Sudan’s Agricultural Heartlands Ravaged as RSF Militias Pillage Farms

The Rapid Support Forces have looted agricultural and livestock wealth worth billions, displacing producers, crippling exports and triggering food insecurity across Sudan.

Sudan’s agricultural and livestock economies — once the backbone of national exports and rural livelihoods — have been gutted by two and a half years of systematic looting and destruction by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

According to government and industry estimates, losses to agriculture alone have exceeded $100 billion, while total damage to infrastructure across the country is near $200 billion, a figure cited by former Finance Minister Ibrahim El-Badawi, who said about 40% of Sudan’s GDP had been destroyed in the first year of the war.

The RSF’s control of large swathes of central and western Sudan has turned fertile farmland and grazing zones into zones of plunder. Farmers, herders and exporters describe forced displacement, targeted killings, and wholesale theft of machinery, crops and livestock. Millions of people have been uprooted from their lands, while exports of key commodities — including sorghum, sesame, livestock and gum arabic — have either collapsed or fallen under militia control.

“The country’s agricultural wealth has been stripped bare. Entire projects have been seized and converted into RSF bases,” said Ghariq Kambal, deputy head of the Sudanese Farmers’ Association.

Agricultural devastation

Once Sudan’s most productive regions — Gezira, Sennar, Blue Nile, White Nile and Kordofan — are now effectively outside national production. The Gezira Scheme, one of Africa’s largest irrigated farming systems, has lost all its equipment, irrigation networks, and storage and laboratory facilities.

Agriculture Minister Ismat Qureshi said preliminary damage to the sector “exceeds $100 billion and will take years to repair.” A September study by the Ministry of Agriculture estimated that 21 million feddans (about 8.8 million hectares) of irrigated farmland have gone out of production due to RSF encroachment.

Beyond the physical destruction, the human toll has been severe. “The RSF forced many farmers to abandon their work,” said Babiker Al-Sharif, a veteran farmer from Sennar. “Some fled the country; others were maimed or traumatised. We lost generations of agricultural knowledge.”

At the Genetic Resources Bank in Gezira State, RSF fighters destroyed laboratories and seed collections, leading to the loss of 17,000 genetic resources, according to Ali Zakaria, an official at the Agricultural Research Corporation. He said this will have “long-term consequences for food security and crop improvement.”

Livestock collapse

The livestock sector, which once generated hundreds of millions in annual exports to the Gulf, has been crippled by RSF blockades and disease outbreaks. Authorities in Gezira State estimate that 60% of the state’s livestock has been looted or killed.

“We lost huge numbers of animals due to disease and lack of medicine,” said Mahmoud Haroun, a cattle producer from Kordofan. “The militias block treatments and prevent animals from moving in or out. The spread of weapons and drugs has poisoned entire herds.”

Veterinarian Dr Mohammed Abu Talib said veterinary services have collapsed. “Breeders tried to import vaccines from neighbouring countries, but the RSF intercepted shipments and shut down livestock markets,” he said.

Khaled Mohammed Khair, secretary of the Livestock Exporters’ Committee, estimated that from April 2023 to June 2024, Sudan lost over eight million head of livestock. “The sector’s entire infrastructure — laboratories, slaughterhouses, and quarantine stations — has been destroyed,” he said. He also confirmed reports of “organised smuggling” of female sheep and camels across borders, disguising looting as legal trade.

Gum Arabic plunder

Sudan, which produces more than 70% of the world’s gum arabic, has seen the RSF seize control of its trade. The militia controls three of the four main roads leading to El-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan and the hub of gum arabic production.

Before the war, annual output of hashab gum reached 50,000 tonnes. Since the RSF takeover, more than 80% of producers have stopped harvesting. Those who continue face multiple militia checkpoints.

Exporter Mohammed Al-Hassan said producers now pay 1 million Sudanese pounds (around $280) per shipment in illegal RSF taxes, on top of soaring official fees and transport costs. Drivers now demand “hundreds of thousands of pounds” — roughly $100–$200 — per trip as hazard pay.

“The RSF has turned trade into extortion,” said Al-Hassan. “Some soldiers even offer to escort trucks for cash.”

According to Awadallah Ibrahim Adam, head of the Cooperative Union of Natural Gum Producers, RSF units have destroyed entire gum forests in the Rahad area of North Kordofan, cutting trees indiscriminately and smuggling most of the product to South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Chad. “Output and exports have fallen to just 20% of pre-war levels,” he said.

A collapsing economy

The destruction of Sudan’s rural economy has deepened the country’s humanitarian crisis and accelerated the collapse of the Sudanese pound, which now trades at about SDG 3,600 per US dollar on the parallel market.

The government’s fiscal base has all but disappeared, while the RSF — funded through looting, gold smuggling and taxation of trade routes — has entrenched its control over large parts of the country’s productive economy.

With 40% of GDP wiped out, no exports, and massive displacement, rebuilding the economy requires political stability and demilitarisation.

For now, the once-fertile lands of Gezira, Darfur and Kordofan remain scarred — symbols of a nation whose breadbasket has been plundered by the RSF.

Reporting by Awad Mustafa