Sudan at war | Threatened agricultural season raises fears of famine

(Port Sudan) After a year of devastating war, hundreds of farmers have been driven from their lands in Sudan, jeopardizing harvests and raising fears of famine in the East African country where it is ” Urgent action now,” warn UN officials.

“Across Sudan, there are communities vulnerable to famine,” says Rein Paulsen, director of the Office of Emergencies and Resilience at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The situation is particularly alarming in Darfur (west) and Kordofan (south), he adds.

“In Darfur”, where a quarter of the Sudanese population lives, “there is 78% less food compared to last year”, warns Eddie Rowe, director of the World Food Program (WFP) in Sudan, a country of 48 millions of inhabitants.

At the beginning of the 2000s, the dictator Omar al-Bashir, ousted in 2019, launched militiamen, the Janjawids, to carry out a scorched earth policy in the vast region of Darfur.

Today, they are grouped within the Rapid Support Forces (FSR), led by General Mohammed Hamdane Daglo. These paramilitaries have been at war since April 15, 2023 against the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane.

Bombing of civilians, destruction of infrastructure, rape, looting, forced displacement and burning of villages have become daily life for the Sudanese.

” Race against time ”

At the beginning of March, the World Food Program (WFP) sounded the alarm about this war which “could create the largest hunger crisis in the world”.

Sudan is already experiencing the largest population displacement crisis in the world, with 8.7 million displaced people.

And for others, it is the battles that stand between them and their fields, like Hamed Ali, a farmer near Wad Madani, capital of al-Jazeera state. “We can’t leave our village, so how can we get to our farms? », he asks.

The agricultural sector, by far the leading provider of jobs in what was the granary of Africa, is nothing more than scorched land.

Some “60% of Sudanese depend on agriculture to survive”, but with the war, “many families have abandoned their farms”, explains Mr. Rowe.

In the fertile al-Jazeera region, the fighting has rendered around 250,000 hectares unusable, causing the 800,000 tonnes of wheat produced in the country to fall by 70% each year.

“We were displaced with no prospect of return,” laments Saleh Abdel Majid, a farmer in al-Jazeera.

Across the country, only 37% of agricultural land is still cultivated, according to the Fikra research center.

Mr. Paulsen fears a “race against time” because April marks the opening of the harvest, he says.

And “the nearly five million Sudanese who go to bed hungry at night” can barely be helped by humanitarians facing obstacles to their movement and a serious lack of funding, says Rowe.

Economy at a standstill

Next deadline: the month of May, during which “we have to be able to give farmers what they need” to sow in June, says Mr. Paulsen.

Vital aid in a country where import-export is almost at a standstill, because the roads leading to the only major national port, Port Sudan, are cut.

“Most of the companies that distribute fertilizers and pesticides are closed,” notes Mohammed Souleimane, a corn farmer in Gedaref (east).

At the same time, the banking system collapsed, depriving farmers of the possibility of using the money transfers and bank loans necessary for their activity.

The war between the army and the feared RSF has already left thousands dead and could last for years, according to experts.

Meeting in Paris in April, the international community announced more than two billion euros in aid pledges for Sudan, half of what the UN demanded.

The conflict has also plunged 18 million Sudanese into acute food insecurity, five million of whom have reached the final threshold before famine.

For Mohammed Abdel Baqi, a farmer in the state of al-Jazeera, without an agricultural season, “if the war does not stop, we will not cultivate our land”.