NO country can expect its farmers to produce enough food when terrorists and bandits drive them from their fields, impose levies on those who remain, destroy their crops or kill them for refusing to comply.
Yet this is precisely what the Nigerian Tribune found in extensive reporting across Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Plateau, Benue, Niger and Borno states. Across the North, farmers are abandoning their farmland because of insecurity.
The implication is stark: without securing farming communities, food security is impossible.
The economic consequences of this violence are equally severe.
According to the World Bank, crop losses in Nigeria rose from about 6.0 per cent of cultivated plots in 2018/19 to more than 20 per cent in 2023/24, more than a threefold increase.
