Both armed groups fighting Sudan’s uncivil war were functionaries of the Bashir dictatorship who subverted the popular uprising against it for their own ends. Both have little regard for civilian life. One group, the RSF (Rapid Support Forces, partially a re-creation of the Janjaweed that was created and supported by that dictatorship) strategically destroyed the local food supply chain, attacking farms growing staples such as corn and millet in a 20 mile radius of the city of El Fasher that fed themselves as well as the city in advance of is besieging and subsequent conquer. Starvation planned in advance and then finalized by the siege itself.
On top of the crop destroying climate change-caused floods and droughts modern agriculture is highly dependent on mass-produced fertilizers. Gulf states are producers of nitrogen-based and phosphate fertilizer, and About one third of global seaborne trade in fertilizers typically passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been more or less closed since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. preventing exports to key markets like Sudan and Brazil while fertilizer producers in South Asia and Egypt are cut off from the gas supplies they need for production. Already The benchmark price of urea, the most widely traded has risen about 30% in the last month More generally it is bad timing for all Northern hemisphere farmers and their planting season. Fertiliser orders are normally placed at this time.
In a context of climate change and war the oligarchic nature of the world food “system” adds to a lack of food security for not-rich people. One of the biggest oligarchs, Cargill have a finger in every pie: it has a stake in the especially world dominant potash fertiliser production of Canada; as part of the acknowledged meat “processing” cartel in North America its slaughterhouses were epi-centres of the COVID virus and its transmission; of palm oil plantations; and the cattle and cattle-feed land taking business of Amazonian Brazil. It faces opposition from indigenous peoples. Cargill’s Santarem river port terminal on the Tapajos river in Para province was occupied in protest at a Brazilian decree that would have expanded an Amazonian waterways in a federal privatization program, benefitting the export of state soy and corn. The protest forced a revoking of the decree.
In some parts of the world this insecurity as defined as a lack of food “sovereignty” as in Britain where the government has been told it should be stockpiling food; that it UK produced far less food than it needed to feed itself, and relied on a few large companies to feed its giant population and was only 54% food sufficient. What Britain’s state “glorifies as efficiency is now vulnerability, ”said Professor Tim Lang at a Farmers’ Union conference.