Sudan Agricultural Markets Performance under Climate Change

Abstract

Previous studies showed that climate change undermining the economies and prosperity of the countries within the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA) and their people. The economic performance of the Sudan, particularly agriculture; depends on weather conditions, especially rainfall the major climatic variable. In the last forty years; summer rainfall pattern across the country has been decreasing by 15 to 20 percent, while temperatures have recorded an increasing trend. The purpose of this paper is to examine the main agriculture markets performance under climate change, including their supply, demand, trade and food security variables. The study has developed a stochastic multi-market model for nine major agricultural markets; the model comprises important characteristics of agriculture in Sudan including the dependency of agricultural supply on rainfall and temperature. The markets have been simulated by calibrating supply and demand functions; the climate scenario simulates these markets under climate change of decreasing rainfall and increasing temperatures trends. The model has introduced prices and rainfall as stochastic variables; it has also incorporated national food security indicators like self-sufficiency ratio and the ratio of total export to food imports, which are directly affected by the agriculture performance. The uncertain (Stochastic) variables in the model are presented in their cumulative distribution functions (CDF) by the help of BestFit; a software within the @Risk program based on annual observations from 1990-2019. The final results are graphed in the form of cumulative distribution function (CDF). The model scenario simulations revealed that, the impact of the decreasing trend of rainfall and the increasing temperature trend would overall lead to considerable losses to markets supplies and hence a deterioration in the country’s external sector and food security situation.