Harvests will be poor in the north of Nigeria because of inadequate rains, according to the Kano State chapter of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN).

“The implication of this is that there is likely to be shortage of food items in the coming season,” said the state chairman of the association, Alhaji Sabo Nanono, speaking on state radio, as reported by BBC Monitoring on 18 October.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) told IRIN its “optimistic” mid-September crop forecast for the Sahel region had been revised down as the rains have ended early.

However, FAO also stressed that the extent of the problem in northern Nigeria will not be known until after the results of a joint evaluation mission are announced next week.

The mission, which started work on 15 October, includes experts from the intergovernmental organisations Le Comité Permanent Inter Etats de lutte contre la Sécheresse dans le Sahel or CILSS and FewsNet, a US-funded organisation for food security in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The farm association offered anecdotal evidence of rising food prices already. Maize is selling at about 3,000 naira (US$24.58) a basin, Nanono, AFAN’s state chairman, said. “When you compare the prices of these commodities to last year around this time we were just ranging about 2,000 naira ($16.38)”.