INSECURITY-DRIVEN DISPLACEMENT AND SHORTAGES IN FOOD PRODUCTION: HOW INSECURITY IN AGRICULTURAL HUBS DEEPENS FOOD INSECURITY IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Across Nigeria’s farmlands, a quiet catastrophe is unfolding. Millions of farmers now wake each morning not to the rhythms of planting or harvest, but to impossible choices: risk being killed on their fields by armed groups or abandon their crops and watch their families go hungry. This chapter tells their stories—of sorghum growers in Zamfara paying bandits half their harvest just to farm, of women in Benue searching flood-wrecked fields for scraps of yam, of children in Borno whose stunted growth bears witness to years of conflict and scarcity. Drawing on three years of fieldwork and heartbreaking interviews with displaced farmers, we trace how violence—whether from insurgents, criminal gangs, or climate-driven clashes—has unravelled Africa’s once-greatest breadbasket. The numbers shock (a 28% drop in rice production, 48% of Borno’s children malnourished), but the human toll cuts deeper: a generation losing its connection to the land, grandmothers recalling seasons when harvests fed nations beyond Nigeria’s borders. Yet within this crisis lie seeds of hope. We document how some communities are adapting—women’s cooperatives reviving lost seed varieties, young engineers developing conflict-resistant storage systems. The chapter concludes not with despair, but with a clear-eyed roadmap: practical solutions that start by listening to those still struggling to feed Nigeria against all odds.