The Nile has shaped Sudan for thousands of years.
Along its banks, water has supported farming, settlements and livelihoods in a country where much of the surrounding landscape is dry. Yet in parts of Sudan, farmers are watching crops struggle in parched soil while one of the world's great rivers continues to flow nearby.
The contradiction is difficult to miss. How can farmers live beside the Nile and still struggle to get enough water for their fields?
The answer begins with a distinction that is easy to overlook. Having a river nearby does not necessarily mean that water can reach every farm, particularly when rainfall is poor, irrigation systems are disrupted and farmers are trying to work through a devastating conflict.
The river is there, but the rain has not been enough
Sudan's 2026 agricultural season has been marked by unusually difficult weather conditions. The Food and Agriculture Organization says the June to September rainy season produced below-average rainfall across most major cropping areas, with Sennar and Gedaref recording rainfall about 20% and 30% below their long-term averages respectively.
Those numbers matter because Sennar and Gedaref are not marginal agricultural areas. Together, they normally account for about a quarter of Sudan's national sorghum production, making the performance of their fields important to food supplies far beyond the farms themselves.
By September, FAO's Agricultural Stress Index indicated severe drought conditions across as much as 55% of cropland in Sennar and 70% in Gedaref. The agency linked the poor rainfall to the ongoing El Niño event, while also warning that conflict, high input prices and limited access to agricultural credit were making the situation harder for farmers.
For a farmer waiting for rain, however, none of those percentages changes what the field looks like. The soil still has to hold enough moisture for a seed to germinate.
In Gedaref, the fields are telling another story
Gedaref is one of the places where the pressure is particularly important to watch.
The state is one of Sudan's major agricultural areas, producing sorghum and other crops across large rain-fed farming zones. But the 2026 season has brought a combination of delayed or inadequate rainfall and high temperatures that has left crops struggling in some areas.
Recent satellite-based agricultural monitoring found rainfall deficits and above-average temperatures across Sudan's rain-fed agricultural areas. The Crop Monitor for Early Warning reported seasonal rainfall deficits of between 100 and more than 300 millimetres in parts of the wider region, with particularly severe moisture stress in southeastern Sudan, including Sennar, Blue Nile and Gedaref.
The effect is not simply that crops grow more slowly.
A crop planted late has less time to develop. A crop planted into dry soil may struggle to establish. And a farmer who loses a harvest loses more than food. They can also lose income, seed for the next season and the ability to pay for the inputs needed to plant again.
Sudan's war has made a bad season harder
The war that began in April 2023 has fundamentally changed the country's agricultural economy.
FAO says the conflict remains the main driver of Sudan's severe food-security situation, having disrupted livelihoods, damaged infrastructure, restricted humanitarian access and displaced millions of people. About 8.6 million people were estimated to be internally displaced by the end of July 2026.
Agriculture has therefore been squeezed from several directions at once.
Farmers have faced difficulties reaching fields, obtaining fuel and purchasing inputs, while insecurity has disrupted markets and movement. FEWS NET says Sudan's 2025/26 cereal production was 22% below the previous year and 27% below the pre-war 2022/23 level, with both conflict and weather contributing to the decline.
This is why describing Sudan's dry fields simply as a climate-change story would miss part of what is happening.
The weather is adding pressure to an agricultural system already badly weakened by war.
This is where climate change enters the story
It would be too simple to look at one dry season and declare that climate change caused Sudan's agricultural problems.
Sudan has always experienced drought and rainfall variability. The 2026 season is also being shaped by El Niño, conflict, economic disruption and the condition of agricultural infrastructure.
But climate change matters because it can alter the background conditions in which these shocks occur.
The 2026 Scientific Reports study found repeated drought episodes across Sudan's major mechanized rain-fed agricultural areas between 2000 and 2024. The researchers found that northern and central regions were particularly drought-prone, while irrigated and southern areas showed greater resilience.
A warmer climate does not mean that every year will be dry.
It means the risks surrounding heat, rainfall variability and water availability can change, making adaptation increasingly important in places where agriculture already operates close to the limits of what the environment can support.
What Happens Next
The coming harvest will provide one of the clearest indications of how Sudan's farmers have weathered the difficult 2026 season.
FAO says the cereal harvest is expected from November, but prospects have already been weakened by poor rainfall, insecurity and shortages of agricultural inputs.
Humanitarian agencies will be watching rainfall, crop development, pasture conditions, food prices and access to agricultural areas. Farmers will be watching something much simpler: whether the ground gives them enough to harvest.
For years, the Nile has been one of Sudan's great symbols of life.
But this year's dry fields offer a reminder that a river alone cannot guarantee food security. Water must reach people, farms and crops, and the systems that make that possible must survive the pressures of both a changing climate and a country still at war.
The Nile is still flowing.
The question for Sudan's farmers is whether enough of its water, together with enough rain, security and support, can reach the fields before another difficult season becomes another empty harvest.