It’s May, and across Nigeria, the rains are returning. In the fields, farmers are busy. The planting season is in the air. Markets are buzzing with new expectations. The wet season, once again, brings life and the illusion of agricultural stability.
Imagine an economy where food production is tied to rainfall. That’s not just tradition; it’s a national vulnerability.
For decades, Nigeria’s agricultural calendar has revolved around one season: the rains. While the wet season has historically been the engine of crop production, the cost of depending almost entirely on it is becoming far too great to ignore. And yet, year after year, the same pattern continues.
Here’s the hard truth: beneath the energy and activity, Nigeria’s over-reliance on the wet season is holding its agricultural future hostage. This is more than a seasonal pattern. It’s a systemic bottleneck. And it’s costing us more than we care to admit.
The Limits of a 6-Month Growing Window
Nigeria’s wet season typically runs from April to October, depending on the region. That gives most farmers just one planting cycle per year. For crops like maize, rice, and soybeans, this means supply peaks shortly after harvest, only to plummet in the dry months, leading to rising prices, food scarcity, and post-harvest losses from overwhelmed storage.
According to the National Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison Services (NAERLS), 80% of Nigeria’s food is grown during the wet season. This dependence leaves no room for scale, resilience, or even predictable supply. When you are racing against the rains, farming becomes a gamble, not a business.
Despite the rainfall, vast arable lands remain unutilized. Even in rural communities, thousands of hectares are left fallow during the season due to a lack of access to inputs, labor, or capital. Ironically, Nigeria has over 70 million hectares of arable land, yet less than half is cultivated.
Post-Harvest Losses and Price Volatility
Without off-season production to stabilize supply, prices for staple crops can swing wildly. Worse still, during the glut that follows harvest, lack of storage and poor logistics result in up to 40% post-harvest losses, particularly for perishable crops.
With no coordinated storage or dry-season backup, what happens after the harvest is painfully predictable:
- Markets flood with produce.
- Prices crash.
- And within months, scarcity returns, driving food inflation right back up.
The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development estimates that Nigeria loses over ₦3.5 trillion annually to post-harvest losses due to inadequate storage, processing, and distribution infrastructure. That’s more than a fiscal dent, it’s a national emergency.
A Drain on Investment Potential
Nigeria’s agri-financing landscape remains fragile, and seasonality adds to the risk. Investors shy away from a system where their returns depend on just a few rainy months a year. The result? Limited private sector funding, and farmers trapped in a cycle of small yields, smaller profits, and no room to scale.
With only 4% of bank loans going to agriculture in 2023 (CBN), smallholder farmers lack the capital to invest in irrigation, off-season inputs, or better technology. Aggregators can’t build storage. Processors can’t scale. Retailers can’t stabilize prices.
Without affordable financing and forward-thinking policy, we are stuck in this annual loop.
A Broken Chain: Inputs, Labour & Yields
Even in the wet season, Nigeria faces a crisis of low productivity. Why?
- Scarcity of improved seeds: Farmers often rely on saved seeds that don’t match the rain’s maturity window. If the rains end too early or too late, entire harvests can fail.
- High input costs: Fertilizers, agrochemicals, and quality seeds are often priced out of reach.
- Mechanization is still a luxury: With limited access to tractors, shellers, threshers, and dryers, farming remains labor-intensive and inefficient.
The result? Even during the “productive” season, yields remain low, costs are high, and smallholder farmers are stuck in survival mode.
A Climate-Driven Crisis Waiting to Happen
The rains are no longer predictable. The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) reports increasingly irregular rainfall patterns, causing floods in some areas and droughts in others. A system that is already too seasonal is now being tested by climate disruption. For farmers without irrigation or resilience planning, this is catastrophic.
When your food system relies on rains that no longer arrive on schedule, food security becomes wishful thinking.
So, What’s the Way Forward?
Seasonal farming has never been the problem. Solely depending on it is. The future of Nigerian agriculture lies in breaking free from this dependence, and that future is financially driven.
Financing: The Catalyst for Year-Round Farming
Imagine if farmers had affordable credit for irrigation equipment. Or if aggregators had access to financing to build warehouses and storage for surplus grains. Or if digital platforms like Kasuwa connected off-season producers directly with buyers.