KHARTOUM, Jan 12 (Reuters) - With investment and security south Sudan could become a food exporter and end its chronic food dependency within a decade, the U.N. World Food Programme said on Wednesday.
WFP Sudan Regional Director Amer Daoudi said the U.N. agency was working with south Sudan, which is voting to become an independent nation in 2011, to build strategic grain reserves and a road network to link rural farmers to urban markets.
"South Sudan has the potential to be not only self- sufficient but a major exporter of fresh produce," Daoudi told reporters in Khartoum.
"If all things go well, if the international community remain engaged, if everything continues to improve...it would not take more than a decade for the south," he told Reuters after the news conference.
But he said all other areas of south Sudan's economy must be developed in tandem to allow agriculture to progress.
After decades of north-south civil war, a 2005 peace deal created a semi-autonomous government in the south and allowed southerners to vote in a secession referendum which ends on Jan. 15. [ID:nHEA252192]
The south is one of the least developed areas of the world with little infrastructure and a heavily armed population with internal conflict often disrupting farming.
"With the support of the Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS)...we will be building feeder roads to help the farmers and villagers to get their produce to the local roads as well as linking them to the trunk roads," Daoudi said.
The south has just 60 kilometres (37 miles) of tarmac roads, most of it built since the 2005 peace deal.
"Secondly (WFP) is looking at establishing with the GOSS grain reserve hubs in south Sudan."
He added that once the south had begun to produce a food surplus, WFP could buy it to use as aid elsewhere in the region, opening up markets, but he warned there was a long road ahead.
"Agriculture is an important pillar to the development and economy of south Sudan and we are going to be greatly contributing in that area," Daoudi said.
Sudan's north has some large irrigated farms but the south is almost entirely dependent on rain-fed agriculture. With good rains last year, WFP said the number of southerners receiving emergency food aid would fall to 1.4 million in 2011.
After bad rains and heavy fighting in 2009, almost half the estimated 8 million population of the south last year was short of food.
(Reporting by Opheera McDoom; Editing by Jason Neely)
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