Farmers in rainfed agricultural schemes across Sennar State, particularly in Ad-Ad-Dinder —home to vast tracts of fertile farmland—are enduring dire conditions due to an almost total absence of essential production inputs: fuel for tilling the land, seeds for planting, fertilizers, and pesticides.
Without these critical resources, the farming season, on which they pin immense hopes, risks turning into yet another calamity, compounding their hardship. Many awoke to find their homes stripped of years’ worth of savings and their once-brimming granaries emptied, abandoned even by the mice that once fed on spilled grain.
Today, they face barren fields that had briefly turned green with the rains. One farmer described it as a “false green”—grass smothering the land, raising the cost of clearing it for cultivation, instead of seedlings promising a harvest. Others describe their plight as “hexagonal, yet cut down to four,” a local proverb evoking problems that spawn even more problems, with none resolved.
Their last chances to escape hunger, poverty, and grinding hardship are slipping away. The scars of recent years weigh heavily: in July 2024, Rapid Support Forces stormed the region, looting harvests and even farm equipment. The following year, many did not plant at all, displaced, impoverished, or too fearful of sowing crops that armed men might once again seize without cause.
Rain in name, drought in truth
We have just emerged from wasted seasons, war, displacement, and the complete plunder of our property, machinery, savings, and even our seeds.
- Saeed Idris Abdullah, Dinder
A farmer in the Dali and Mazmoum agricultural scheme in Sennar State painted a bleak picture of this year’s summer season, telling Atar:
“We are supposedly in the peak of the rainy season, yet the land remains parched. The cracks in the soil remain unhealed due to scarce rainfall,” he noted, adding that they were now in the final days of the ‘Natara rains,’ yet showers remained meager. They had not even seen the usual surge of ‘natara’ insects, as the lack of rain kept eggs dormant in the crevices.
“We once feared the ‘natara’ rains for breeding pests and infestations. But now we pray for them—to break the cracks, moisten the soil, and allow us to work—if planting is even possible this year,” described agricultural worker Othman Abdeen Mohamedein from Ad-Dinder , summarizing the farmers’ predicament.
Back in June, Sennar’s rainfed agriculture authority had predicted above-average rainfall for the season, particularly in August and September 2025, following a coordination meeting with the state’s meteorological office. Yet an agricultural expert told Atar that “the soil’s water capacity depth is now barely 20 centimeters, while seeds are usually sown deeper. This poses a grave threat to sprouting crops, which require over 40 millimeters of rainfall for their roots to anchor deeply and reach nutrients. Dual-leaf crops in particular may not withstand prolonged dry spells.”
At the end of May, sector director Mousa Ahmed Idris announced that 4.5 million acres were targeted for cultivation in Sennar’s rainfed schemes this summer. But Atar’s field observations reveal that, unlike in previous years, only a small number of farmers are preparing their land using the disk harrow. Initial plowing with heavier tools, such as the kholkhal, is now largely abandoned due to lack of financing, rising preparation costs, and inadequate diesel allocations.
At fuel stations across Sennar state, a familiar scene has taken hold: long lines of tractors and trucks stacked with empty barrels, waiting for a diesel supply that has become nearly impossible for farmers to secure. Banks have pulled back from financing, while the farmers’ financial struggles speak for themselves. Even those who managed to obtain loans found fuel scarce, if not entirely absent in some areas.
“Our problems are compounding by the day, and with every sunrise the crisis deepens,” one farmer told Atar.
Saeed Idris Abdullah, a farmer from Ad-Dinder schemes, echoed the sentiment.
“We have just emerged from wasted seasons, war, displacement, and the complete plunder of our property, machinery, savings, and even our seeds. When we turned to the banks, we found little financing, far below what is needed. Many institutions refused us altogether. We were promised improved seeds, but they have yet to arrive, and the season is already slipping into the bone.”
He stressed that during the war, farmers lost the diverse seed varieties they had carefully saved year after year to plant their lands.
According to the state news agency SUNA, Sennar’s governor, along with the heads of the Sudan Central Bank branch in Sennar, the Agricultural Bank for the Sennar–Blue Nile sector, and other commercial banks, agreed to secure funding for the 2025 summer season. The decision came during a joint meeting held in Sennar on May 29, where participants discussed financing options: the Savings Bank would cover agricultural machinery, while the Agricultural Bank would provide capital financing, with the rest of the banks funding production inputs such as seeds and fertilizers.
The Savings and Social Development Bank, one of the leading institutions supporting farmers, later announced that it had launched a programme to finance 200 tractors through three of its branches in Sennar state.
Erosion of agricultural financing mechanisms
One of this season’s ironies, a farmer told Atar, is the striking absence of the predatory financing schemes that once flourished in rainfed farming areas. These arrangements, promoted by brokers and middlemen for what he called “greedy parasitic capital,” were locally known as katafli, gal, habl, and kasr.
Also gone is Sudan’s most famous and deeply entrenched model, the sheil, which once allowed traders to advance farmers’ money or goods on credit. But war stripped even the traders themselves of the capacity to lend, erasing this tradition.
In the past, powerful traders and large-scale farmers with substantial capital financed cultivation by offering cash or in-kind support, reaping profits that often doubled, or even tripled, upon repayment. But one veteran farmer explained to Atar that looting of cash, equipment, and reserves also crippled big traders, leaving them unable to provide financing.
“We have nothing left to offer. Yes, it was a lucrative trade and a safe investment, but we too have been reduced to poverty,” he said.
Another farmer shared how, after exhaustive searches, he found a merchant in the Sinja market willing to buy part of his diesel allocation—originally provided by a bank—for 500,000 pounds per barrel, even though the market price was 800,000. He used the proceeds to settle old bank debts and prepare a fraction of his land with the remaining fuel.
In the past, I cultivated 4,000 acres of sorghum, sesame, cotton, and hibiscus. This year, I will settle for 500 acres, hoping conditions improve.
- Rainfed farmer, Ad-Dinder
This practice, known as kasr, forces farmers to sell portions of their bank allocations at half the market price just to stay afloat. Despite the inequity, he considered himself lucky to have found anyone willing to buy.
“In the past, I cultivated 4,000 acres of sorghum, sesame, cotton, and hibiscus. This year I will settle for 500 acres, hoping conditions improve in the years ahead,” he said.
An agricultural expert, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Atar that the Sudanese Agricultural Bank was founded in the 1950s to provide farmers with credit and free them from the grip of sheil traders, under whose debt many had long suffered. Yet today’s financing model, he said, undermines that mission. By fragmenting loans, delaying disbursement, and tying credit to repayment of old debts—without accounting for the devastation of war, displacement, looting, and loss of preserved seeds—banks are effectively pushing farmers back into the hands of sheil merchants. He described the current policy as a complete betrayal of the founding philosophy of the Agricultural Bank and of other institutions that later entered agricultural financing.
In late July, farmer Rahmatallah al-Amin Suleiman told Atar that delays in releasing funds threaten to derail the entire summer farming season in the rainfed sector. Unlike previous years, when financing typically began in June, no loans had been extended by that point.
We are at the edge of August, yet we have not received our full allocations of diesel to prepare the land.
- Farmer Rahmatallah al-Amin Suleiman
“We are at the edge of August yet we have not received our full allocations of diesel to prepare the land,” he said, adding that the limited fuel supplied to farmers was far from sufficient for essential operations.
“The price of a diesel barrel has soared to 800,000 pounds, up from 400,000 just two seasons ago. As prices have doubled, so has the struggle of farmers trying to secure it in time for the season.”
Suleiman criticizes banks for conditioning new loans on the repayment of old debts, asking:
“Have these banks forgotten that the crops harvested in 2023 were looted? To make matters worse, farmers were unable to cultivate in the 2024 season because of the war and the mass displacement it caused.”
He urged banks to restructure or forgive past debts, stressing that their failure to extend financing has forced farmers to turn to wealthy middlemen, locally known as jokiyya, and accept exploitative contracts that risk leaving them destitute or even in jail.
Mohammed Ali Mohammed Issa, a rainfed farmer in Ad-Dinder and former bank employee, echoed those concerns. He told Atar that delayed financing has severely undermined the current season, noting that several banks previously engaged in agricultural lending, including the Bank of Khartoum, have yet to reopen their branches in Sennar State.
“The absence and delay of financing have driven many farmers to abandon cultivation altogether,” he said. Issa estimated that only 20 per cent of farmland in Ad-Dinder ’s east and west schemes has been planted this year compared with previous seasons.
“The remaining land lies fallow, overrun by weeds, raising the cost of rehabilitation and preparation. In the past, all farmland would have been planted by early August,” he added.
Scarce seeds and manual labour
Speaking to Atar, agricultural experts warned of the risks farmers face when resorting to monocropping under financial duress, abandoning or reducing the cultivation of other crops. Many farmers have focused on sorghum due to its lower costs, a trend that threatens production diversity and could create future shortages in other crops left out this season.
Farmers in the rainfed sector expressed concern over weak seed germination already evident in some schemes across the state. One farmer noted that the seeds were genetically hybrid varieties produced two years ago, some of which were only viable for a single season. Atar confirmed that even these flawed seeds have yet to be distributed in sufficient quantities despite repeated government promises.
Farmer Issa noted a troubling development: the return of manual labour in place of machinery, which he described as a regression.
Since the late 1940s, rain-fed farming had become almost entirely mechanized. Now, with machinery lost and diesel scarce, farmers are forced to forgo critical mechanized operations such as al-khal-khal, a plough that penetrates 40 to 50 centimetres deep to level the soil and break clods. Instead, they rely on hand labour to remove weeds, a practice Issa said is ineffective and fraught with challenges.
“A farmer with 4,000 to 5,000 feddans needs a large workforce to clear weeds, and must feed them while they work. With food prices soaring and farmers short on cash, many remain unable to cultivate their land,” he said.
When rain becomes both hope and hazard
If the crisis persists, the region faces the imminent threat of famine.
- Agricultural expert Ibrahim Mohammed Hassan Abdullah
As much as farmers in Ad-Dinder ’s schemes east and west of the river await the seasonal rains, they also fear heavy downpours. Torrential rain would cut off the dirt road linking the area to Sennar’s capital, Singa, complicating access to diesel, seeds, and later fertilizers.
Farmer Issa noted the dilemma could have been resolved had government agencies and banks met their obligations by providing farmers with their fuel and seed allocations.
“We hope for rain, but at the same time, we hope it does not come in excess,” he summed up.
Agricultural expert and Sennar University professor Ibrahim Mohammed Hassan Abdullah told Atar that rainfall typically intensifies in August. Delays in the central and northern parts of Ad-Dinder , he warned, threaten the failure of the current season and place farmers in a precarious position.
Abdullah urged farmers to embrace solidarity and to plant light seed varieties such as Rashish, Fetrita, and Arfa’ Qadamk. Though low-yielding, he recommended them for subsistence and to salvage the season.
Abdullah also called for partnerships between farmers and local commercial capital to rescue the harvest rather than waiting for unfulfilled government promises.
Having lived among Ad-Dinder ’s residents for nearly a year, Abdullah described their condition as dire and cautioned that if the crisis persists, the region faces the imminent threat of famine.
