Interplay of Agriculture Deterioration and Poverty Incident

Abstract

In Sudan agriculture is considered to be the leading economic sector forming typically over 40% of the GDP has lost much ground with a drop of its GDP share to 33% in 2007. Northern Sudan as one of the most important agricultural region is characterized by low and erratic rainfall and limited arable land. Agriculture in this district provides an employment for about 70% of population. More dramatic is the deterioration in the contribution of agriculture to the country's exports, declining to about 3% in 2007 down from an average of 74% in the period 1996-1998. Further, a large portion (83%) of Sudan's rural people today lives in highly vulnerable livelihood and degraded environments. This situation affected agri- cultural productivity severely through greater frequency of yield-diminishing. This study aims to assess the crop productivity deterioration to the poverty incident in rural area. In tracing differences in agricultural yield and returns, detailed calculations from the collected data were made to estimate the per capita rural income from agricultural activities in northern Sudan. The results suggest that the potential impacts of low yield and yield volatility especially in the conventional farming system extremely causes poverty incident in northern Sudan.