Cereal production, markets, and policy in Sudan

Cereal production has long been a cornerstone of Sudan’s food security and economy, especially wheat, sorghum, and millet. Given the importance of these staples, policy related to imports and prices of wheat (and sorghum, to a lesser extent) has major effects on food production and consumption. In particular, before 2023, government interventions in wheat markets involved huge implicit—and sometimes explicit—fiscal costs, including interventions on large food aid inflows, official sales prices, direct controls on commercial imports, and subsidies on wheat milling (D’Silva and Badawi 1988; Faki and Taha 2009; Abdelaziz et al. 2022). These policies have generally benefited urban consumers at the expense of rural producers and have not always been well-targeted to the poor (Resnick 2021; Resnick 2026, Chapter 3 in this volume).