Eight farmers from different parts of Sudan told reporters that fuel and fertilizer price increases would aggravate problems caused by Sudan’s civil war, making it harder to grow both domestic staples like sorghum and millet, and exports like sesame.
A news report notes that Sudan is “at the forefront of a looming global food crisis at a time of shrinking aid budgets. About 19.5 million people, more than 40% of the population, are facing crisis levels of hunger,” and some areas in the south and west are already plagued by famines that have killed tens of thousands of people.
“Sudan’s agricultural potential has drawn interest from Gulf investors but the sector has been hampered by decades of mismanagement and war. About two-thirds of the population depend on farming for their livelihoods.” Many are subsistence farmers.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says harvests in Sudan will likely shrink by “not less than 40%.”
“After more than three years of war in Sudan, the army has control of central and eastern regions, while the militia that is fighting Sudan’s army, the RSF, “has solidified its control” of Sudan’s west. “The two sides are fighting over the vast Kordofan region that lies between, crucial to agriculture. For farmers in southern Omdurman’s Jamuia scheme, this planting season should have been promising, after the RSF, blamed for damaging irrigation ditches and water pumps, was driven from the area adjoining the capital Khartoum a year ago. Now, however, farmers face fertilizer prices up 67% year-on-year and prices for fuel – including diesel used in irrigation pumps – have more than doubled, according to national surveys.”
“At that price we don’t make a profit, you spend your whole profit on the diesel,” said farmer Bashir Ismail.
Only 525 out of 10,500 acres have been plated midway through the planting season, said farm manager Omar al-Ebeid.
The Iran war is also cutting food production in Asia. In April, Bloomberg News noted that
Across Southeast Asia, tens of millions of smallholders are struggling to find affordable crop nutrients as well as the diesel needed to run tractors, irrigation pumps and rice planters. In Thailand, some farmers are leaving the crop in the ground as it’s too expensive to harvest.
The scarcity of supplies underscores how the six-week war in Iran has upended global trade and raised concerns around food shortages. As well as driving oil prices higher, the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz – which remains largely blocked despite a temporary ceasefire – has choked a vital route for fertilizer and fuel deliveries, with Asia particularly affected.
“There’s a lot of panicked farmers,” said Patrick Davenport, director and co-founder of BRM Agro, an integrated rice farmer and miller in Cambodia, where roughly three-quarters of the population lives in rural areas. “Most are involved in agriculture – and they’re all hurting,” he said.
Rice is a staple for more than half of the world’s population, as well as a livelihood for rural communities across a region where agriculture still accounts for a large share of economic activity. Farmers [are] struggling with input costs that have doubled or even tripled.
Sudan’s civil war has already killed at least 400,000 people, and led to genocide in the country’s western Darfur region.
Sudan is in the midst of a civil war between Sudan’s armed forces, and a militia called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Both sides have killed thousands of civilians using drones. The Rapid Support Forces also have committed genocide against the Masalit people of western Sudan. And they slaughtered tens of thousands of the Zaghawa people, including thousands of children, after seizing the major city of El Fasher. The RSF also has kidnapped thousands of people and held them for ransom, torturing many of them. The RSF has killed at least 250,000 people from non-Arab ethnic groups in Sudan’s western Darfur region.
