This paper deals with the food challenges in Egypt, after the Russian war on Ukraine and the delay in global wheat supplies revealed a serious deficit in food security for the Arab countries in general, especially Egypt, with a population exceeding 100 million people.
This paper seeks to explore the results of applying the neoliberal model to the field of food security in Egypt, within the broader framework of the problem of agriculture and food in Egypt in general with its structural dimensions and historical backgrounds, after a quick look at the global food situation as a whole, and in the Arab region in particular, and on the expected effects of the Russian war -Ukrainian on international trade in general and the food situation in particular.
The global food crisis: structural, not transitory!
Despite the historical trend of declining food prices in parallel with technological developments and new technologies in the field of agriculture; And the vertical and horizontal expansion that resulted in productivity improvements. In the other two decades, the world witnessed a counter-trend of high prices and successive crises in its supplies, the most prominent of which were the crises of 2008 and 2011; During which food prices doubled, while its entire index, consisting of cereals, meat, dairy, sugar, oils and fats, increased by about 50% between 2007 and 2008, and arranged a state of extreme price volatility throughout that period. Wheat prices rose worldwide by an average of 130% in That year, after a brief decline in conjunction with the global financial crisis, the new blow of the crisis (which coincided with the Arab Spring); During which the prices of wheat and corn doubled again within a year (1) .
And here we are witnessing a new wave of rising food prices globally, since late 2020, as shown by the movement of the food price index in nominal and real values, shown in the graph in Figure (1), which shows how the index exceeded not only its levels in the two previous crises, but also its historical levels in the middle seventies.
Figure (1): Food price index in nominal and real terms during the period 1922-1961 (2)
Despite the multiplicity and complexity of the reasons behind this crisis, Jane Harrigan summarizes the main structural causes of this crisis in two groups of reasons, distributed on both sides of supply and demand as follows (3) :
First : On the demand side: rapid population growth, changing food consumption patterns, especially in some large and important countries such as China and India, and an increase in the demand for crops for the production of fossil fuels, as well as new methods of financing (predominantly financial) food commodities at the global level and transforming them For investment goods in the international stock markets, within a crisis and fragile global economy financially and monetaryly.
Second : On the supply side: Weakness of international markets in terms of a decrease in the proportion of agricultural production that is internationally traded, weak stocks of agricultural commodities, climatic changes and natural disasters, as well as trade policies such as banning exports and others, in connection with the national priorities of different countries, especially for major exporters of commodities. Food in a market governed by production and export concentration, contrary to the conventional wisdom about agricultural markets!
More specifically, a report issued by UNCTAD in 2008 confirms the 2008 crisis (4), on the structure of the crisis, by saying: It is not possible to “consider the food crisis merely as a result of recent factors such as the rise in oil prices or the fall in the price of the dollar, climatic conditions, speculative operations, or restrictions by some countries on exports or biofuel production, but is also a result of trends It is deeply rooted and long-term, resulting from changing demographic and consumption patterns and from years of structural failures of development strategies..; therefore, it is likely to continue indefinitely regardless of any short-term measures”, which confirms the depth of the crisis, not its transient character, as At the time, it was not the result of any of the reasons mentioned exclusively. Today, it is also not an accidental result of the Corona pandemic, nor of the Ukrainian crisis, nor even of the suppressed global crisis in the global economy that is suffering from inflation that is about to explode. actually list.
New protectionism: the implications of the Russian-Ukrainian war on the global food trade
Despite the geographical and military limitations of the Russian-Ukrainian war to date, its articulation within a global geopolitical conflict and East-West friction is at a critical stage of global tension associated with the decline of the dominant imperial position of the United States, and with it the Anglo-Saxon-Latin West in general in a way, in the face of the Chinese rise, within the state of It is the global contradiction between the infrastructure and the superstructure of the world system (5) , which made it the status of a mini-world war, or the real beginning of it, intensifying all the contradictions and fundamental conflicts of the contemporary world.
This is reflected in international trade, supply lines, and food prices through three different channels.
The first: direct political boycotts and associated economic sanctions, and the reactions to them; With its direct effects on financial, commercial and economic transactions in general, interruption, or at least high costs, of transportation and supply lines, and tensions and bottlenecks in the global financial and monetary systems that used to facilitate trade and supply lines.
Second: the indirect economic repercussions of those political boycotts; The resulting increase in energy prices in general has implications for transportation and food; As they are pivotal sectors, they have fundamental multiplier effects on all other sectors, especially with the great weight of conflict countries in all of these sectors. In the energy sector alone, Russia alone captures about 20% of natural gas exports globally.
The third: the critical size of the two conflicting countries in the agricultural, food and fertilizer market. Together, the two countries contribute about 12% of the total global food trade in terms of calories (6) . In more detail, about 34% of world wheat exports, 26% of barley exports, 17% of corn exports, 25% of sunflower seed exports, and more than 70% of sunflower oil exports, as shown in the following figure (2). In terms of fertilizers, Russia represents 15% of the world trade in nitrogen fertilizers and 17% of the global trade of potash, and Belarus, its ally targeted by similar sanctions, adds another 16%, and the total dependence on the two countries in addition to Ukraine increases to what may exceed 60% of them (7) .
Figure 2: Russia and Ukraine shares in the world trade of some basic food crops (8)
As direct effects only in the first month of the military operation, with no results yet visible on the expected new production cycles if they continue in the coming months, food markets witnessed severe fluctuations in basic crops in particular, such as wheat, corn, rice, soybeans, and even cotton, and the situation reached something like At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic (9) , and perhaps worse, the food price index rose to its highest level in its history, up by 12.6% from February to the beginning of April, driven by historic peaks in the prices of cereals, meat and vegetable oils (10) .
The effects were not limited to the two countries concerned, but included the imposition of restrictions on food exports from other countries since the military operation began in late February, so the number of those countries increased from 3 to 16 countries starting from the first of this April, collectively representing 17% of the total calories Thermocouple in circulation (11) . Figure 3 thus shows how the immediate impact of the Ukrainian crisis on global food trade exceeded the impact of both the global food crisis of 2008 and the first period of the Corona epidemic.
Figure 3: Effects of the Ukrainian crisis, Corona and the 2008 global food crisis on global food trade (12)
In sum: Whether it is the direct impact of the weight of the two countries directly involved in the conflict, with their critical importance in the global trade of the food market, or the indirect effects of the conflict as a whole, on the rest of the countries and their trade policies in that market; The world is on the verge of a food crisis of concern, whether in Ukraine itself or outside it, to the extent that David Basile, Executive Director of the United Nations Food Program, described it as an unprecedented situation since the Second World War (13) !
The fragility of the Arab and Egyptian nutritional situation
God bless the Arab region, which intersects with what international reports describe in the Middle East and North Africa, with a strategic location and great resources, but it lacked in most of it – in our recent geological age – wide fertile lands and abundant water, with the exception of the Fertile Crescent, the Nile River Basin and some other relatively small areas, The region is located within the largest desert in the world, the African Sahara; This has made the region one of the world’s poorest agricultural regions. While it contains about 5% of the world’s population, it possesses only less than 1% of its renewable fresh water, and among 20 countries around the world that receive less than 1,000 cubic meters of renewable fresh water per capita, located 15 countries, including in the Middle East and North Africa (14) .
This was reflected in the region’s ability to produce food, especially with its limited production and technological capabilities. What was shown in the lag of the average growth rate of agricultural production during the period 1990-2010 of 0.2% compared to that of the low- and middle-income group of 0.8% and the Asia and Pacific region of 1.4% (15) , and of course the Arab population growth rate, which ranges between 2.5 and 3 % over the past half century; To become “the region that in the past supplied the world with food, completely dependent on food imports just to survive,” and food imports would represent more than half of the region’s food consumption (16), so most Arab countries import between 25 and 50 percent of their food needs, and food imports represent the largest A share of the region’s imported products ranged between 11 and 34% of imports, and the Arab food import bill represents about 5% of the region’s GDP (17).
Arab countries rely heavily on grains for their food. They get about 35% of their daily calories from wheat alone. Cereal imports represent between 40 and 50% of consumption, and in some Arab countries such as Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Palestine they reach about 70%; What made the Arab region, in general, the largest importer of cereals in the world, and even as individual countries, many Arab countries occupy advanced positions among the world’s largest importers of cereals (18) .
This situation represents a huge burden on the Arab economic and social situation, as well as its political and strategic threats, on the one hand, in terms of excessive dependence on the outside, first, in the provision of such highly vital commodities, and secondly: on the one hand: on the one hand, the weak financial situation of most non-oil Arab countries, and in a joint report of the Group One of the leading international organizations on the Arab food situation, 2009 (19)In terms of food security, the Arab countries were classified into four categories, based on the possible combinations of two criteria, namely: the extent of food dependence on the outside and the solvency of the financial situation, as shown in the following figure (4), as there are no Arab countries in the most secure category , which are safe from “reliability/quantity” and “financial/price” risks together, while the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council fall in the category of food dependency but financially secure (they are exposed to quantity risks more than price risks, such as the risks of export bans and trade boycotts), followed by the group of countries Which suffers from financial weakness more than food dependency, which includes Egypt, Sudan and Syria (they suffer from price risks to a greater degree than from quantities), and then the last group of the worst situation, which suffers from both types of risks to a greater extent, namely: Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Morocco and Djibouti (they suffer from financial risks more than food dependency) quantities and prices together).
The seriousness of this situation is reflected in the affiliation of most Arab countries to the group of middle and low-income countries, representing about 90% of the population of the Arab region; The opportunity for the two mentioned criteria to come together increases, and their impact on price and quantity risks increases, with the increase in financial pressure on the one hand (such as Egypt and Lebanon for example), and the exacerbation of internal and external conflicts with their impact on economic stability and agricultural production in the weakest countries in the region on the other hand (such as Iraq) Palestine, Sudan and Yemen).
Indeed, the data indicate that there are actual signs of that meeting, as shown by the fact that the Middle East and North Africa is the only region in the world that has witnessed an increase in the proportion of undernourishment from 3.8 to 4.6% during the period 1990-2005 (21) , and it is conceivable that the This is the situation with the successive food crises throughout the period 2008-2010; What appeared in a report by the FAO that the level of hunger in the Arab world increased by 91.1% during the twenty years since 2000, and that about one third of the region’s population suffers from moderate or severe food insecurity in 2020 (22) . We can anticipate the extent of the situation and the awareness of its fragility, in the context of the current Ukrainian crisis, knowing that the Middle East and North Africa region imports more than 50% of its imports of cereals and a large share of wheat, barley and maize from Russia and Ukraine alone (23) .
As for Egypt, which serves as a relatively expressive case of the “average” of the Arab food situation, in its true raw form, the average per capita share of agricultural output tended to decline from its Arab and global counterpart, while it amounted between 2015 and 2020, respectively, about 373.9 and 306.1 dollars In the Arab world, and $402.2 and $416.8 globally, it decreased in Egypt from 393.1 to $285.4 per capita, with intermittent fluctuations, of course, but in a primary direction of decline (24) , which was accompanied by a slight decline in the average per capita calorie supply per day from 3388 to 3277 During the same period (25) , a steady rise in consumer price indices for main food commodities in Egypt coincided with it from 178.4 to 303.1 between 2016-2020 (26) .
The annual average food gap in Egypt during the period 2000-2017 is estimated at about 16 million tons of food, valued at 6 billion dollars, with a general trend of increasing throughout the period, so that the actual food gap for 2017 amounted to about 23 million tons, valued at 10 billion dollars, with expectations of an average That gap during the period 2018-2030 is about 25 million tons, with a value of 14 billion dollars (27) .
As for the extent of self-sufficiency in food, despite its different trends and differences between different crops, the most important of them at all, which are cereal crops, which include wheat, rice, barley, sorghum and fine corn, tended to decline from 69 to 45.6% during the period 2000-2018, and legumes likewise from 56.4 to 37.6%, while dairy, fruits, vegetables and starches improved by slight percentages, most of which do not compensate for the previous declines. The following table (1) shows in detail the trends of self-sufficiency in Egypt throughout the mentioned period.
Egypt ranked 62nd out of a total of 113 countries on the Food Security Index for 2021, with a moderate average of 60.8, and at varying rates among the sub-indicators. This disparity reflects conditions of pressure on resources and high dependence on the outside in providing food (29) . Egypt also ranked 56th out of a total of 116 countries on the Global Hunger Index for 2021, with a moderate rate of 12.5 that puts it in the somewhat safe category, down from a rate of 16.3 2000 (30)And moderate and severe malnutrition rates are consistent with poverty rates in Egypt throughout the period 2014-2020, between 27 and 33% of the population, while severe malnutrition independently revolves around an average of about 7% during the same period, and suffered from one fifth to a quarter of children under the age of five Throughout the 2000-2020 period of stunting (31) , all of which are acceptable compared to global and regional averages, but fragile given their dependence on a high component of food imports from abroad.
Thus, in general, Egypt and the Arab region in general are experiencing a real crisis in their raw food situation, a crisis that reaches the point of turning the agricultural sector into a burden and a real obstacle to development and economic development in general. An industry capable of progress, initially without strong agriculture, nor sustainable development without advanced industry, which is first confirmed by the logic of science, in terms of the central role of agriculture with its surpluses in financing industrial investment and its production in providing a basket of wage-goods at acceptable prices that reduce the costs of its labor, and secondly as an example. History, not to mention all the well-known historical experiences that we are not detailed in. Egypt did not experience a comprehensive, agricultural, pre-industrial decline, until after Sadat made his famous statement, originally inherited from the British occupation, that “Egypt is an agricultural country”!
However, this situation cannot, of course, be reduced to its purely “natural/technical” aspects. The restriction of resources and technology, however severe it is, does not alone explain a situation of this severity. Rather, it shares the playing field with the “social/institutional” aspect related to agricultural and food policies and the general management of the sector on its two sides, production and consumption. , together, with a substantial effect on the productive efficiency of resource use, the allocative efficiency of how output is distributed, and both the allocative efficiency of how those resources are initially allocated; What is all related to the sectoral-agricultural effects of the economic model followed in general, and its priorities and biases in particular, which we now move to approach in the context of a brief analysis of the historical and structural roots of the agricultural deficit, and consequently the food gap, in Egypt as a special case, significant and expressive of the situation.
Dimensions and roots of the agricultural deficit in Egypt
The crisis of agriculture in modern Egypt begins in the early twentieth century, when “traditional” agriculture reached its limits under the pressure of the iron law of diminishing returns. to be technically unable to move the economy in general (32)While it was framed from the social point of view by the pattern of exporting the single crop, which the British occupation imposed on the country, through social relations that are a mixture of commercial and usurious capitalism within the scope of exchange and semi-feudal production and family units within the scope of production; To establish many of the imbalances in the national economy, which they present on the one hand, the misallocation of resources by the control of the single crop at the time, cotton, over a significant percentage of agricultural employment, at the expense of the optimal allocation of resources that stems from local needs, and on the other hand, it relied on backward patterns of head control. The money on direct producers drains the economic surplus in the sector and displaces it, without encouraging the development of the sector technically and socially (33) .
At that time, a growing awareness developed of Egypt’s need for an agricultural revolution that would transfer it to modern agriculture, unless the dominant semi-feudal forces that had an interest in the continuation of the cotton economy in all its dimensions could accomplish it. The signs of the food crisis began as a product of the agricultural crisis, which was still a crisis of social organization rather than a crisis. Natural resources, so the first practices of food support were in the forties of the twentieth century, then the July revolution, which began with an attempt to revolutionize irrigation, at least in its quantitative aspect, with the High Dam project, the attempt quickly ended with the death of Abdel Nasser, and the crisis began to exacerbate, as we record Jamal Hamdan that “An agricultural revolution that did not accompany the irrigation revolution, and hence the failure of Egyptian agriculture to reach the limit of self-sufficiency, especially food sufficiency, and the problem of the food gap emerged sharply, and Egypt turned for the first time in its modern history, and perhaps in its entire history, into an importing country for food, food and grains after it was A traditionally exporting country, and for the first time, the famous historical saying turned grain from Egypt to Corn from Egypt to Corn to Egypt.(34) .
This situation came within an aggravating state of the material scarcity of the Gaza Strip’s resources, land and water, represented by what Muhammad Dowidar described as a state of “land hunger” (35) . From the French invasion until the early sixties, the population increased from 2.46 million to about 26 million, while it rose The area of arable land increased from 3.22 million acres to only 5.88 million acres during the same period, i.e. the population increased by approximately 956%, while the land only increased by 82% only (36) , a trend that continued despite all the attempts of agricultural reclamation that sought It has the revolution, which declined during the opening period and its aftermath, increasing the area of agricultural land to 10.3 million feddans compared to an increase in the population to 100 million people, in 2019 (37) , an increase of only 75% for the first compared to an increase of 285% for the second; Thus, the average agricultural area of the Egyptian citizen decreased to 0.1 feddan only.
Of course, the official version is trying to reduce the entire problem of Egyptian development – and not only agricultural – to the natural aspect, that is, to the rapid population growth, and the increasing pressure it represents on the limited – agricultural – resources. His acceptance in light of five clear symptoms and shortcomings, technical and social, reflecting the deviations of the economic model followed and the economic mismanagement in the beginning, in the light of which we can summarize, in that urgency that does not allow a comprehensive approach to the complex agricultural problem, the symptoms and structural dimensions of the weakness of the agricultural sector in general in Contemporary Egypt.
The first is the decrease in the average agricultural productivity, as a symptom of the continued technical and social backwardness of Egyptian agriculture, which first appears in the decrease in the share of the agricultural worker in the value added in the agricultural sector of $5,772 in 2019, compared to its already low average for the Arab region of the same year. the world $ 6,595 (38) , as well as the decrease in the sector’s contribution to the GDP, which amounted to about 11% of the output, compared to its contribution to total employment of 23.3%, in 2019 (39) ; Which was reflected in the decline in the agricultural economic efficiency index (40) for the country in the same world to reach 0.47% (41) , a decrease that experts explain by many factors, it is sufficient to know of them what is related to the most important technical elements of the agricultural production process; Let us deduce the overall state and business logic of the sector from the production point of view.
At the level of the agricultural land component, Egypt witnessed a significant deterioration in the average general productive efficiency of land; non-compliance with proper agricultural cycle system and agricultural land conservation and improvement policies; What appeared in the shrinkage of the area of “first-class” lands in the old lands from about 3 million feddans to only 978,000 feddans, or less than a third, during the period 1996-2005, compared to the increase in the area of “second-class” lands from about 33.6 to 41.8% during The same period, and the increase in the area of the “third degree” land from 1.25 million acres to 2.12 million acres, and the area of the “fourth degree” land nearly quadrupled, from 205 thousand acres to 816 thousand acres during the same period, which are dangerous rates in that relatively short period (42) .
In terms of scarce water resources, Egypt suffers from poor efficiency in its use. Although Egypt actually belongs to countries classified as water poverty countries, whose average per capita share is less than 600 cubic meters annually, it still uses traditional irrigation methods in most of its agricultural lands. What does not achieve the efficient economic use of water, as it is one of the most wasteful countries in the world in its use, as the efficiency of water transmission and distribution in Egypt does not exceed 70%, and even drops to 50% in field irrigation systems (43) .
Of course, such a weakness in the efficiency of the use of the two central resources in the agricultural production process would not have been exacerbated, had traditional technological methods not continued to dominate the sector in general; As a result of the small size of agricultural holdings, the ineffectiveness or absolute absence of agricultural cooperatives as a solution to this problem, in addition to the weak financial and technical capabilities of traditional farmers, with the continuation of the family production pattern in part, relying on labor-intensive production arts and animal power as an alternative to expensive machinery.
second: the inefficiency of the cropping structure as a reflection of the agricultural allocation pattern that does not reflect the best possible combination of agricultural production in the light of local needs; Because of the imposition of the neoliberal model on the agricultural sector in Egypt; With the consequent control of the export crops on the capitalist agriculture department, which is supposed to be the most developed department of Egyptian agriculture. Perhaps the control of the alfalfa crop over what reached about 25% of the agricultural land in Egypt is one of the most prominent early examples of this situation, without even being a crop with a comparative advantage Its productivity has risen, justifying the percentage that has persisted since the mid-seventies, which prompted the Minister of Agriculture at the time to limit his competence with a special statement showing the extent of the imbalance that the policy of economic openness in the field of agriculture led to; He stated that “we approached the figure of 1.8 million acres of alfalfa for a number of animals equivalent to one-seventh of the population, while we cultivate 1.4 million acres of wheat for about 35 million people.(44) , Of course, it is not the animal that takes the advantage, but the consumers of its meat who are able to pay for it, with their strong influence on price structures and agricultural profits, through capitalist allocation mechanisms intersected with political complicity and inefficiency in government agricultural policies of course, which were self-contradictory policies , whereby the state subjects the main traditional crops to the compulsory supply system, and buys them at administrative prices lower than their market value, keeping those prices relatively fixed with slight increases that are not commensurate with the increases in the prices of other crops that are not subject to that system (45) .
The third : the high costs of agricultural production, starting with its most important component, land; As a result of the intersection of the aforementioned “land hunger” with its liberation as a commodity of rent and ownership according to the logic of the aforementioned neoliberal model; What triggered a state of speculation on land, and the successive large increase in agricultural rents, as well as its abandonment and bulldozing to turn it into building lands, which there is no exaggeration in describing it as a strategic blow that hit the sector, which did what the dominance of trade in the industrial sector did, and what the rentier nature did in the economy in general.
The dominant commercial nature of the economy in general, in connection with the aforementioned neoliberal style and its dominant formula in Egypt as a peripheral country, has contributed through the proliferation of trading rings with their increasing and steady costs (46) , with the dominance of importers’ monopolies controlling many agricultural production inputs that the state has lifted its hand from supporting and providing (47) In raising the costs of agricultural production operations; It also contributed to the imbalance in the price structures of agricultural crops. Hence a distortion of the agricultural resource allocation process, even by purely market accounts.
The instability of the prices of the most important production requirements also contributed to the instability of costs and confusion of production accounts . % and 63.4% between 2000 and 2001 for example), similarly its counterpart for municipal fertilizer reached 34.47%, and for pesticides 60.34%, and it was only moderate for chemical fertilizer with a rate of 9.7%.
In addition to the above – which raises the final costs – the high percentage of crop losses; In order to reduce the market tradable net output and actual consumption, and in a study of the percentages of losses in the wheat crop during the period 1990-2013 (49) , the average ratio of wastage to local production of wheat during the period was about 17.8% annually, ranging between 11.05% as a minimum. and 35.89% as a maximum, and its average to wheat imports was about 18.8%, ranging between a minimum of 10.38% and a maximum of 49.15%, and by estimating the equivalent of that loss as agricultural resources in 2013 alone, land losses amounted to about 1.23 million feddan, lost about 18.39 million days of agricultural work, lost about 24.52 million man-hours in mechanical work, and lost about 2.56 billion cubic meters of water, which, when calculating all other types of losses, amounted to about 6.24 billion pounds in that year 2013 alone.
Fourth : the decline in agricultural production growth rates as a result of the sector’s neglect of investment and production. In a strange paradox, Sadat’s statements that “Egypt is an agricultural country” coincided in the mid-seventies with the first decline in investment interest in the sector; The state’s investments in agriculture declined from 16.6% of total investments in 1970 to 4.2% of them in 1980, corresponding to a drop to a quarter in just ten years; As it was negatively reflected, especially in light of the important role of public investment in the economy in general, on the total agricultural production, and the most dangerous on the technical base of the sector; Where the default lives of many agricultural machinery and equipment that were owned by agricultural cooperatives and the Agrarian Reform Authority have expired (50). No wonder this period, with this excessive neglect of agriculture combined with policies of chaotic opening, saw a rapid widening in the food gap, which rose from 1.7 million tons of food worth $984 million in 1970, to 7.4 billion tons worth $ 1.9 billion in 1980 (51 ) .
The three five-year plans during the period 1997-2012 recorded a continuous decline in the investments implemented in the sector, from 7.2 to 5.24 to 3.32% of the total investments, respectively; Which was reflected in the decline in the shares of agricultural product in the total GDP for the same period from 16.82 to 14.83 to 13.99%, respectively, and was also reflected in the increase in agricultural imports during the period, by 77.5% between the first and second plans, and 104.2% between the third two plans. And the second (52) .
It is the trend that continues to date, which appears in the trend of the development of the relative importance of investment in the agricultural sector during the period 2000-2018, as its total decreased by 73.4% from 12.89 to 3.43% of the total national investment, and at the level of its two components, public and private, the former decreased by 76.6% from From 9.21 to 2.15% of public investment, the second decreased by 69.3% from 16.48 to 5.06% of private investment, as shown in the following graph (5).
Fifth : The poor economic and social condition of the Egyptian farmers, as a reflection of the poor condition of the sector in general, and as a result of fundamental imbalances in the Egyptian agricultural, financial and monetary policies, in terms of both efficiency and justice. Small farmers, in addition to the dysfunctional relationship between the countryside and the city in Egypt, to the extent that poverty is considered a rural issue in it mainly, to the extent that one of the projects of geographical targeting of the poorest areas in Egypt at the end of the Mubarak period was known in the media as the “Thousand Villages” project (54) , according to a study by the Ministry of In the Egyptian planning period, it was noted for the period 1996-2000 that while every ten Egyptians six lived in the countryside, eight out of every ten poor people lived in it, and while every ten Egyptians four worked in agriculture, six out of every ten poor worked in it.(55) , a situation that continues despite the slight improvements here and there, as the average wage of the agricultural worker increased compared to the average wage in other sectors from 74 to 81% during the period 2010-2015, but it remains lagging among all sectors; Where it ranked twenty in 2015 accounts (56) .
We do not think that we need to expand on the discussion of the famous “peasant question” with a long history in Egypt in this narrow field, which, with its special importance, requires an independent approach within a more comprehensive discussion of the agricultural problem as a whole.
Conclusion: The inevitability of food sovereignty and the agricultural revolution
From a highly focused and succinct presentation of the roots of Egypt’s agricultural deficit; It turns out that the problem of agriculture in Egypt is only a part of, and an extension of, the problem of the entire Egyptian economic pattern, as a pattern that was unable to complete its structural transformation, with its two parts, independent industrial and agricultural revolution, that necessary transformation to address in one fell swoop the technical and social problems of the agricultural sector in Egypt, which has become a burden On development rather than being a starting point and supportive of it, as is evident from the unsustainability of the neoliberal model in agriculture based on the “food security through foreign trade” approach, in terms of the fragility of the model and the high risks associated with it in general, and in the contexts of the financial crisis of the peripheral countries with limited exports, such as Egypt in particular. Not to mention the new, rising protectionism, which is increasingly likely in times of international crisis and political tension, as we are experiencing these days with the Ukrainian crisis!
For all this, it is imperative for Egypt and the Arab region in general to adopt a different approach, within a systematic structural transformation process, based on “comprehensive food sovereignty” that aims to control the material conditions of society’s reproduction, including its material and social independence, at least, with the critical mass of its food base , by producing it under its control and within its lands and conditions, and by adopting a cooperative approach among the countries of the region, which compensates for all the scarcity of resources, and enhances the chances of achieving an agricultural revolution, moving the entire region from a “state” of scarcity to abundance, through the most efficient technical techniques and the most productive organization Rational, for the benefit of the productive majority of our Arab peoples.
About the author
Magdy Abdel Hadi
Economic Researcher.REFERENCE
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15 Jane Harrigan, The Political Economy of Food Sovereignty in the Arab Countries, p. 38.
16 Adam Haniyeh, The Roots of Anger.. The Present of Capitalism in the Middle East, translated by Amr Khairy, (Dar Safsafa for Publishing, Distribution and Studies, Cairo, 2020), p. 138.
17 Jane Harrigan, The Political Economy of Food Sovereignty in the Arab Countries, pp. 33-34.
18 Jane Harrigan, The Political Economy of Food Sovereignty in the Arab Countries, pp. 33-34.
19 World Bank; FAO; IFAD, Improving Food Security in Arab Countries (Arabic), )World Bank, Washington, DC., 2009(, p 11-12.
20 World Bank; FAO; IFAD, Improving Food Security in Arab Countries, p 12.
21 Jane Harrigan, The Political Economy of Food Sovereignty in the Arab Countries, p. 51.
22 “Report: Hunger in the Arab world has risen by more than 90% within 20 years,” United Nations News website, December 16, 2021, (accessed April 12, 2022): https://2u.pw/ J7Vhy .
23 Joseph Glauber and David Laborde, “How will Russia’s invasion of Ukraine affect global food security?”.
24 Arab Organization for Agricultural Development, Arab Food Security Situation 2020, Arab League, Cairo, p. 24.
25 Arab Organization for Agricultural Development, Status of Arab Food Security 2020, p. 27.
26 Arab Organization for Agricultural Development, Status of Arab Food Security 2020, p. 25.
27 Emad El-Din Zaki El-Hawary and others, “Assessment of the food security situation according to performance indicators within the Egyptian agricultural sector,” The Egyptian Journal of Agricultural Economics, (Egyptian Association for Agricultural Economics, Vol. 29, No. 4, December 2019), p. 1521.
28 Adel Al-Mahdi et al., “Food Security Challenges in Egypt under the 2030 Agricultural Development Strategy,” The Egyptian Journal of Agricultural Economics, (Egyptian Association for Agricultural Economics, Volume Thirty-One, Issue Four, December 2021), p. 1287.
29 The Economist Impact, Global Food Security Index, Egypt: https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-security-index….
30 Global Hunger Index, Egypt: https://www.globalhungerindex.org/egypt.html.
31 FAO, Near East and North Africa.. Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2021.. Statistics and trends, Cairo, 2021, p 30, 32.
32 Hazem El Beblawi, Economic Growth in Egypt: Impediments and Constraints (1974-2004), Commission on Growth and Development Working Paper, no. 14, (World Bank, Washington, DC., 2008), p 6.
33 Mohamed Dowidar, The Egyptian Economy between Underdevelopment and Development, (Egyptian Universities House, Alexandria, 1978, pp. 296-293).
34 Jamal Hamdan, The Personality of Egypt.. A Study in the Genius of Place, Part Three: The Integral Personality of Egypt, (Dar Al-Hilal, Cairo, 1994 AD), p. 51.
35 Mohamed Dowidar, The Egyptian Economy between Underdevelopment and Development, 223, 411.
36 Mohamed Magdy Abdel Hadi, Structural Change and Economic Growth in Egypt in the Period 1961-2010.. Analytical Study, Master’s Thesis, (Mansoura University, Egypt, 2017), p. 39.
37 ““Statistics”: The area of cultivated land increased to 10.3 million acres, an increase of 0.8%,” Amira Saleh, Al-Masry Al-Youm, Wednesday, December 23, 2020, (entry date: April 18, 2022): https://2u. pw/zriwm .
38 Arab Monetary Fund, Unified Arab Economic Report 2021, p. 320.
39 Arab Monetary Fund, Unified Arab Economic Report 2021, pp. 298, 314.
40 As shown in the text, the agricultural economic efficiency index is the product of dividing the “ratio of agricultural output to the gross domestic product” by the “ratio of the agricultural labor force to the total labor force”.
41 Arab Monetary Fund, Unified Arab Economic Report 2021, p. 320.
42 Agricultural Research and Development Council, Sustainable Agricultural Development Strategy 2030, (Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture, Cairo, January 2009), p. 6.
43 Abd al-Sattar Abd al-Hamid Muhammad al-Tarawi, “An economic study of the most important problems of Egyptian agriculture,” The Egyptian Journal of Agricultural Economics, (Egyptian Association for Agricultural Economics, Volume Twenty-Eighth, Issue Four, December (b) 2018), p. 2047.
44 Adel Ghoneim, The Egyptian Model of Dependent State Capitalism.. A Study of Economic and Class Changes in Egypt (1974-1982), (Arab Future House, Cairo, 1986), p. 390.
45 Adel Ghoneim, The Egyptian Model of Dependent State Capitalism, p. 390.
46 Saad Ibrahim Al-Sharif, “Commodity Circulation and Inflation Cycles in Egypt..An Analytical and Applied Study”, The Egyptian Journal of Commercial Studies, (Faculty of Commerce, Mansoura University, Vol. 13, No. 4, October 1989), p. 149-203.
47 “The Mafia of Agricultural Seeds in Egypt with Government Sponsorship,” Abdel Tawab Barakat, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, November 22, 2018, (accessed date: April 19, 2022): https://2u.pw/V2iej .
48 Nadia Fathallah Gomaa and Gamal Abdel Razek Manisi, “An Analytical Study of Food Security Indicators for the Most Important Grain Crops in Egypt,” The Egyptian Journal of Agricultural Economics, (Egyptian Association for Agricultural Economics, Volume 29, Issue No. 4, December (b) 2019) , p. 1950.
49 Adel Mohamed Khalifa Ghanem and Sahar Abdel Moneim Qamra, “The Impact of Wheat Waste on Agricultural Resources and Food Security in the Arab Republic of Egypt,” The Egyptian Journal of Agricultural Economics, (Egyptian Association for Agricultural Economics, Vol. 26, No. 1, March 2016), p. 114, 115.
50 Adel Ghoneim, The Egyptian Model of Dependent State Capitalism, p. 388.
51 Adel Ghoneim, The Egyptian Model of Dependent State Capitalism, p. 385.
52 Mohamed Mostafa Abdel-Aty Abdel-Fattah, “An Economic Analysis of the Performance of the Agricultural Sector in Egypt”, The Egyptian Journal of Agricultural Economics, (The Egyptian Society for Agricultural Economics, Vol. 25, No. 1, March 2015), p. 145.
53 Mervat Rafael Gerges Youssef, “The Efficiency of Agricultural Investment in the Arab Republic of Egypt,” The Egyptian Journal of Agricultural Economics, (Egyptian Association for Agricultural Economics, Volume Twenty-Ninth, Issue Two, June 2019), pp. 615-616.
54 “The Minister of Housing addresses “Qandil” to complete the Gamal Mubarak project for “A Thousand Villages”,” Wafaa Bakri, Al-Masry Al-Youm, Saturday, August 25, 2012, (entry date: April 20, 2022): https://2u.pw /tPwCn .
55 Khaled Ikram, The Egyptian Economy in Half a Century.. From the July Revolution to the End of the Millennium, translated and presented by Magdy Abdel Hadi, (Egyptian General Book Organization, Cairo, 2021), p. 408.
56 Waheed Ali Mujahid and Rania Muhammad Naguib Al-Derini, “Assessment of Some Economic and Social Indicators for the Sustainability of Egyptian Agriculture,” The Egyptian Journal of Agricultural Economics, (Egyptian Association for Agricultural Economics, Volume Twenty-Eighth, Issue Four, December 2018), p. 1854.
