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