…Says drought affects early farming
As Kano State and its counterparts in the North continue to look forward to continuous rainfall, farmers have been recording poor crop harvests especially of rice and other grains, which rely on water for bumper yields.
Rice, which requires consistent water supply, has been left without the usual daily rainfalls for several weeks and the plants are drying out.
In areas where the farms are located close to water sources such as rivers, ponds and boreholes, farmers have adopted these water sources to irrigate their farms, a very unusual sight during the wet season. An unestimated amount of loss has so far been compiled in the affected farm areas where food crops have dried up due to lack of water.
Chairman of Tudun-Wada Rice Farmers Association in Kano, Husaini Muhammad, told Arewa Voice that they are already losing about two-thirds of their produce to insufficient rainfall and are not likely to harvest the remaining one-third of what they planted.
He said: “We are faced with a lot of challenges this season. There is an acute scarcity of water due to lack of rain. From what we have estimated, we have lost two-thirds of what we planted this season. It is only one-third that we are hoping to harvest if we are lucky.
“Even what is remaining presently, we have to be pumping water from a nearby village through channels to water what has remained in our farms. Presently, there are even places where there is no water at all and they are likely to lose everything.
“In addition to this, there are no good tools in the hands of the farmers for watering the farms. It is only God that can save the situation. The ultimate is that we are going to lose two-thirds of what we have planted because they have all dried up and there is not enough water to revive them. This is definitely going to affect the price of the product subsequently.
“Already the price has started rising because the quantity of the one already harvested is not much”.
Another farmer, Ahmad Kura, said that the price of agricultural commodities will definitely rise as rainfall dries up.
Responding to the threat, the Project Coordinator, Kano State Agro-Pastoral Development Project, (KSADP), Ibrahim Garba Muhammad, assured that they will be adopting climate-smart agricultural practices to deal with the situation subsequently. He said, “Machinery aimed at reducing the impact of climate change on our agricultural practices are going to be pursued”.
Ibrahim observed that policymakers in Kano are desirous of seeing rapid results especially in the agricultural sector, hence the need for more proactive implementation of the KSADP crop intervention programmes, which aims to improve food and nutrition security.
