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Agencies – Sudan Events<\/strong><\/p>\n The lush palm groves of Karima are a long way from Sudan’s battlefields, but the war’s effects are all too present, leaving farmers struggling to find buyers for this year’s harvest. Prices have collapsed in the vital date industry, the latest economic sector to become a casualty of war in the northeast African country. Land left fallow<\/strong> Agencies – Sudan Events The lush palm groves of Karima are a long way from Sudan’s battlefields, but the war’s effects are all too present, leaving farmers struggling to find buyers for this year’s harvest. Prices have collapsed in the vital date industry, the latest economic sector to become a casualty of war in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12401,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12400\/revisions\/12401"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nEvery autumn, until this September, date farmers in northern Sudan pulled their harvests down from palm trees, securing a living for months to come.
\nBut five months into the war between Sudan’s rival generals, the country’s economic infrastructure has been destroyed and “buyers are scared”, farmer Al Fatih al Badawi, 54, told the AFP news agency.
\nSudan is the world’s seventh-largest producer of dates, growing more than 460,000 tonnes per year, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.
\nHow much of that figure will be available this year remains to be seen, but farmers in northern Sudan are lucky they could manage a harvest at all.
\nIn Karima — a town on the Nile River about 340 kilometres (210 miles) north of the capital Khartoum — the groves bustle with young men climbing date palms, dropping bunches of the brown fruit, beloved by Sudanese, onto white sheets below.
\nFarmers who depend on the date industry face colossal challenges moving their products across the country, as do those in other agricultural sectors.
\nAlong with insecurity, wartime fuel shortages have severely hindered the ability to transport goods.
\nBefore the war, nearly all trade in highly centralised Sudan went through Khartoum.
\nBut constant air strikes, artillery blasts and street battles have left the capital largely off-limits to traders, who fear for their safety or are turned back by fighters at chec kpoints.
\n“Our main market was Khartoum”, Badawi said. Without it, trade is at a standstill and the price for his crop is in freefall.<\/p>\n
\nIn Sudan, one of the world’s most underdeveloped countries, dates and other agricultural products were a foundation of the pre-war economy.
\nThe agriculture sector employed more than 80 percent of the workforce and accounted for 35 to 40 percent of gross domestic product, according to the United Nations.
\nBut now, in much of the country, including southeastern Gedaref state, known as Sudan’s breadbasket, the land has been left fallow.
\nProcessing factories have been razed or looted.
\nSmallholder farmers have no access to financing, traders have no guarantees of viable markets and industry heavyweights have given up.
\nIn May, Haggar Group — one of the agriculture sector’s largest employers — suspended operations and laid off thousands of labourers.
\nEven before the war began, one in three people were in need of humanitarian aid and the country’s farmers — unable to meet domestic food security needs — struggled to break even.
\nThe date sector in Karima had been in urgent need of “guidance and agricultural policy”, as well as resources to reduce high rates of waste, said Al-Jarah Ahmed Ali, 45, another farmer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"