A renewed surge in kidnappings targeting farmers across Kwara, Plateau, Taraba, Niger, and other Central Belt states is intensifying fears of a looming food emergency in 2026.
LEADERSHIP Sunday gathered that, across the affected states, farmers have been forced to suspend dry-season operations after multiple abductions along irrigation corridors and riverbank fields. Cropland harvests are also being abandoned as critical production zones fall silent.
This development comes amid recent warnings that over 34.7 million Nigerians could face acute food shortages by mid-2026, according to the latest Cadre Harmonisé assessment. Persistent insecurity was identified as one of the key drivers behind the worsening food crisis.
Farmers say the attacks are undermining a production cycle vital to national supplies of rice, maize, and vegetables. Early assessments by farmers’ groups show significant disruptions to village-level output — a trend that could deepen inflationary pressures as the country approaches 2026.
The President of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Muhammad Magaji, told LEADERSHIP Sunday that the security crisis has already altered decisions by thousands of farmers preparing for the dry-season cycle. He noted that entire cooperatives are abandoning fields that typically support both household consumption and supply chains.
According to the farmers’ union leader, the threat has become so severe that even medium-scale producers are scaling down acreage — a move he lamented would erode the national capacity to stabilise food availability in the coming year.
In November, the Federal Government celebrated a fall in food prices, with the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, attributing the development to targeted government market interventions. According to the Minister, the decline in food prices across several commodities signalled that government interventions in production, input delivery, and market stabilisation were working.
“While we are not yet where we want to be, this positive trend confirms that we are moving in the right direction,” Kyari told participants at the 47th National Council on Agriculture and Food Security in Kaduna State.
However, Magaji noted: “Insecurity has already started affecting our members, especially those in dry-season farming, because many people are being captured during dry-season farming — whether maize, rice, or other crops. Unfortunately, because of the insecurity, it is really affecting our members now.”
He added: “If the security situation improves, many farmers will return to farming activities. If you intend to cultivate only five to ten hectares, improved security could encourage you to expand to 20, 30, or even 60 hectares. All that is needed is for the Federal Government to improve the security situation.”
Agribusiness stakeholders share similar concerns. They warn that early signs of a nationwide food shortage are already visible in the rising costs of inputs and widespread uncertainty among farmers. Many smallholder farmers — who contribute more than 70 percent of domestic food output — are now unable to maintain production levels, which experts fear could weaken the national food system.
The President of the Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NABG), Arc Kabir Ibrahim, warned that the combination of scarce inputs, high logistics expenses, and shrinking rural output is already distorting market prices.
Ibrahim told LEADERSHIP Sunday that the cost of sustaining operations is pushing smallholders into deeper poverty, leaving them unable to recover quickly enough to prevent a nationwide shortfall by 2026.
“The upsurge in insecurity could pose a very significant threat to the attainment of food security. Unaffordable food prices due to scarcity and high production costs portend a serious shortage, and this trend could exacerbate inflation,” Ibrahim said.
He continued: “The high cost of inputs is a driver of food inflation any day, and insecurity is an additional threat factor to the attainment of food sovereignty and food security. Deepening poverty among smallholder farmers will definitely affect productivity, and 2026 may be a very difficult year for Nigerians.”
Other stakeholders insist that the only sustainable path to averting a food emergency is restoring security in Nigeria’s food-producing zones. They argue that once safety is guaranteed, farmers will increase food production, investors will return, and production can recover. Without immediate action, they caution that 2026 may usher in one of the most challenging food-supply years in Nigeria’s recent history.
The Labour Union, under the aegis of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), warned that Nigeria risks a spike in food prices if displaced farmers are unable to return to their communities.
Speaking on the state of the nation at the National Executive Council meeting in Abuja, the Union’s National President, Comrade Festus Osifo, called on the government to act urgently, insisting that insecurity has moved beyond isolated incidents and now threatens national stability and economic recovery.
Osifo linked the collapse of farming activities to the insecurity crisis, stressing that no economic policy can succeed if farmers remain unable to plant or harvest. He added that the government must address the crisis at its roots by helping farmers return to their fields.
“In the market, prices are not coming down. When you go to the market with ₦100,000, what you’ll bring back is almost nothing. The government — federal, state, and local — should do everything possible to ensure that commodity prices are under control. They must ensure that farmers can return to the farm, because it is only when farmers go back to the farm that they can produce new crops to bring to the market,” he said.
