REDUCED rainfall and herders’ invasion of farms, both directly or indirectly linked to climate change, are forcing women farmers to adopt changes in Nasarawa.

One night in 2014, Victoria Alkali’s husband was killed and their house set on fire following a clash between herders and farmers in Obi Local Government Area of Nasarawa State, North-Central Nigeria.

The widow and her four children immediately took shelter with a group of women who were also survivors of the crisis.

Alkali’s guinea corn farm was her family’s only asset but frequent cattle grazing on the farm meant she struggled to provide food for the children, and could barely pay their school fees. Unknown to her, an even bigger challenge was looming — the effect of climate change on farming communities in her area was becoming more rampant.

In May 2020, with the onset of rain, Alkali planted guinea corn, hoping to harvest before the herders arrived. But the rains stopped in August instead of November in what was becoming a norm, a deviation from the past. The poor harvest forced her to stop the construction of the new house she had started.

To improve the yields, she started using poultry droppings as fertiliser. She had bought 10 bags of the droppings from a neighbouring community at N5,000 per bag. To her delight, it increased the yields from 10 to 15 bags of guinea corn.

Research has shown that cow dung and chicken droppings can improve the soil structure to hold more nutrients and water and therefore become more fertile.
Smallholder women farmers in Nasarawa State like Alkali are using such means to protect their farms from the effect of desertification.

In 2017, a maize farmer in Toto Local Government Area of the state Murna Bitrus had also suffered declining yields from her farm due to the shortage of rainfall. Unfortunately, this was at a time a section of her house collapsed and frequent herders’ invasion stopped her from working her five-hectare farm located an hour from her home.

She eventually found two hectares close to the local government area which she rented at N230,000 per annum.

Cow dung fertiliser
Being her only source of revenue, Bitrus sought several means to increase the farm’s yields. Later in the year, one of her friends residing in Oyo State in South-West Nigeria introduced her to the dung of a cow specie for use on her newly secured land.

The friend connected her to an abattoir in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, and they arranged frequent transportation of cow dung across over 600 kilometres to Nasarawa in the North-Central region of the country.

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She paid about N27,000 for a 50-kilogramme bag of cow dung and used two bags on the farm every month.

Before she adopted cow dung as fertiliser, since the reduction in rainfall, she had harvested about 30 bags of maize. But in 2020, her harvest was 85 bags, almost triple her old yield from the same farm.

However, she lamented spending so much on the cow dung, citing it as the reason she could not renovate the collapsed section of her house, as she strove to keep up with other rising expenses in the house.

“Cow dung increased my farm output, but the cost of the dung strained my finances. For example in 2020, I didn’t make any profit. I put all the proceeds back into the business,” she said.

Irrigation
In Awe Local Government Area, many farmers channel water from a dam in the area to irrigate their farms, particularly during the dry season and sometimes to supplement reduced rainfall.

For instance, Sarah Albert, a rice farmer in Awe, considered going into irrigation in 2019 after successive failed harvests. She said rainfall usually started in March and ended in November but in recent years it had been between April and October.

She paid up to N20,000 to local transporters for about 35 jerry cans of water every month to irrigate her farm.

While this is an alternative means to solve the problem of reduced rainfall that affected the growth of her crops, she realised fewer proceeds using this method than during the rainy season. She harvested about 60 bags of rice when rainfall was adequate but with irrigation, she hardly got 10 bags, causing her revenue to drop from N300,000 to N30,000.

READ MORE HERE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/special-report-women-farmers-respond-to-climate-change-using-alternative-cultivation-methods/