Some cereal crops can withstand harsh growing conditions, and, hence, can be considered an important line of defense against food shortage under climate change. Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Monech) is the main food crop for millions of people, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. This crop performs well under input constraints (e.g., limited water) and exhibits high resilience to adverse climate conditions (e.g., high temperature, drought, and waterlogging), making it a star crop for combating hunger under climate change. However, sorghum and other similar crops are not tolerant in absolute terms. Climate change could push the growing conditions of these crops beyond the limits they can tolerate, jeopardizing the food security of millions of people around the world. In this research, we analyzed the current status of sorghum production, trends, and factors controlling sorghum yield using empirical approaches. Especially in sub-Saharan Africa, this crop is cultivated widely under unfavorable climate conditions and sub-optimal input levels. Our findings raise multiple concerns as well as highlight opportunities for the sustainability of sorghum cultivation in a future with climate change. Sorghum yield seems to increase persistently despite global warming due to an improved inputs approach, offering hope that similar adaptation approaches can be fruitful, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. A combination of interventions including adequate use of fertilizers and technology adoption (e.g., tolerant cultivars), efficient management (e.g. improved irrigation), and better agronomic practices, is the key to boosting sorghum yield and ensuring the sustainability of this important crop under a warmer climate.

Understanding the human–water–food–climate nexus is central to achieving sustainable intensification (SI) in agriculture. This research uses a socio-hydrological approach to understand the underpinning for implementing SI in the Gezira Irrigation Scheme, Sudan, by integrating vegetation indices derived from remote sensing, ancillary, gridded soil and precipitation data, supplemented by interviews with 393 farmers. The productivity gap was estimated as the difference between the potential and actual productivities. Based upon data on farmers’ socio-economic status and field practices, a regression tree model was built to determine the factors that control the sorghum yield. The model revealed that the financial status of farmers and access to water are the most influential factors on sorghum yield. A conceptual framework that elucidates SI and its bi-directional feedback to the environment, society and the economy is proposed. Implementing SI in the scheme has implications on water and food security in Sudan and beyond its borders.

Recent climate change has brought new patterns of extreme events in terms of both drought and heavy rainfall to the drought‐prone African Sahel. The effects of these recent extreme events on the performance of the Sahel farming systems are still weakly investigated. This study aims at assessing effects of droughts versus floods on crop yield levels and losses, focusing on the so‐called recovery period, particularly 2001–2020. A newly developed productivity‐drought condition index (PDCI) is utilized to assess agricultural productivity as related to drought or flood in a highly vulnerable region, that is, the Sudanese Sahel. Four farming systems, namely traditional rainfed, mechanized rainfed, gravity irrigated and spate irrigated systems, with sorghum and millet as staple food crops, are considered. The PDCI is defined as a function of the integrated normalized difference vegetation index (iNDVI) over the growing season. To address temporal and spatial variabilities, scaling of the PDCI is done in two dimensions: space and time. Crop statistics are used to derive yield losses. Our results show that both drought and flood episodes (seven and six episodes, respectively) can be captured using the PDCI. Drought remains the most relevant risk to Sahel's crop productivity. Some recent large‐scale floods led to yield loss. However, floods cause smaller risks to agricultural productivity compared to droughts. Floods may even result in enhanced crop yields. Based upon scaling in the time or space domain, ranking the severity of drought impacts on crop yield for individual years from 2001 to 2020 reveals least to slightly different results. Vulnerability to drought depends on the crop type and farming system. Drought effect on crop yield from the irrigated sector is clear on individual years but not as a general statistical relationship. The parameter ‘percentage area under drought’ explains around one‐third of the variation in the rainfed crop yield. The spate irrigation scheme, the gravity irrigated system and the rainfed farmlands experienced respectively 87%, 57% and 46% of area under drought on average. Irrigated systems produce much higher crop yields than rainfed systems. The mechanized system is more drought‐vulnerable than the traditional system. These results call for identifying agricultural management pathways that recognize the combined implications of both hydrological extremes for the region's food security.