Save us, our life on the Nile edge: Farmers

By Ayman Elias Ibrahim-The Citizen

Azhari Mansour’s fruit and vegetable farm on the bank of the Nile has been in his family for three generations. But in the past ten years he has seen the size of his land fall from 25 feddan to just 5 feddan. The cause is not crop failure  or poor farming but a silent, stealthy enemy: erosion. Rain, floods and the Nile's  currents have gradually worn away the river bank - eating into Azhari's land.

Soil erosion in Azhari's land, photo credit: Ayman Elias

 The lost of the land has had a devastating impact on his income and the life of his wife, three children and three brothers.

“My family and I have been investing in this land for about 5 decades," Azhari said. "It has been my family's only source of income for four generations since my grand-grandfather”. Today the turnover from his business is no longer enough to cover their basic needs. It has fallen from 21000 SDG to 9000 SDG in seven years. 

During the last 50 years the river, rains and floods have eroded, about million feddan in the Northern and Nile states, according to the ministry of agriculture.

Azhari Mansour, 55, who farms in the al-Jaili area, northern Khartoum Bahri, says they are likely to lose all of  their land because if the speed of the erosion.

“We all depend on this land for our livelihood," he said. "One of my brothers is suffering from kidney failure, and taking regular medicine in private clinic. it is too expensive for us and now we are barely able to afford the cost of his treatment”, Azahir told The Citizen. 

Azhari clears his farm alone after loosing his 10 workers

 Azhari was forced to lay-off his all 10 workers who were planting and harvesting  his seasonal  fruit and vegetables which he sold  to traders and consumers. He now has to do all the work himself.

“From July to January, we produce nothing because the Nile water floods the entire island during the autumn period, therefore this period is very difficult for all lands’ owners and workers”, he said, adding that they experience, during this period, a very bad conditions.

“We have nothing to do but to reduce expenses, to survive until we are able to use the land again”, he said.

Dr Fathurrahman Mohammed, Director of Rainfall Sector in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, told The Citizen that finding a solution to the soil erosion is very difficult because the topography of the Nile is unstable.The soil erosion as an environmental phenomenon is increasingly affecting the sustainable development of human societies in the Nile banks in Sudan, according to Zaki  Yousif, an agriculture expert.

Yousif, who is also the head of the Sudanese Environment Conservation Society (SECS)- al-Jaili branch explained that the phenomenon is associated with the Nile floods, pointing out that the Nile changes its course from time to time  a result of the collision of waves, generated by the water flow, which in turn leads to erosion and destruction of agricultural land.

“The phenomenon is not new because the Nile, every year, brings a lot of silt, from its course in the Ethiopian plateau. However, the erosion rate has become larger and increasingly in all lands of the Nile’ banks”, he said.

 Osman Mohamed Ahmed, 75, another land owner in al-Jaili said he lost 11 faddan of land and many trees. Every year he loses  two or three faddan.

“Since 2002, I lost 11 faddan,  466 guava trees and 15 palm trees, and now what remains of my land is only about two faddans”, Ahmed said. He is now supervising the farming process by himself, after his three worker stopped working for him due to his financial problems.

“I was hiring a one full-time worker, paying him a monthly salary of 320 DDG, while giving him complete freedom to search for extra work, in addition to other two workers paid in a daily basis, he added.

The river Nile farms which were once crowded with workers are now empty. The redundant workers are now seeking jobs elsewhere, but the work they find is usually poorly paid: some work as street hawkers selling drinking water, food stuff and other goods.

Ahmed said that official from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have visited the area with Sudanese officials, and had suggested that the farmers use barrels filled with asphalt to isolate their lands from the water. “But that would be too expensive and beyond our financial capacities”, Ahmed said.

On finding solutions to the problem, Yousif suggested state intervention was needed. It requires “long-term and sustained efforts and capacities to be addressed”, he said. Scientists and researchers are now looking for deep-rooted water plants to protect soil from fragmentation and to prevent soil erosion and degradation, he added.

Yousif spoke about an effective method being used by some farmers, which is bridging the space between the land and water with stones and wastes, to prevent the flow of water. But it is an expensive and impractical process.

“It will be nonsense if some farmers followed this method while the other did not”, he said.

“Many farmers raised grievances to the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry probably considers it as not feasible. However it is economically feasible as these agricultural lands provide the capital and other states with fruits and vegetables”, Yousif said.

 Azhari’s only hope now is saving the rest of his land

Azhari says that his only hope is that the  authorities will intervene to save the few acres he has left. "If we lose what we have left then I fear for my family's future," he said. 

*This article first appeared in the print edition of the Khartoum-based The Citizen English-daily dated February 25, 2014.