

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