Unity State, South Sudan

Frontier First Agriculture

With abundant sunshine, ample and timely rainfall, and large swathes of fertile soils, this country provides all the physical resources required for successful crop production at scale. Experienced management and strong capital support were brought to bear; however, the lack of adequate internal transport infrastructure remained a critical constraint. Despite this, a well-resourced and successful large-scale cropping enterprise was developed over the 4 years period until the outbreak of civil hostilities resulted in the sudden cessation of long-term operations of Concord Agriculture.

Challenges Resolved

Migratory Red-billed Quelea birds are a major pest of small-grain crops in this region.

Red-billed Quelea are the most populous bird species in the world, and the major pest in sub-Saharan Africa of small-grain cereal crops such as grain sorghum, millet and rice, potentially causing complete crop destruction in some circumstances. Through good management decisions with strict planting date cut-offs and correct varietal selection, crop maturity could be timed to occur before the migratory arrival of quelea flocks. Selecting maize (corn) in the cropping mix was also an excellent strategy, as the kernels are too large for quelea to cause any damage.

The micro-relief and topography necessitated land-forming to prevent crop waterlogging.

The landscape was dominated by two key features: (1) extensive micro-relief that led to prolonged ‘ponding’ of all low-spots during the rainfed crop growing season, and (2) very flat topography with excessive rainfall run-off moving too slowly to avoid substantial waterlogging-induced crop losses. Accurate field surveys provided the foundation for engineering of grade and RTK-GPS machine-controlled land-forming to eliminate the micro-relief and crop waterlogging damage. All excess run-off was captured into on-farm storage for irrigation of a second crop grown in the subsequent dry season.