Abstract

This paper examined the influence of arable crop farmers’ use of Climate-Smart Agricultural Practices (CSAPs) on food security in North-Central Nigeria. Primary data were collected using a structured questionnaire, and a multistage sampling procedure was adopted to select 120 respondents. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, sigma scoring, mean score, and logit regression. The results revealed a mean age of 48.0 ± 5.7 years, a household size of 5.9 ± 1.6 members, farming experience of 18.0 ± 6.6 years, a farm size of 1.4 ± 0.6 hectares, and an annual income of ₦173,210 ± ₦ 5,000. The majority were male (92.3%), married (88.0%), had no secondary occupation (72.5%), had formal education (72.3%), and were members of associations (58.4%). The sigma scores on perceived effects of climate change indicated hotness (5.30), irregular rainfall (5.30), and yield reduction (5.08). In contrast, the mean scores of constraints to CSAPs' use included rainfed farming (2.93) and inadequate finance (2.90). The CSAPs most commonly employed were shifting planting schedules (5.02), mixed cropping (4.91), and planting cover crops (4.70). The influence of CSAPs on food security showed that sex (-0.5535), age (-0.0372), household size (-0.0413), education status (-0.4317), farming experience (-0.0620), and association membership (-0.0849) had significant negative effects. In contrast, secondary occupation (0.1894), farm size (0.2568), extension visits (0.3715), and total CSAPs used (0.3498) were highly significant positive determinants. Intensive CSA training and grant awards were recommended to enhance the effective use of CSAPs and improve food security.

Introduction

Agriculture has been recognized globally as a primary source of human life since it produces the food that humans need to survive. As an important industry that significantly contributes to local and global food security, job creation, and farmer income generation, it is carried out by many smallholder farmers in developing nations, including Nigeria, where it is rain-fed due to its dependence on rainfall, a key climatic factor (Pierre et al., 2024). Other climatic factors that influence agriculture in a place include temperature, humidity, wind direction and speed, precipitation type, frequency, and amount, as well as solar radiation.

Note that it is not only climate elements that influence agriculture, but there is also an inter relatedness between the two (agriculture and climate). Agriculture has several ways in which it influences and is influenced by the environment, with the two having inverse, reversible, and reciprocal relationships. This is consistent with Wakweya (2023), who noted a nexus between agriculture and climate and Yilai et al. (2024), who identified a substantial dependency between agriculture and climate. For example, agriculture will flourish, and humans will reap the natural benefits of optimal production and productivity, including stable food supplies and food security, if climatic conditions are ideal and optimal (Wakweya, 2023). On one hand, vegetation (forest) can influence atmospheric elements such as rainfall and even absorb excess heat thereby influencing the weather condition of a place meaning that agriculture is a key carbon sink, in that agricultural perennial such as pasture, forests, fruit orchards and tea plantations can capture CO₂ from the atmosphere for/through photosynthesis (Yilai et al., 2024).

Conversely, Yilai et al. (2024) stated that agriculture contributes to the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as methane (CH₄) from the metabolic activity of bacteria that produce methane, nitrous oxide (N₂O) from ruminant gastrointestinal fermentation and farmland soil nitrification and denitrification under nitrogen fertilizer application, and anthropogenic Non-CO₂ from the conversion of forest land to cropland. Others include agricultural activities such as machinery operations, fertilizer and feed inputs also indirectly increase the carbon footprint of agriculture via various pathways such as fossil fuel consumption, traditional and predominant method of clearing farmland by bush burning and the indiscriminate cutting down of trees for use as firewood and making charcoal all releases and increases the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere which traps heat and contribute to global warming and consequently resulting into climate change (Onoja, 2023). 

Long-term changes to temperature, precipitation, wind patterns, and other aspects of the Earth's climate system are referred to as climate change (Henri-Ukoha and Adesope, 2020). In Chepng'etich et al. (2024), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) further defined climate change as the swift and unpredictable shifts in Earth’s surface temperature and precipitation patterns that have made agricultural systems more vulnerable worldwide. They went on to say that, although the effects of climate change are felt globally, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is expected to experience the most severe impacts on its food systems and agriculture. They claimed that this is due to the region's fragility, stemming from the fact that agriculture, the main driver of their economies, is largely dependent on rainfall and is therefore extremely vulnerable to climate change. This supports the position of Tabe-Ojong et al. (2023), who found that droughts, rising temperatures, and changes in rainfall patterns, including both increased and decreased rainfall, are examples of how climate change is affecting smallholder arable crop agriculture in many tropical locations.

It is worth noting that half the world consumes arable crops such as rice, yams, beans, maize, wheat, guinea corn and cassava, among others and in Nigeria, every household consumes them (Chima et al., 2024).  They added that the impact of a changing climate on arable crops is a catastrophe shared by many countries of the Globe, especially Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), including Nigeria, where biodiversity-based rice and cassava farming is facing extinction, especially in the northern part, where drought and flood disasters are destroying agrifood systems, causing food insecurity.

Food insecurity is when people are unable to meet their food needs. They may eat once a day but not know where they will get their next meal or that people experiencing severe food insecurity may have run out of food completely and go a day or more without anything to eat at all (Oxfam, 2025). Oxfam further explained that food insecurity is when only 1 in 11 people have access to food, and the Number of people globally without access to adequate food is 31%. Nigeria ranks ninth among the top 10 nations in the world with the greatest food crises, according to Onoja (2023). In 2019, more than five million individuals in Nigeria were affected, which accounted for 5% of the global total (Global Network Against Food Crises-GNAFC, 2020). According to the WFP 2024 report, in Action Aid Nigeria (2024), there were 100 million food-insecure Nigerians in Q1 2024, up from 66.2 million in Q1 2023. They added that out of these, 18.6 million are experiencing acute hunger, and as of March 2024, 43.7 million Nigerians are exhibiting crisis-level or above crisis-level hunger coping strategies. Food security is therefore essential for human existence, and this has been the reason why successive governments in Nigeria have attempted to address the food crisis and insecurity situation caused by other factors, until recently, climate change. Regrettably, the country has never come close to attaining this goal. In Nigeria, smallholder farmers are facing threats to their livelihoods and food security due to climate change, resulting in a growing decline in agricultural production, food accessibility, and financial stability. This has bolstered Wakweya's (2023) assertion that climate change has negative implications for food security.

Food security is when "all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to suit their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life," (Tabe-Ojong et al., 2023) and (Oxfam, 2025). The United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) "Zero Hunger" target is seriously threatened by the world's population growth, which is predicted to surpass 9 billion people by 2050, even as climate change continues to threaten the ability to produce food (Yilai et al., 2024). Food security as a concept encompasses four primary aspects: (a) Food availability, especially of local food, which must always be readily present on shop shelves and at market stalls. (b) Food access means having physical, social, and financial freedom to access food. (c) Food utilization, which occurs when people have access to wholesome, disease-free food in enough quantities to support an active and full life; and (d) Food stability, which occurs when the food supply is steady and consistent, and rising food costs and seasonal food shortages brought on by climate change do not jeopardize food security. Food security, therefore, is about ensuring that no one goes hungry and in practical terms, it means that the fundamental assurance of human survival is food security. Onoja (2023) cited Pachauri & Meyer (2014) as warning that African nations may see a 10% to 25% decrease in farm production if the required adaptation measures are not implemented. As an addendum, Pierre et al. (2024) noted that the two most significant issues of our day are food insecurity and climate change; therefore, it is imperative to develop sustainable agricultural practices that mitigate the consequences of these two factors on agriculture.

To address these two challenges, Fig. 1 clearly shows the World Bank and partners' resolution from the Seminar on Climate Change and Risk Management, where they developed Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) to help farmers adapt to and mitigate climate change and address the interconnected challenges of food insecurity that has been made worse by climate change (World Bank, 2024 in Wanglin and Rahut, 2024).

The concept of CSA was first proposed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) at the Hague Conference in 2010 (Yilai et al., 2024), aiming to achieve the multi-win goals of increased food production, security, and income, as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation. As illustrated in Fig. 1, the three main goals of CSA are: (a) Increasing agricultural productivity sustainably by producing more and better-quality food without further taxing natural resources in order to increase incomes and improve nutrition security, particularly for the 75% of the world's poor who live in rural areas and depend primarily on agriculture for their livelihoods. (b) Developing resilience and adapting to climate-related hazards and shocks, such as droughts, pests, and diseases; and enhancing the ability to grow and adapt to longer-term pressures, such as more unpredictable weather patterns and increasing seasonal variability and (c) Reducing GHGs emissions from agriculture of the food system, avoid deforestation due to cropland expansion, and increase the carbon sequestration of plants and soils (World Bank, 2024 in Wanglin and Rahut, 2024).

Wakweya (2023) noted that climate-smart agriculture is now positioned as an exceptional perspective for meeting both global warming reduction and adaptation objectives while also ensuring/enhancing agricultural production and feeding people worldwide. The CSA is gaining recognition as a viable approach to mitigating the impact of climate change on the food security of farming households. Although the idea of CSA is still evolving, little research has been conducted on the connections between CSA and sustainable agriculture, and how CSA behaviors might be encouraged to achieve food security. Climate-smart agricultural practices and technologies (CSAPs) are a group of agricultural production-related practices that can "effectively adapt agriculture to climate change and reinforce agricultural production capacity" (Wanglin and Rahut, 2024).

Based on the foregoing, this paper investigated the influence of arable crop farmers’ use of CSAPs on food security in North-Central, Nigeria. The purpose of the study was to;

i. describe the socio-economic characteristics of arable crop farmers. 

ii. identify arable crop farmers’ perceived effects of climate change;

iii. identify CSAPs used by arable crop farmers;

iv. identify constraints faced in the use of CSAPs by arable crop farmers; and,

vi. examine the influence of CSAPs usage on food security.

Fig. 1: Climate-smart chart adapted from World Bank (2024) in Wanglin and Rahut (