00:00 Daniel Musa and his uncle are salvaging what they can.
00:04 The yams and soybeans they grew this season
00:07 are completely gone.
00:08 Most of the Amaze crop is rotten in the flood water.
00:14 - A lot of them has spoiled as you can see.
00:16 And water has carried everything away.
00:18 The one that is left is what we are picking now.
00:22 - The flooding means the corn has started germinating
00:26 right out of the husk.
00:28 There is very little that is good to eat.
00:32 - Now that the water has carried it away,
00:34 I'm sorry, we don't have any alternative
00:37 of paying our school fees, feeding the family,
00:41 and also leaving something for emergencies
00:44 like diseases and other things.
00:47 - Earlier this year,
00:48 the farmers had counted themselves lucky.
00:51 Moderate rains after April gave them reason
00:54 to hope for a good harvest.
00:56 But the downpour in August washed away those hopes
01:00 and much more besides.
01:03 - Roads, bridges, homes are gone.
01:07 People here were dependent on this year's harvest.
01:10 Now the crops they live from,
01:12 everything has been washed away.
01:15 - Mud walls were no match for the water.
01:18 Hundreds of people like Dabru Kupna
01:20 in Jimbali lost their homes.
01:22 He says that if help does not come,
01:25 he may have to leave.
01:27 - This kind of disaster has never happened to us here.
01:33 It's so strange to see this in the village
01:35 where I was born.
01:36 Water came into the rooms and people had up to here.
01:42 I've never seen this kind of thing before.
01:44 - But climate change is also shortening the growing season
01:50 and bringing drought.
01:53 This creates challenges for crop breeders.
01:56 Here they have been working to produce new varieties
02:00 that mature quickly and that tolerate the dryness.
02:03 - In areas where the season has become shorter
02:07 in what we term as terminal drought,
02:09 some of these early maturing varieties help farmers
02:13 to be resilient and to be able to cope with these problems.
02:18 We have also developed and released varieties
02:21 that are drought tolerant and intermediate.
02:24 - Intermediate crops grow rapidly
02:26 during the shorter rainy season before the drought sets in.
02:31 The reality is confronting farmers here.
02:33 Yahya Alhassan trialed the new varieties five years ago
02:38 after the seasons became unpredictable.
02:41 - If you continue to follow the old sowing plan,
02:46 you'll miss the season.
02:47 We follow the scientists' innovations
02:49 and we don't get losses.
02:51 - Yahya sows both drought tolerant
02:54 and early maturing varieties.
02:57 He says he is getting better yields now than he did
03:01 with the ones he used to plant.
03:03 He would like to see other farmers
03:06 using the new varieties too.
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