Water, Land and Labor in Irrigation Agriculture along the Nile : Cases from the Northern Sudan

bkyo Metropolitan U)ziversity INTRODUCTIONThe present study has two aims.The first 'is to introduce, on the basis of data obtained through the author's own field vyork, the system of irrigation agriculture in a village located in an Arab Muslim district in the northern Sudan, and the sharecropping arrangement therewith.The second aim is to discuss, by comparison with data in the literature, the importance of water, land and labor as elements of production in the irrigation agriculture along the Nile in the northern Sudan.The research area, "Mahrnudab" (pseudonym), is a village on the east bank of the Nile about seven kilometers south of the city of Al-Damar (population approximately 30,OOO), which in turn is about 300 km north along the river from the Sudanese capital of Khartoumi).According to the 1993 national census, the population of the village was 2,078, many of whom were engaged in farming.