Strategic Plan for Agricultural Development 2017-2020, emanating from the Quarter-century Strategy.

This Strategic Plan for Agricultural Development is a nationwide inter-sectoral document aiming at promoting efforts to modernize agriculture and develop its productive and competitive capacity, as well as develop and maintain natural resources and preserve the environment for the current and future generations in an integrated framework. The main goal of the Strategic Plan is to transform the agricultural sector into a dynamic sector capable of sustainable growth at a rate of not less than 6% annually, and that enables the use of agricultural resources to achieve food security and provide a decent life for workers in the agricultural sector, by moving from a focus on production only to a comprehensive view of the value-added chain. To achieve the aforementioned overall goal a number of strategic objectives are set out, they are (i) increase in production and productivity; (ii) food security; (iii) increase in exports and replacing imports; (iv) poverty reduction by increasing farm income and generating employment; (v) developmental balance; and (vi) protection of natural resources.
To help eliminate hunger and malnutrition, the Strategic Plan focuses on instruments to increase food supplies, reduce hunger and improve responses to emergency food crises, such as (i) increasing investments that contribute to increased production and productivity and lead to the necessity to provide food and the stability of its supply; (ii) development of early warning systems and manage risks related to food; (iii) investing in services that diversify horticultural products and that enhance food security and nutrition; (iv) encouraging microfinance institutions to finance small-scale producers and agricultural industrialization; and (v) activating the comprehensive food security and nutrition policies, according to which the Supreme Council for Food Security was formed.
In order to make agriculture and forestry more productive and sustainable, main interventions will be aimed at (i) creating an enabling environment for agricultural production, including raising the efficiency of resource use in the sector, addressing land issues, and codifying rights and means of completing the land use map; (ii) promoting an institutional reform and capacity building of producers, including reform in the irrigated and rainwater sectors, applying modern information management systems and establishing appropriate partnerships with private sector institutions; (iii) increasing productivity and agricultural production by a. rain and irrigated agricultural systems, and a modernized agricultural environment, managed with high efficiency and served with adequate infrastructure and facilities, b. modern equipment for major projects, and updating the irrigation system as an essential condition for experimenting with an innovative water delivery mechanism to support the intensification of crops, c. adoption of the agroforestry system, d.development of scientific research, agricultural services, and knowledge; (iv) addressing agricultural land issues and protecting and developing resources; (v) increasing the number of forest trees on agricultural land by 5%; (vi) rehabilitating and enriching of natural pasture resources and providing infrastructure for grazing lands, such as animal watering points; and (vii) developing the sustainable management of parks and wildlife resources in order to conserve biodiversity and increase stakeholder participation in the sustainable management of reserves and forests.
Rural poverty will be addressed through (i) training and building production capabilities and institutional re-qualification with the aim of bringing about a shift in awareness of the behavior and practice of producers, and to benefit from experiences and policies that lead to the increase in the production and productivity of farmers and their income; and (ii) increasing GDP and developing small rural industries.
To enable more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems, the Government will promote (i) support for rural markets to raise the efficiency of performance in addition to raising the level of administrative capacity and supervision of the agricultural sector; (ii) traditional Sudanese products in the international markets; (iii) agricultural industrialization, value chain development and agricultural marketing, including the production of manufactured agricultural goods to meet the demand for local food and penetrate the specialized markets, and improvement of linkages of the agricultural sector with other countries in particular on food industries that are based on agriculture and animal husbandry and have high added value.
Increasing the resilience of livelihoods to disasters shall be faced through (i) combating desertification and controlling desert encroachment by afforestation of a large number of hectares in the form of belts and windbreaks; (ii) using drought-tolerant tree species and promoting water conservation through water harvesting technologies and riverbank protection from erosion; (iii) expanding watershed management, conservation, and control of surface runoff and stopping erosion in the upper reaches of the watersheds, the Nile Basin, and waterways; and (iv) applying forest management laws, afforestation/reforestation of degraded forests, and reforestation of 30% of the total area of reserved forests.