‘Huge food gaps in South and North Darfur’: officials

Government officials of both South Darfur and North Darfur States are warning for food gaps. According to a report by the South Darfur State’s Ministry of Agriculture, tabled at the state’s Legislative Council, South Darfur needs an estimated at 228,000 tons of grain to compensate for the gap. The parliament demanded from the South Darfur State government to expedite the bridging of the food gap, “that will affect the citizens in the next few days if not avoided”, Sudan News Agency (Suna) announced on Monday.Mohamed El Amin, the chairman of the parliamentarian Committee of Agricultural and Engineering Affairs, described the size of the food gap as “huge and disturbing”. 142,000 tons The North Darfur State Minister of Agriculture in, Eisa Mohamed Abdallah, estimated the food gap in his state at more than 142,000 tons, “due to the failure of the agricultural season last year, and the recent security incidents that took place in some of the eastern and western parts of the state, and the rural area of El Fasher”. “These factors have a direct impact on the people’s stocks of food and seeds.” The Minister told Suna that the North Darfur Ministry of Finance, in cooperation with the World Food Programme, has already started bringing “strategic stocks and relief items” into the state. He emphasised the need of “proceeding as fast as possible” to reach the affected farmers and support them in the upcoming agricultural season, in order to reduce the effects of the food gap. File photo: A farmer in Foro Baranga locality, West Darfur (Albert González Farran/Unamid) Related:’Intervene in food gap, price hikes’: North Darfur Parliament (27 February 2014) Food supply gap in North Darfur: agricultural survey (31 January 2014)North Darfur Governor warns about food shortage (7 November 2013)