Eastern Sudanese farmers abandon lands

Failing agricultural policies and the shortage of rain this year have led to “a steady deterioration in agricultural productivity in eastern Sudan”, according to an agricultural expert. Many farmers of the El Gezira and El Managil Agricultural Scheme fear imprisonment as they will not be able to pay their debts to the banks.

Sesame farmer in El Gedaref state and agricultural expert Mustafa Khalil said that the area witnessed “a steady deterioration in agricultural productivity” in the past years.

“The disastrous agricultural and economic policies in El Gedaref, in addition to the lack of rain this year, have led to the impoverishment of the farmers in eastern Sudan,” he said. “Many farmers are leaving for the towns to search for other work instead.”

El Gezira and El Managil

A concerned farmer reported to Radio Dabanga from Hasaheesa in El Gezira that “this agricultural season not only failed because of the late and uneven rainfall caused by El Niño this year, but also owing to the lack of pesticides, a significant increase in the costs of the agricultural production process, and disastrous policies”.

In September, the Sudanese government dissolved the Farmers’ Union and replaced it with work associations.

‘Catastrophic’

Early this year, the Farmers Union denounced amendments to the Scheme’s policy lines, calling them “catastrophic”. The farmers said that the new measures would lead to land grabbing and “transform the Scheme into feudal farms”.

In June, the farmers of El Gezira staged a large protest in Wad Madani, capital of El Gezira state. “We have become desperate about the government policy concerning the Agricultural Scheme, as the situation in El Gezira has deteriorated rapidly over the past decades,” a farmer told Radio Dabanga at the time.

“More than half of the homeless now wandering the streets of Khartoum are from El Gezira,” the source quoted from a report by the Ministry of Social Welfare.

The farmers refuse “the appointment of any staff at the Agricultural Scheme administration, who have contributed, directly or indirectly, to the mismanagement of the scheme and the disappearance of its competent cadres,” he added.

Cotton

The El Gezira Agricultural Scheme used to be one of the world’s largest irrigation projects. For nearly eighty years, it remained the sole source of hard currency for the country, through the cultivation of cotton. During the last few decades, however, the cotton production was reduced to less than 100,000 acres. About 12 cotton gins in El Gezira state had to close their doors.

The acreage of cotton crops diminished again in 2014, “to less than five percent of El Gezira Scheme,” a member of El Gezira Farmers Association told Radio Dabanga in August last year. The farmers decided to cut the cotton production, “because of the high input costs, and the failure of the authorities to set a price for the commodity”.

He said that the farmers of El Gezira and El Managil accused the Scheme’s management of negligence and a lack of responsibility. They demanded an urgent investigation into the spoiled sorghum seeds sold to the farmers early last year.”

According to Sudan’s President Al Bashir, the El Gezira Agricultural Scheme is non-feasible. “Since the end of the 1960s, the Scheme has become a burden on the country’s budget,” he said at a press conference in Khartoum on 30 November last year.