Agricultural Resources Allocation and Field Crops Competition

Abstract

Problem statement: Field crops are considered as essential cash and food crops produced in River Nile State (RNS) of North Sudan include cereal, food-legumes, vegetables and fodders beside the perennial crops. They are the main source of household income and regarded as a major part of the daily diet for the Sudanese. In other words they play an important role in household food security and poverty alleviation. However, resources use efficiency for producing these crops is became critical due to high competition from high population pressure and chronic low and instable crop yields emanating from environmental stresses and poor use of improved technology pose challenges for resource management. Since resources are most essential economical inputs, the target should be when optimizing resources use to obtain maximum productivity per unit. The RNS is considered as one of the main supplier of these cereal and foodlegume crops to the country. The crops are commonly produced under pump irrigation from the River Nile. The production of field crops in the State are faced by numerous constraints namely inefficiency of resources use, low level of productivity and high cost of production. The study aims to assess the allocation of the available resources use over the competitive field crops of the dominant crop combination. Approach: It was on this basis that a study was prepared out in RNS to establish resource combination levels that maximize gross margins from food and cash crops that commonly grown within the combination. Primary data was collected by using structured questionnaires for (70) randomly selected respondents from Elzeidab scheme public irrigated scheme of RNS as a case study. A linear programming technique through the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) program was used to assess the optimally combining resources in the prevalent field crops. Results: The model results revealed that tenants would get higher returns by allocating more resources namely land, water, labor and capital to the food legume crops production. Higher net benefits would be from food legume crops production and least from exclusion them. Conclusion: The RNS tenants should therefore, be guided on how to optimally and efficiently utilize their resources and be encouraged to grow food legume crops that give production and yield advantages, earn high returns and contributed significantly to farm sustainability and alleviates malnutrition in RNS.