By El Tayeb Siddig, Nafisa Eltahir and Khalid Abdelaziz
OMDURMAN, Sudan, May 25 (Reuters) - Farmers across Sudan say the hike in global fuel and fertilizer costs resulting from the Iran conflict will force them to cut back on planting this summer, restricting food production in a country where war has caused acute hunger.
Eight farmers from different parts of Sudan, as well as experts working in the sector, told Reuters that fuel and fertilizer price increases would compound problems caused by a civil
war, hitting staple domestic crops such as sorghum and millet as well as exports like sesame.
Sudan is particularly vulnerable to the fallout from the Iran crisis as it relies on the Gulf for more than half of its fertilizer needs, according to U.N. data, while the war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has left it entirely dependent on fuel imports.
The country is also already 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, with some areas at risk of famine, according to a U.N.-backed monitor.
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.
The regional war has added "salt to the wound," said Sadig Elamin, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's senior food security analyst in Sudan, warning that overall production could fall by "not less than 40%."
A sustained shock risks worsening hunger "well beyond the current food crisis," the U.N.'s humanitarian office said this month.
WAR PRICES
After more than three years of war in Sudan, the army has control of central and eastern regions, while the RSF has solidified its control of Darfur in the 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 one farmer, Bashir Ismail.
Only 500 out of a total of 10,000 feddans (4,200 hectares) have been planted about halfway into the planting season, said Omar al-Ebeid, secretary for the scheme’s farmers' committee.
LACK OF SUPPORT
Meanwhile, farmers complain that the army-aligned government, with its budget diminished in favour of the war effort, hasn’t helped them.
“The RSF left in February of last year. Nothing has been fixed since then,” said Mohamed Balla, head of a farmers' collective in the Gezira scheme, which produced around half the country’s sorghum and wheat before the country’s war.
As fuel and fertilizer prices have shot up, prices for harvested crops have stayed stagnant.
National cereal production, which had already dropped by a quarter from the pre-war average, according to the FAO, could fall further.
“Two sacks of wheat buy you one sack of urea. So we won’t grow it again,” Balla said.
Sudan’s state-backed Agricultural Bank is supposed to help finance farmers but has been affected by the conflict like the rest of the financial sector. It has priced agricultural inputs too high and products too low, Balla and others say, driving farmers into debt.
The bank's head told Reuters it would work to "alleviate the burden" on Sudanese farmers by providing inputs on better terms over longer periods.
The Agriculture Ministry's director for agricultural production, Fatma Yousif, said the ministry had agreed with the bank to create a new fund to finance as much as possible.
The ministry was looking into how to support farmers on fuel costs and was working on rehabilitating irrigation canals, having fixed pumps in several locations, she told Reuters.
MACHINERY LOOTED
In Kordofan and Darfur, continued lawlessness is threatening the production of sesame, peanuts, gum arabic, and millet.
“There is no funding for farmers, no machinery for planting and ploughing the land, and no security because the RSF and other gangs loot the crops and demand money at every checkpoint,” said Mohamed Adam, a farmer displaced from West Kordofan state to army-controlled El Obeid in North Kordofan.
An RSF spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. The group has previously denied targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure.
Three farmers from the area told Reuters that tractors were looted in raids and farmhands recruited to fight, while entire communities had been displaced, meaning very little land has been prepared in rain-fed fields for the upcoming season.
Khalid Abdellatif, director at CTC Group, one of the country’s largest agricultural suppliers, said sending supplies into the regions was expensive and risky, and small-scale subsistence farmers in particular were struggling.
(Writing by Nafisa Eltahir; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
