GEZIRA STATE — Wheat production in Sudan's Gezira Scheme fell by 58% during the 2023–2024 season under Rapid Support Forces control, according to assessments by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Satellite imagery analysis using Sentinel-2 data and the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index found a partial recovery of agriculture across the Gezira, Sennar, and Khartoum states after the Sudanese Armed Forces retook territory by early 2025.

The Gezira Scheme covers 924,000 hectares, includes more than 8,000 kilometres of canals, and historically produced half of Sudan's wheat. Its agricultural system disintegrated after the RSF captured Wad Madani in December 2023. The European Union Agency for Asylum documented RSF fighters diverting irrigation channels, flooding agricultural lands, and using bags of harvested crops as makeshift bridges over canals. The al-Haiwawa canal, which serves 2,360 farmers across 48 villages, was among the most severely damaged.

Sudan's civil war began on April 15, 2023, following a power struggle between the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces. Fighting first erupted in Khartoum and then spread to other regions, with the RSF advancing across Sudan's agricultural heartland in late 2023. In December 2023 in Abu Quta, in northern Gezira state, RSF fighters looted markets, a local police station, and the agricultural bank. Farmers there flooded their irrigation canals to impede RSF vehicles.

Armed fighters looted the national seed bank and emptied World Food Programme warehouses in Wad Madani that had held enough food to sustain 1.5 million people for a month. The price of a 50kg bag of fertilizer in Gezira state rose from 20,000 to 120,000 Sudanese pounds, and tractor rental prices tripled during the same period, according to Radio Dabanga.

The Sudanese Armed Forces recaptured Singa in Sennar state in November 2024 and Wad Madani in January 2025. By March 2025, the SAF controlled most of Gezira and Sennar states, and it declared full control of Khartoum state in May 2025. NDVI data from December 2025 showed improved crop health and the return of geometric green patterns in the Gezira, Rahad, and Suki schemes, indicating that farmers resumed planting. Satellite imagery of the North Bahri, East Nile, Sundus, and Kutranj agricultural projects in Khartoum state showed no recovery in 2025.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification reported that by late 2025, 3.4 million people had moved out of crisis levels, attributing the improvement to stabilisation in Gezira, Sennar, and Khartoum states following RSF withdrawal. An earlier IPC report had warned that 25.6 million people, half of Sudan's population, faced acute food insecurity, including 755,000 in catastrophic famine conditions.