Nigeria: Kaduna ginger farmers count losses as disease ravages crop, ruins livelihood

On a sunny morning last August, Jatau Malichy, 65, left his home in Mafo-fadia, a village in Kachia Local Government Area in the southern part of Kaduna State, north-west Nigeria, to inspect his farm. After retiring as a librarian with the state government, Mr Malichy devoted himself to cultivating ginger on the five-hectare farm. But what he noticed of the crops that day left him bewildered and heartbroken. The crops were wilting. Over a few weeks from July, a ‘strange disease’ gradually devastated the crops. Mr Malichy’s 58-year-old widow, Bathsheba, believes the shock over the loss of his crops led to his death a few days later on 7 August. The community had practised ginger farming for as long as Mrs Malichy could remember. She and her husband used proceeds from their farm to build their house in the village in 2019. “Our plan was that after that 2023 harvest, we would not farm again. So we doubled what we normally planted, hoping for more proceeds,” she told this reporter at ...