by increasing competition for scarce land and water resources (McGuirk and Nunn, 2020; George _et al._ , 2021a). As agricultural seasons have shifted associated with climate change, nomadic herders have changed the timing of their migratory patterns and agricultural households have lengthened their growing seasons. Rising tensions motivated several Nigerian states to implement open-grazing bans in 2016 and 2017. These bans are associated with a sharp escalation of violence in the first half of 2018, which represents the core source of variation in herder-related violence in our study.

We construct panel data by combining information from Nigeria’s General Household Survey and the ACLED Project from 2010 through 2019 and pay particular attention to both the seasonality in herder-related conflict and how agricultural households respond to exposure throughout the agricultural season.

We find that both men and women exposed to herder-related violence and that have also been previously exposed to this violence shift toward informal work in the post-planting season and shift away from informal work, on the extensive margin, in the post-harvest season. This shift toward informal work in the post-planting season seems to act as a substitute activity for agricultural work for men in households exposed to herder-related violence and that have also been previously exposed to this violence. Agricultural work, however, does not decline for women. Rather, the total number of hours worked increases if women live within households exposed to herder-related violence and that have also been previously exposed. For these women, the increase in total hours worked is predominantly allocated to informal work. These results are consistent with the view that work in the informal sector can act as a partial ‘safety net’ for agricultural households exposed to herder-related violence in Nigeria.

Furthermore, we investigate heterogeneity across both time and space by exploiting the spike in violence just before the 2018-2019 GHS survey rounds and within Nigerian states implementing opengrazing bans, which have been attributed as a contributor to increased violence in the conflict. We find that the shift toward informal work and away from agricultural work is larger within states implementing an open-grazing ban and during the 2018-2019 survey round, especially during the post-harvest season.

Finally, we investigate the consequences of this labor response to exposure to herder-related violence. We specifically estimate “knock-on” or lagged effects that materialize during the post-harvest period of the 2018-2019 GHS survey and are associated with exposure to herder-related violence in the previous planting season. We find that households exposed to herder-related violence and who have also been previously exposed to this violence (i) shift their consumption toward food and away from other expenditures, (ii) are more likely to sell raw crops to relatives/friends or via the farmgate, and (iii) are more likely to operate a non-farm enterprise.

Despite our finding that agricultural households exposed to herder-related violence in Nigeria might use the informal sector as a way to cope with the increased risk associated with agricultural production, this ‘safety net’ does not seem to effectively guard against these households experiencing adverse economic consequences. Therefore, herder-related violence can have wide-reaching indirect costs beyond the direct costs associated with the loss of human life and the destruction of property. In the absence of the elimi21