Abstract:

This study uniquely highlights an underlying factor (climate change) which has not been acknowledged in Nigeria’s farmers-herders clashes which has claimed many lives. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) is applied on data of seventeen agricultural crops grown in Nigeria for 36 years. Climate change variables include: CO2 emissions, temperature and mean annual, while livestock is represented by the production index. The paper investigated the nexus of climate change with crop production and livestock production. The results indicate a long run relationship between crop production and climate change but there is no long run relationship between livestock production and climate change. To overcome the effect of rainfall uncertainty, it is recommended that agricultural firms partner with energy companies (and/or government) to invest in combined hydro power and irrigation project – especially, in drought-prone areas. The government should increase its expenditure on agriculture (both capital and recurrent) to especially support farmers and agro-allied companies who have been affected by the COVID-19 shutdown. This could increase the level of mechanized farming with modern equipment, farming implements and enhanced seedlings which are resilient to climate change to boost crop and livestock yield. National orientation programmes aimed at enlightening Farmers and Herders about emerging changes in climate extremes.