The western Sudan is also suffered from low soil fertility, especially in sandy soil. This type of soil has a higher requirement for water, mainly in the production of millet crops. Meanwhile, negative impacts and the adjustment of liberalization policies that hit the rural areas hard also influenced access to food for the majority of the population. The marketing policy constitutes a concern for the farmers; therefore, a lack of clear marketing price policies for agriculture and animal production are also affected food security. This resulted in higher costs of production,which directly led to diminishing the net returns from different farming activities . Moreover, nft hydroponic system the inequality and lack of income has a greater impact on the purchasing power of the people. North Kordofan State is recognized as a vulnerable food deficit area. The farmers and agro-pastoral herders are subjected to food insecurity since their agricultural production does not meet all their food consumption needs.
The situation of food security is ever-changing and unpredictable among the seasons and usually depends on the amount of food and cash crops produced at the farm level.The trend of food security can be described through the percentage change between consumption and production of cereal food from season 1995/96 to 2006/07. Figure 9 views the surplus and/or deficit in cereal foods based on the amount of both production and consumption. The figure reveals that a higher food deficit has been occurring since the end of the last decade, when consumption exceeded production. This mostly emerged from a decrease in production as a consequence of poor soil fertility,inadequate rainfall, and drought. Therefore, the percentage change between consumption and production was negative. Only in season 2005/2006, there was a food surplus, which has been shown by the positive change between food consumption and production as shown in Figure 9.
The sedentary farmers in North Kordofan State faced both shortage in food availability because of high fluctuations in the production due to unfavorable conditions and also severe inaccessibility to food because of acute, hydroponic nft system widespread poverty and limited off-farm income opportunities as reported by .The food deficit that has been occurring year after year affected about 74% of the total population. This population mostly lived in the Sheikan locality, and they suffered from chronic food deficit. They were distributed as 64.6% and 82.3% in the Southern and Northern parts of the locality, respectively. In contrast, about 49% of the population in the state was regarded as food insecure in the year 2006 . The average estimated food deficiency for food insecure households overall in the state was approximately 16.4%. However, this figure varied from 5% to 25% among the localities . Various activities have been conducted in North Kordofan State to reduce the food gap and food insecurity.Many NGOs in the region were delivered relief food as free food distribution for the most vulnerable groups.
This emergency food program seeks to secure food through food aid and relief during drought or bad seasons.This activity is usually conducted via coordination between governmental organizations (GOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Recently, there have been special programs implemented by the World Food Program (WFP) to improve the food insecurity situation. These programs are the School Feeding Program (SFP)and Food for Work (FFW). Unfortunately, despite the efforts made by these programs to alleviate food insecurity,there is only slight improvement. This is predominantly due to a lack of a good coordination between the government and international donors. Subsequently, many programs targeting the reduction of food insecurity have not successfully achieved their objectives. One of the most important activities for realizing food security in North Kordofan State is School Feeding Program(SFP). This program was implemented via an agreement between government representatives by the State Ministry of Education (SMOE), School Feeding Department (SFD), and the WFP. The agreement defined the terms and conditions under which the SMOE and SFD would implement the food distribution on behalf of WFP.