Agricultural Productivity and Poverty in Rural Sudan

While agriculture remains the mainstay for a large share of the population in Sudan, and rural poverty has seen a dramatic decrease (between 2009 and 2014/15), poverty remains relatively high among those engaged in agriculture. Households engaged in agriculture—either crop farming or raising livestock—see among the highest rates of poverty among households classified by their main livelihoods in Sudan. As these households form a major bulk of the total population, understanding why these households remain poor and identifying strategies for lifting them out of poverty is a key concern for researchers and policy makers. This concern occupies the primary motivation for this study. Using data from the 2009 National Baseline Household Survey (NBHS) and 2014/15 National Household Budget and Poverty Survey (NHBPS), this study sheds light on the rural landscape in Sudan. Though rural Sudan has fared much better than urban Sudan between survey rounds, the number of poor remains higher in rural than in urban areas. Sudan severely lags other African countries in terms of agricultural productivity. Sorghum, Sudan’s most commonly produced crop—grown by close to half the agrarian households—has seen yields increase from below 500 kg per ha in 1995 to almost 700 kg per ha in 2017. A major constraint to improving crop productivity in Sudan is the low use of productivity-enhancing inputs, particularly fertilizers and pesticides and low-yield seed varieties. Increasing input use can be achieved by investing in rural markets. Market participation of agrarian households in Sudan is low, constraining farmers’ ability to raise their income levels and escape poverty. Improving rural transportation and telecommunications networks, providing access to rural credit and financial services, and increasing the ease of doing business for input providers and output marketers can increase the geographic penetration of agrarian input and output markets. Though sorghum and millet remain the dominant crops grown in Sudan, the recent increase in the number of households growing sesame is a welcome development. Deteriorations in the irrigation infrastructure need to be reversed to ensure Sudan remains competitive in the export of commercial crops. Access to cell phones has significantly increased channels of communication for the rural poor.