environmental degradation as a cause of conflict in - Steiner Graphics

2. Agriculture (Farming)Crop farming is the main economic activity for more than eighty percent of Darfur’spopulation. The cultivation of millet, sorghum and other cash crops (groundnuts,sesame etc) is essential for food and economy of the population. Millet is thestaple food for more than seventy-five percent of the population and is cultivatedthroughout Darfur, especially in the sandy soils and clay soils that could be exploitedeasily by manual labour. In turn sorghum is the staple food for the populationin the west and the south of the region. It is cultivated in the wadi beds, lightclay and gardud soils. The cultivation of these crops has continued for hundredsof years in Darfur. The productivity of these crops is dependent on the rainfall andnatural land fertility.In turn, the demand for the agricultural crops has increased parallel to the increasein the population. Therefore, what are the changes that have taken placesince the beginning of 1960s? What has been the effect of the droughts thatstarted in the beginning of seventies? Productivity and production of the rain fedcrops declined due to the decline of the rainfall in quantity, distribution and intensity.For compensation of the declining production, horizontal expansion of farmingbecame an option for the farmers. In turn, the average land holdings per householdor person have decreased due to population increase.Although there are no systemic and accurate official productivity figures fromDarfur in the period of the sixties to the late eighties, based on interviews withsome farmers, the figures below indicate the changes in both area and productivity.Yaqub Ahmed is a farmer in qoz soils in the western part of al-Fashir; his farm area is 60ımokhamus (5046 square meters). In 1968 he cultivated 12 mokhamus and the yield was84 sacks of millet (100 Kg), i.e. 800 Kg per mokhamus.In 1974 he cultivated 25 mokhamus and the yield was 43 sacks, i.e. 170 Kg per mokhamus.In 1984 the entire plot was cultivated and the yield was 12Kg per mokhamus.From 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, the crop harvest assessments carried out by theAgricultural Planning Unit (APU) of the State Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resourcesfigured the following productivity results: 65, 45, 23, 45 and 11 Kg per mokhamus respectivelyfor the same area. Moreover, it is worth noting that this area of the qoz was one ofthe 11 animal routes for nomads before 1962 and since became agricultural land, and dueto continuous farming, droughts and pests etc., the productivity of millet and the grazingcarrying capacity have progressively declined.36