Sudan Events – Rehab Abdullah
The Sudan Platform for Agriculture and Food Security launched an urgent appeal to protect institutions, agricultural research facilities and centres, irrigation facilities, main stations, the Gezira Scheme, stakeholders and livestock, and to avoid the risk of food insecurity in Sudan.
The platform warned, in a statement (Thursday), against the sudden expansion of the war into the state of Gezira, which constitutes a direct threat to citizens, agricultural facilities, livestock, and the irrigation system, including the Sinnar reservoir, the main irrigation stations, and the Gezira Research Station, which is the largest station of the Agricultural Research Authority and contains the gene bank that contains most of the resources of plant genetic information available in Sudan, as well as the Authority’s central library, which contains Sudan’s research heritage in the field of agriculture.
The platform said that the impacts of the war, its extensions, and the displacement movement have a direct impact on the rest of the national irrigated projects (Al-Rahad, Al-Suki, New Halfa, Al-Junaid Sugar, and Sinnar Sugar), which doubles their impacts on agriculture and food security throughout Sudan.
The platform revealed the spread of looting and theft incidents on a large scale, affecting the project’s facilities, vehicles, heavy machinery, tractors, means of movement and communication, and production inputs, and the systematic impoverishment of the people of the Gezira by robbing them of their property, plundering their savings, intimidating them, and threatening their security, which severely impacts the food production chain and the provision of essential necessities for citizens in the state of Gezira and the country as a whole. Therefore, the cessation of agricultural production, regardless of the duration of this cessation, will inevitably lead to food crises, a sharp rise in the prices of food commodities, and their complete absence.
