Agriculture in Sudan plays an important role in that country's economy. Agriculture and livestock raising are the main sources of livelihood for most of the Sudanese population.. It was estimated that, as of 2011, 80 percent of the labor force were employed in that sector, including 84 percent of the women and 64 percent of the men.
Agricultural products regularly accounted for about 80 to 95 percent of exports until the oil industry came on line. Total sector activities contributed an estimated 35.5 percent of GDP in 2006, a decline from the years prior to the development of the oil industry. Crop cultivation was divided between a market-oriented sector comprising mechanized, large-scale irrigated and rain-fed farming (mainly in central Sudan) and small-scale farming following traditional practices carried out in parts of the country where rainfall or other water sources were sufficient for cultivation.
Large investments occurred over time in mechanized, irrigated, and rain-fed agriculture, which together accounted for roughly two-thirds of Sudan’s cultivated land. The early emphasis on growing cotton on irrigated land decreased. Peanuts, wheat, and sugarcane are major crops, and considerable quantities of sesame also are grown.. Rain-fed mechanized fanning continues to produce mostly sorghum, but the cultivation of sesame has increased, and short-fiber cotton is also grown.. Production in both subsectors increased domestic supplies and export potential. This gain appeared, however, to have been achieved mainly by expanding the cultivated area rather than by increasing productivity.
Most subsistence cultivators produced sorghum as their staple crop, although in the northerly rain-fed cultivated areas millet was the principal staple. Subsistence farmers also grew peanuts and sesame. Following food shortages in 2001, there was an attempt to increase land area for the production of food. The increase in food production, however, was at the expense of the production of export crops, although export crops increased in 2004 and the export of sesame and cotton continued to increase through 2008.
History
Around 4000 B.C. there was harvesting of wild grains, fishing, hunting, and the domestication of sheep, goats and dogs. The harvesting of wild grains was well established in Nubia, especially during wet seasons. From about 3000 B.C. migrants brought the technique of simple tilling and cultivation to the area of modern Kordofan. Cultivation also spread to the Ethiopians highlands, which spurred the Nilotes to come down to more hospitable plains of the present Sudan region. By 2000 B.C. pastoralism had arrived with the long-horned cattle and products such as milk and butter were added to diets. During the Meroitic Empire, while lasted from 750 B.C. to 350 A.D., agriculture was not longer limited to the Nile valley and expanded to areas such as the Butana plain which offered fertile clay. On the plain dura, sorghum and vulgare was grown for the first time and advancements enabled the construction of canals and sophisticated irrigation networks. Cotton was introduced in 400 B.C. and a textiles industry flourished for several centuries. Around the time of the Egyptian invasion in 1820, agriculture transformation had occurred with respect to irrigation, improved utilization of the rain lands, and new exotic crop species. Egyptian markets were also responsible for increased agricultural output. During the Mahdiya War (1881-1899) much of agriculture was abandoned as people fled. Soon after in the early 1900s cotton rapidly expanded due to high demand from the British. In 1937, the completion of the Jebel Aulia Dam, 50 Km South of Khartoum, transformed agricultural production.
The Gezira Scheme, which originated as a pilot cotton-growing project in 1911 during the Anglo-Egyptian period, expanded into one of the world’s largest irrigation projects. The completion of the Sennar Dam in 1925 enabled a major expansion of irrigated cotton cultivation and played a significant role in the modernization of Sudanese agriculture during the twentieth century.
Land use
Before the secession of South Sudan, the Ministry of Agriculture estimated that Sudan had 84 million hectares of potentially arable land. The area under permanent crops was estimated at more than 19 million hectares in 2010, about 23 percent of potential arable land.
Substantial variations existed in land classified as actually used or potentially usable for livestock grazing. The Ministry of Agriculture and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) classified about 24 million hectares as pastureland. In 1975, however, a United Nations interagency mission to Sudan had estimated the total potential grazing land at between 120 million and 150 million hectares. Total forest area declined from 71.2 million hectares in 1990 to 61.6 million hectares in 2000. The use of some woodland areas for grazing, the dearth of rainfall during the 1980s, and the ecological damage from mechanized farming caused steady deforestation.
In 2011 Sudan still had a substantial amount of land suitable for future cropping. The 1975 UN mission believed that two-thirds of the potential area for livestock grazing, however, was already in use, and that proportion had probably increased over time with the rising numbers of livestock. In addition to land suitable for cultivation and livestock grazing, Sudan also had about 76 million to 86 million hectares of desert. An area of about 2.9 million hectares was covered by swamps and inland water, and additional land was occupied by urban settlements and other man-made features.
Land tenure
The right to own property, to bequeath it to heirs, and to inherit it was established by the 1973 constitution (then known as the Permanent Constitution), although that right was suspended in 1985.. Sudan has long had a system of land registration through which an individual, an enterprise, or the government can establish title to a piece of land. Such registration was extensive in Northern Sudan, especially in the then-states of Al-Khartoum, Al-Awsat, and Ash Shamali. Before 1970 all other land (unregistered) belonged to the state, which held ownership in trust for the people, who had customary rights to it.
The Unregistered Land Act of 1970 declared that all waste, forest, and unregistered lands were government land. Private land was limited to that registered before 1970 under a 1929 land ordinance and was limited to agricultural land along the Nile and a few areas along other water courses. Such land amounted to only about 1 percent of all land. Individuals could, however, lease land from the government and gain usufruct rights.
The government owned most of the land used by the modern agricultural sector and leased it to tenants (for example, in the Gezira Scheme) or to private entrepreneurs, such as most operators of large-scale mechanized rain-fed farming.. The lease rights were for specified periods of time; for example, leases rights for the large mechanized farms were typically for 25 years..
There were also many variants of land tenure. The communal land used for pasture and for subsistence cultivation was owned by the government but under the control of the community or local leader, who allocated it to households of the village or ethnic group for their exclusive cultivation. The rights to such land might be passed on to heirs, but ordinarily the land could not be sold or otherwise disposed of, nor used as collateral. The right was also retained to land left fallow, although in Bahr al-Ghazal, Upper Nile, and Equatoria there were communities where another individual could claim such land by clearing it.
Among the transhumant communities of the North, the rights to cultivated land were much the same, but the dominant position of livestock in community activities introduced certain other communal rights that included common rights to grazing land, the right-of-way to water and grazing land, the right to grass on agricultural land unless the occupier cut and stacked it, and the right to crop residues unless similarly treated. In the western savannas, private ownership of stands of hashab (gum arabic) trees could be registered, an exception to the usual government ownership of the forests, but dead wood for domestic fuel and the underlying grass were common property. Water, a matter of greatest importance to stock raisers, was open to all if free standing, but wells and the associated drinking troughs were private property and retained by the digger season after season. In Northern Sudan, especially in the western region where increasing population and animal numbers placed pressure on the land, violations of customary laws and conflicts between ethnic groups over rights to pasturage and water increased during the 1990s and early 2000s. These were major factors behind the warfare that began in Western Sudan in early 2003.
Crops
Sesame seed became Sudan’s prime agricultural export commodity in the mid-1990s, and it was also used domestically to produce oil for cooking.. The yield varied in recent years, with a production of 416,000 tonnes in 1996. It was 350,000 tonnes in 2008 and about 248,000 tonnes in 2010 because of a decline in productivity. As of 2018, Sudan produced 981,000 tons of sesame seed, making it the world's largest producer.Sudan production in 2018, by FAO Sesame exports earned US$141 million in 1996, some 23 percent of export revenues. They decreased to US$93 million in 2007, constituting 1.2 percent of export earnings, but increased to US$167.3 million in 2010.
Gum arabic is the most important forest product of Sudan, which accounts for 80 percent of the world’s supply. It is collected from acacia trees in Darfur and Kordofan and used widely in industry for products ranging from mucilage (for postage stamps), to foam stabilizers, to excipient in medicines and dietetic foods. The Gum Arabic industry markets the product, with restraints placed on the right of any private company to independently export unprocessed gum arabic in 2009. The justification given for regulating its sale is that its quality would deteriorate and export quantities and prices would decline if sales were deregulated. Moreover, even though gum arabic requires minimal processing and packaging, the prices received by producers in 2000-2001 were only 21 percent of world market prices. Export markets for it are price sensitive, as there are synthetic substitutes and competition from Chad, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, and Nigeria. Production in 1994-95 was 84,000 tonnes. It declined to 16,000 tonnes by 2000 but surpassed 30,000 tonnes in 2010. Export earnings were US$40 million in 2003 and about US$24 million in 2010.
Peanuts are one of Sudan’s major cash crops. Peanuts grow on rain-fed land in the far west and also under irrigation. They are both a domestic source of food and oil and a major export. Production had been decreasing as a result of low producer prices, low world market prices, disease, and drought, but conditions turned around in the early 2000s. Production was 1.2 million tonnes in 2003, although revenues remained low. Production dropped around 2008-2010, but Sudan produced 2.8 million tons of peanuts as of 2018, making Sudan the fourth largest producer in the world. Exports provided US$741,000 in 2007 and US$200,000 in 2010.