Farmers are currently suffering from great difficulties in irrigation and financing, which has caused huge losses that have resulted in serious social, economic and legal problems that threaten food security in Sudan..
And the past twenty years have seen; systematic destruction, corruption and neglect of all project structures; Including the irrigation network, which has lost 85 percent of its designed capacity; In addition to roads, civil and engineering facilities.
Experts and farmers warned of catastrophic repercussions as a result of the collapse of the project, which until the end of the eighties of the last century was considered one of the main pillars of the Sudanese economy and food security. It is the main source of income for more than 140,000 farmers who support families estimated at 3 million.
The reasons behind the collapse
- Experts and farmers believe that the current destruction of the project is inseparable from the consequences of the massive corruption that the country has witnessed during the past three decades. Its size is estimated at more than $700 billion; Which affected many agricultural projects and public sector institutions, whose conditions deteriorated dramatically following the inclusion of Sudan in the list of countries sponsoring terrorism in the second half of the nineties of the last century due to the former regime’s involvement in a number of terrorist activities and its hosting of a number of extremists and extremists. Abdullah Akoud, a university professor and researcher in the Gezira project crisis, estimates the extent of corruption and damage to the project during the period from 1990 to the end of 2018 at more than $100 billion..
- Irrigation and reservoirs expert Abu Bakr Mustafa expresses his fear of the difficulty of controlling the current collapse of the project, which is considered one of the few agricultural projects in Sudan that have enjoyed a strong infrastructure for a long time. However, that structure was shattered and greatly exhausted after the Brotherhood came to power in 1989. Mustafa told Sky News Arabia that the previous regime systematically destroyed the Jazira agricultural project after assigning the tasks that the Irrigation and Excavations Authority had been carrying out since the establishment of the project in 1925 to subsidiaries. to elements loyal to the regime who do not have sufficient experience; Noting the displacement of most technical competencies. Mustafa points out that one of the major problems that the project faced was the large number of villages and large residential communities that were established within the project lands, which could hinder any efforts to rehabilitate irrigation networks..
- Farouk Al-Badawi, a member of the secretariat of the Al-Jazeera and Al-Manaqil Project Farmers Alliance, agrees with what Mustafa said. He believes that the previous regime worked systematically to destroy the structures of the project. He sold and dismantled well-established and major institutions such as the Department of Agricultural Engineering and the Irrigation and Excavation Authority, which had the technical and logistical capabilities necessary to maintain and maintain irrigation channels based on engineering and technical standards and experiences accumulated over the years..
- from his side; Othman Hassan, a member of the Presidential Council of the dissolved Steering Committee of the Gezira Farmers Union, holds the policies responsible for the current deterioration in the Gezira project; He told Sky News Arabia that the obvious shortcomings in financing and marketing policies greatly affect production. Hassan explained that more than 50 percent of farmers either refrained from cultivating wheat or reduced the areas during the current season, due to the state’s failure to fulfill its responsibilities towards farmers, leaving them prey to financing companies that triple the prices of fertilizers and agricultural inputs. While the price of a bag of fertilizer is 22 pounds (4 dollars), companies sell it to farms for more than 60 pounds (about 11 dollars). He pointed out that the Ministry of Finance’s refusal to apply the incentive price for buying wheat from farms; It led to huge losses and caused many farmers to go to prison because of their inability to pay their debts and financial obligations.
Hassan warns of the current attempts to form illegal committees for farmers and to return to the law regulating relations with the Gezira project, which was enacted in 2005, which he described as one of the main reasons that led to the destruction of the project. He stressed the need to lay rational foundations to save and rehabilitate the project, given that this constitutes a national battle to cross the country, restore balance to the national economy, and achieve food security through the advancement of production and the removal of distortions that afflicted the project during the past years.
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