How Did Sudan Lose Its Agricultural Map?

Mohannad Awad Mahmoud
When a country experiences a decline in a particular crop, the reasons may include a poor season, turbulence in global prices, or a temporary financing crisis. But when a country the size of Sudan begins to lose the very contours of its agricultural map, the problem is no longer seasonal — it has become strategic.
The question that must now be asked is not: How much do we produce?
The more dangerous question is: Does Sudan still cultivate according to a national plan, or has agriculture become a matter of improvisation and chance?
Sudan is not a country lacking fertile land. On the contrary, it is among the richest agricultural nations in the region, with an estimated 200 million feddans suitable for cultivation, of which less than 25% is actually utilised. Historically, Sudan possessed a recognisable agricultural map: Gazira for irrigated farming; Gadaref for sesame and sorghum; Kordofan and Darfur for groundnuts, gum arabic, and livestock; the Northern State for wheat, dates, and vegetables; and Sennar and White Nile forming part of an integrated productive system.
Today, however, that picture has become blurred.
Who now determines Sudan’s agricultural map? Is it the state, guided by strategic planning? Or is it the market, speculators, war, and the lure of quick profits?
Take Gadaref as an example.
This state is not merely an agricultural area; it is one of the pillars of Sudan’s food security and agricultural exports. Yet parts of it are now shifting towards crops such as watermelon seeds — not because there is a strategic national decision declaring this the optimal use of the land, but simply because market signals suggest that the crop is profitable and offers quick returns.
But is that alone sufficient to redefine land use?
And is what benefits the farmer this season necessarily what benefits Sudan’s economy as a whole?
Watermelon seeds may be profitable for an individual farmer, but do they generate the highest strategic return for the state? Do they contribute to food security? Do they strengthen foreign currency earnings? Or are we redrawing Sudan’s agricultural map according to speculative signals rather than strategic thinking?
In countries that think strategically, such matters are not left to chance.
Take Egypt as an example. Despite operating a market economy, the Egyptian state intervenes in determining cropping patterns, particularly in water-intensive agriculture, because water there is treated as a matter of national security. The state links what is cultivated to resource consumption and to broader economic and food-security priorities.
Likewise, Brazil’s agricultural transformation did not occur because farmers acted individually without direction, but because the state connected financing, scientific research, infrastructure, and export policy within a coherent economic project.
Sudan, by contrast, appears to be cultivating without a compass.
One of the clearest examples of this absence of planning is the management of sesame production.
Sudan produces one of the finest sesame varieties in the world, yet it has lost a significant part of its competitive advantage because global markets no longer purchase sesame merely as a raw crop. Today, it is treated as a sensitive food product subject to strict standards concerning food safety, hygiene, traceability, and pesticide residue controls.
And here a fundamental flaw emerges.
The decision to cultivate sesame, sorghum, or other crops is often left entirely to the farmer, without a clear crop-rotation system, organised agricultural records, or rigorous technical guidance.
This is not a minor technical detail.
The lack of traceability, weak agricultural extension services, and poor documentation of agricultural inputs can lead to issues with pesticide residues, exposing Sudanese produce to rejection in highly regulated international markets.
As for salmonella — now one of the principal reasons behind stricter global controls on sesame imports — it is not merely a farming problem. It is a problem affecting the entire production chain: harvesting, drying, storage, hygiene, and handling.
In simpler terms, the problem does not lie in the quality of Sudanese soil, but in the lack of a system to protect the quality of the final product.
Then there is another strategic opportunity lost.
How much Sudanese sesame is produced today under certified organic standards targeting premium global markets?
Virtually none.
Meanwhile, countries such as Uganda — which lacks Sudan’s historical legacy in sesame production — have succeeded in building certified organic sesame value chains aimed at higher-value export markets, because the world no longer buys merely raw commodities. It buys products that are clean, traceable, certified, and sustainable.
The difference is not the land.
The difference is management.
Then came the war, further complicating the picture. But it would be a mistake to blame everything on the war, because the conflict merely exposed an older crisis: the absence of agricultural planning itself.
Large areas of Darfur and Kordofan — once the heartland of groundnut production, gum arabic, and livestock — have become wholly or partially detached from the normal economic cycle. Some areas still produce but cannot move goods efficiently; others can move goods only at prohibitive costs; while in some places, economic decisions are no longer made by the state at all.
Yet even if the war were to end tomorrow, the same question would remain:
Does the state possess a clear vision determining what should be cultivated, where, why, for which market, and for what return? Or are we still cultivating reactively?
Then comes the oldest and most persistent challenge: financing.
How can agriculture function without real financing?
Agriculture requires liquidity, inputs, machinery, seeds, fuel, storage, and marketing systems. Without financing, farmers will not consider what the national economy needs; they will simply cultivate whatever they can finance or sell quickly.
And here lies the heart of the crisis.
The issue is not merely whether agriculture should be financed, but which agriculture should be financed.
Should financing be directed towards wheat, sesame, sorghum, groundnuts, high-return export crops, low-resource crops, or food-security staples?
These are not merely technical questions.
They are questions of statecraft.
Does Sudan possess an updated production map? Do we truly know what is being cultivated, where, for which market, and at what economic return? Or are we still managing agriculture through instinct and improvisation?
Major agricultural nations do not leave such matters to chance because agriculture is not simply an economic activity; it is food security, foreign currency earnings, employment, and social stability.
Yet Sudan appears to have left the market, the war, and circumstance to determine what should have been determined by the state itself.
Nations are measured not only by the land they possess, but by the vision they possess.
And the question confronting Sudan today is not merely how much it cultivates — but whether it still cultivates with the mindset of a state.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=14044