Using Agricultural Research and Development To Enhance Food Security in South Sudan

South Sudan is endowed with abundant natural resources able to support diverse agricultural activities. More than two decades of civil strife that concluded with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 greatly hampered agricultural development in the Country. During the conflict and after the CPA, there were combined efforts by relief, rehabilitation and development partners, including the Government of South Sudan to revitalize agricultural production and productivity. However, agricultural production has been low due to several constraints including; low genetic potential of landraces, disease and pest pressure, declining soil fertility, poor agronomic practices, unfavourable climatic factors such as drought and floods, low technical capacities of farmers, researchers and extension agents, poor physical infrastructure and poor institutional framework for both research and extension. While the opportunities for increasing agricultural productivity are grossly under-utilised, unsustainable use of natural resources for increased food production can have negative implications on the environment and natural resources, through land degradation, deforestation, water pollution, depletion of water resources and new pest problems. Such unintended consequences suggest a threat to food security and highlight the need for appropriate agricultural technologies, adequate agricultural extension, effective regulation, careful pricing policies, appropriate incentives, and policy responses that make intensive agriculture compatible with sustainable management of natural resources and the environment.  In order to meet these challenges rationally and to pro-actively seize available opportunities, increasing and committing more resources to Agricultural Research for Development (R4D) could bring the much anticipated agricultural transformation in South Sudan. Such investments will have a positive trickledown effect on the youth by way of generating appropriate and improved technologies that could attract them to agriculture and build their capacities in solving both present and future challenges in a sustainably food secure South Sudan.   

Key words:

South Sudan, Food Security, Research for Development (R4D)