Across the country, farmland that could feed the world's largest hunger crisis many times over lies fallow, as weary farmers once again find themselves in the crosshairs of faraway destruction.First came war between the country's army and rival paramilitaries, which since April 2023 has killed more than 200,000 people and pushed nearly 20 million into crisis levels of hunger.Then a more distant conflict, between Iran and the United States, crippled fuel and fertiliser supply through the Strait of Hormuz, causing costs to soar.And now the powerful El Nino climate pattern strengthening in the Pacific Ocean, which impacts winds and rains across the world, has delayed crucial rains and led water levels in the life-giving Nile to drop precipitously.Just south of the capital Khartoum, farmer Al-Tigani Fadlallah points to an island that shouldn't be there."The water usually covers it by July, but you can see it even now," he told AFP this month, seeing in the sunbaked sandbank a bad omen for his parched crops.Through the length of Sudan, from the northern fields near Egypt, along the Nile river to the Ethiopian border, farmers told AFP reporters the water they need is not rising from the riverbanks nor falling from the sky.The UN's food and agriculture organisation says the season "is unfolding under heightened climate risk, driven by El Nino conditions" including delayed and below average rains, and long and frequent dry spells. Farmers say it is one of the hardest seasons in recent memory, but climate research shows it will not be the last.Pray for rain