Agriculture in Sudan
[1] Total sector activities contributed an estimated 35.5 percent of GDP in 2006, a decline from the years prior to the development of the oil industry.
[1] Large investments occurred over time in mechanized, irrigated, and rain-fed agriculture, which together accounted for roughly two-thirds of Sudan’s cultivated land.
[2] Rain-fed mechanized fanning continues to produce mostly sorghum, but the cultivation of sesame has increased, and short-fiber cotton is also grown.
On the plain dura, sorghum and vulgare was grown for the first time and advancements enabled the construction of canals and sophisticated irrigation networks.
[4] Around the time of the Egyptian invasion in 1820, agriculture transformation had occurred with respect to irrigation, improved utilization of the rain lands, and new exotic crop species.
[3] The use of some woodland areas for grazing, the dearth of rainfall during the 1980s, and the ecological damage from mechanized farming caused steady deforestation.
[3] An area of about 2.9 million hectares was covered by swamps and inland water, and additional land was occupied by urban settlements and other man-made features.
[5] The government owned most of the land used by the modern agricultural sector and leased it to tenants (for example, in the Gezira Scheme) or to private entrepreneurs, such as most operators of large-scale mechanized rain-fed farming.
[8] It is collected from acacia trees in Darfur and Kordofan and used widely in industry for products ranging from mucilage (for postage stamps), to foam stabilizers, to excipient in medicines and dietetic foods.
[8] Export markets for it are price sensitive, as there are synthetic substitutes and competition from Chad, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, and Nigeria.
[8] Sorghum is the Sudanese staple food crop, but the yield varies, depending on weather conditions and the amount of irrigated land used for it.
[10] In 1999 plans were announced for a large production facility in the White Nile region, with major funding from the Chinese government.
[12] Adequate groundwater, however, offered the eventual possibility of using pump irrigation from local wells for additional cropping or for supplementing any flood shortages.
[14] The mechanized rainfed agricultural sector developed after 1944-45, when a government project to cultivate the cracking clays of central Sudan started in the area of Al-Gedaref (also seen as Al-Qadarif).
[14] Its prime purpose was to meet the food needs of army units stationed in British colonies in East Africa (present-day Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda).
[14] An average of about 6,000 hectares a year was cultivated between 1945 and 1953, chiefly producing sorghum, under a sharecropping arrangement between the government and fanners who had been allocated land in the project.
[14] These estates proved costly, however, and in 1954 the government began encouraging the private sector to take up mechanized fanning in the area, a policy that continued after Sudan gained independence in 1956.
[16] Their ability to obtain capital permitted them also to abandon depleted land and to move into newly demarcated uncleared areas, a practice that had a deleterious impact on the environment, deprived the indigenous inhabitants of work opportunities, and increased desertification.
[16] With loans from the IDA, the MFC was able to provide technical assistance, credit for land clearing and machinery, and marketing aid to individual farmers and cooperative groups.
[16] Traditional rain-fed farming involves nomadic and seminomadic peoples and transhumance, as well as settled agriculture, which also includes significant numbers of livestock.
[11] Vegetation in the zone is open grasslands, bush thickets, and thorn woodland where quick-maturing grains and oilseeds are produced.
[10] It provides a large part or the entire livelihood of nearly half the population of Sudan, mainly in the traditional farming sector.
[10] In recent years, the government has encouraged commercial livestock production of camels, goats, sheep, and cattle for sale abroad.
[10] This breed is found chiefly in the western savanna regions and in fewer, although significant, numbers farther to the east as far north as Kassala.
[10] In the vast areas used by pastoral herders, cattle husbandry is conducted in an economic, cultural, and social context that evolved over generations.
[17] Transhumant groups own most of the Nilotic variety of cattle, and their migrations, related to the wet and dry seasons, usually do not exceed 150-160 kilometers.
[17] The result was a growing overstock and pasture depletion until the outbreak of civil war in 1983, which was followed by the devastating droughts of the 1980s and early 1990s that greatly reduced livestock numbers throughout Sudan.
[19] Poultry is raised mainly by farm families and villagers, although a modern sector consisting of government commercial operations and some semicommercial private ventures has developed.
[21] Another outbreak of Rift Valley fever caused some losses once again in 2007-8 and resulted in temporary import restrictions against Sudanese livestock.
[21] However, despite the immense potential, agriculture in Sudan faces several challenges, including poor infrastructure, inadequate access to credit and markets, recurrent conflicts, and climate change.
