Satellite imagery shows how war scorched Sudan’s agricultural heartland
An Al Jazeera satellite analysis found a sharp collapse in central Sudan’s irrigated farming under RSF control and only a fragile recovery after army gains.
An Al Jazeera satellite investigation has mapped the scale of agricultural destruction in Sudan after the civil war that began on April 15, 2023. Using Sentinel-2 imagery and the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index, the report tracked change across the country’s largest irrigated farming areas in Gezira, Sennar, and Khartoum states. The green geometric fields that once marked Sudan’s breadbasket were replaced by brown, dust-coloured stretches of abandoned land.
The report says the worst damage coincided with areas held by the Rapid Support Forces during 2024. After RSF forces captured Wad Madani in December 2023, the farming system in Gezira began to disintegrate. In Abu Quta, fighters reportedly looted markets, the police station, and the agricultural bank, while farmers flooded their own canals in an attempt to turn fields into mud traps and slow heavily armed pickup trucks.
The Gezira Scheme remains central to the story. The irrigation project spans about 924,000 hectares between the Blue and White Nile, includes more than 8,000 kilometres of canals, and historically produced half of Sudan’s wheat. According to the FAO, wheat production in Gezira fell by 58 percent in the 2023-2024 season. The article also cites documentation that irrigation channels were diverted, farmland was flooded, and harvested crop bags were used as makeshift canal bridges. FAO identified the al-Haiwawa canal, serving 2,360 farmers in 48 villages, as one of the worst-hit arteries.
The economic shock to farming communities was severe. Former farmer Hussein Saad told Radio Dabanga that the price of a 50kg fertiliser bag jumped from 20,000 Sudanese pounds to 120,000, while tractor rental prices tripled. The report says fighters looted the national seed bank and World Food Programme warehouses in Wad Madani that held enough food for 1.5 million people for one month. An RSF telecommunications blackout in early 2024 also paralysed money transfers and shut 200 of 300 local soup kitchens that displaced families depended on.
Similar deterioration was recorded in the Rahad and Suki Schemes in Sennar and Gedaref, covering 126,000 hectares and 37,800 hectares respectively. In managed irrigation systems, healthy farming shows up from space as regular rectangular grids. When pumps stop, water gates are no longer coordinated, and fertiliser is not applied, those patterns vanish and are replaced by irregular vegetation and bare soil. That is the pattern Al Jazeera says it observed during RSF control.
After the Sudanese army retook Singa in November 2024 and Wad Madani in January 2025, satellite data from December 2025 showed a partial improvement in crop health across Gezira, Rahad, and Suki. The recovery remains well below pre-war conditions, but the return of geometric green grids suggests farmers have cautiously resumed planting. The findings line up with IPC estimates that 25.6 million people in Sudan face acute food insecurity, including 755,000 already living in catastrophic famine conditions.