Gedaref, Sudan's Granary, Scoured By Extreme Rains And Strangled By Desertification - Guardian
In Sudan’s eastern state of Gedaref, nicknamed “the granary” for its vast rows of sesame, sorghum and millet, banks of sediment and gravel are popping up as high as hills around the farms – the result of deforestation and erratic rains causing watering holes to overflow. Locals call them karab, meaning “something useless”, says environmental scientist Tarig El Gamri, standing atop one such mound. He points out the water mark swirls etched around one of many deep gullies near the village of Wad Hassan, a 45-minute drive east of Gedaref city.
“Climate change affected the intensity of rainfall. When it is very intense, you have very quick and very high runoffs, and this is what we are seeing now,” says El Gamri, a project coordinator at the Sudan Higher Council for Environment and Natural Resources. “They spoil the soil. Now you see they cannot cultivate such land, because it has lost the levelling.”
In 2015, Gedaref had 70ml of rain. This year, it has had 600ml so far. These extremes have led to flash floods and desertification, which is destroying arable land. “Last year, the rain didn’t come and everything was destroyed,” says Aisha Youssef Ahmed in the neighbouring village of Siraj Alnour. More intense droughts and failed rains have ruined harvests and also affected livestock: the cows that used to grow big and strong are skinny and often have to be sold off. Ahmed, 65, never thought that “rich, lush and productive” Gedaref would become a place “where everything has got worse”.
But while floods from overflowing wadis are washing away fertile topsoils or morphing farmland into unworkable shapes, the annual riverbank floods that people relied on to grow watermelons have declined due to heat, evaporation and dam construction in Sudan and across the border in Ethiopia.
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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/dec/19/sudan-faremers-battle-climate-change-hunger-desertification