Sudan’s big grain producers are struggling to find sufficient labour to manage their fields, writes RVI Fellow Magdi El Gizouli. The problem is particularly bad in the central Gezira region, in the eastern Gedaref State, and in North Darfur. Writing on his StillSudan blog, El Gizouli notes that the biggest reason for the labour shortfall is the mass migration of Southerners from the ‘kambos’, the ‘makeshift settlements that twin the villages and towns of the riverain heartland’ to the new South Sudan. He also points to the involvement of as many as half a million people, ‘many of whom are likely to be escapees from the penury of agricultural labour’, in a new ‘gold rush’ in different parts of the country.