Chronicle of raw materials
Wheat: the Sudanese paradox
Audio 01:38
A Sudanese wheat farmer presents the fruits of his labor.
© AFP/Ashraf Shazly
By: Marie-Pierre Olphand Follow
2 mins
In Sudan, farmers are struggling to sell their wheat, while the country lacks it and people face galloping inflation.
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Plunged into an ever-worsening economic crisis, Sudan is short of wheat.
The price of bread has increased tenfold since the coup last October and queues are now part of the daily life of those who can still afford to buy it.
The country imports more than two million tons of wheat a year, but also produces more than 750,000 tons, according to the latest figures from the FAO, for the year 2020. However, for two months, the local harvest has been struggling. to sell.
The State had promised 75 dollars per bag of wheat, but today the institutional buyers have disappeared from the circuit and the bags of cereals are piling up among farmers who fear that their stock will be damaged.
The state confirmed last month that it would not buy all the crops produced in the country because the coffers are empty.
Forced to buy at high prices on the international market, Sudan has already spent 366 million dollars on imported wheat between January and March, according to the Central Bank.
"Local wheat will eventually find a buyer"
The suspension of international aid since the coming to power of General Al Buhran also weighs on the finances of the State which had already cut in its expenses last summer, under international pressure, by stopping to subsidize many products. .
A measure that precipitated the soaring prices.
The difficulty is that most farmers are used to selling their entire harvest to official buyers and so far refuse low-price offers to local middlemen.
The export of this Sudanese wheat is not an alternative, specifies an analyst, for reasons of grain quality and lack of relays necessary to market it.
But this wheat will not be lost, tempers a trader: it will end up being bought, because the country needs its local production, especially since Ukraine and Russia were among the two main suppliers of wheat until the war. wheat from Sudan.
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