Egypt is attempting to take big steps to boost its agriculture sector with several big projects already underway all with the purpose of increasing the number of cultivated areas to more than 9.7 million feddans. This is not to say that the country lacks agricultural land, several feddans of land are already in use for agricultural purposes especially ones populated around the Nile Delta, considered the most fertile area in all of Egypt.
The issue lies in the fact that to meet the demands of the increasing population many of these farming areas end up overtaken and overrun by a plethora of housing projects that end up placing the land in danger of depreciation and erosion.
To fare with the loss of agricultural land, the country had to heavily depend on food imports especially wheat, maize, oats, rice and barely that would come from countries like Brazil and Argentina. That is why since 2015 the state began to take action and initiate a land reclamation project with the starting goal of reclaiming 1 million feddans of land.
Since then, several mega agriculture projects came into formation, the biggest being the New Delta Project that kicked off at the beginning of 2021. The project involved the reclamation of an area of land consisting of 1 million feddans that will be called the “New Delta”. The plan is for this piece of land to be home to a rich variety of crops including wheat, corn and vegetables as well as providing job opportunities for more than 5 million citizens.
In the same vein, the State has also kicked off the North and Central Sinai Development Project in 2021. Several pieces of land have been selected in central and north Sinai to be cultivated and used as areas devoted to agriculture. Each of these targeted areas will be provided with water that will be transferred using pumping stations, irrigation water pipelines and other channels.
With all these initiatives, so far, the projects have made good progress in improving agriculture as stated on Friday by the Spokesman for the Agriculture Ministry Mohamed Al Qersh:
“The new agricultural projects have contributed to the availability of many crops due to increasing productivity to 18 ardebs per feddan (1 ardeb is equivalent to 150kg)”
Mohamed Al Qersh Via Egypt Independent
The country will continue its efforts as it has already set a big target for itself of increasing agricultural production by 30% in 2024 as well as boosting the agriculture sector’s GDP contribution by 12%.
