Egypt is, perhaps, a unique example of a country where agriculture in general and food production and security in particular, are totally synonymous with water. The Nile river provides 96% of the country’s water resources and population is concentrated in areas where both urban settlements and irrigated areas can receive and make use of the Nile waters.
The country depends on a more or less fixed amount of water (fully generated outside the country itself) which, if anything, is more likely to be diminished by climate change and development in upstream riparian countries than the other way around. As a result of unabated population growth (1.64% annually), most publications on water in Egypt will conventionally start with stressing that per capita water (and land) endowments are decreasing (which is a truism for all countries in the world).
Although as early as the mid 1980s Egypt was already importing half of its needs in grain, the pursuit of ‘self sufficiency’ in wheat has long been a recurring rallying political motto, despite the plain evidence that it will remain an elusive target. Some have also questioned the self-sufficiency objective, especially if cheaper food is available on the world market. But because of the political situation in the Middle East and of the vulnerability of Egypt to sudden increases in food prices, Egyptian politicians beg to differ. Expanding cultivation, whether in marginal areas within the delta, on its western and Eastern fringes, or more recently in the western deserts, has remained a constant objective, with investment costs obscured by the stated priority to settle populations and produce food for the country.
Whatever the rationale put upfront, this land expansion strategy has also been fuelled and sustained by a web of political and financial interests that cut across land reclamation administrations, economic elites and foreign investors. Some have questioned whether the irrigation with fossil water of bersim produced by Gulf investors for export and consumption by their cattle, or the direct export of non-processed fruits and vegetables, are the best use of national water reserves. With regard to the expansion of cultivation on the two sides of the delta (including northern Sinai, across the Suez Canal), increasing crop production (i.e. evapotranspiration) without reducing it in already existing areas means reducing the amount of water disposed of to the sea. This can be done by reducing deliveries (which means that the efficiency of distribution has to be improved and that return flows to the drain will be reduced and consequently more saline), re-injecting water from primary or secondary drains into irrigation canals to enhance supply, treating and reusing waste water that cannot be used at the moment because of too high pollution levels, and abstracting groundwater (from shallow aquifers replenished by seepage from plots and waterways, but at the cost of a shift in salinity iso-lines inland).
All these options are already well exploited. Out of the 55-60 billion cubic meters released each year by the High Aswan dam, around 12 billion are currently pumped out to the sea. One is tempted to think that there is still a 20% margin of possible water savings but this is misleading: several assessments and modeling exercises have indicated that it is not considered possible to reduce the outflow to the sea under a value of around 8.5-9.5 billion m3. Water primarily needs to be pumped out to maintain the water level in the drainage system 2.5 m below the level of the land; and to flush out salts and pollutants before they reach unacceptable concentrations. The plain conclusion is that although efficiency improvements are still possible and desirable at the margin (~3 billion m3, or 5% of dam releases), it is not possible to expand irrigation without reducing crop evapotranspiration in the delta, especially considering that some reclaimed areas are already water short or even left fallow. The current loss of arable land to urbanization –commonly taken at 16000 ha/year for the country- has increased several fold since the revolution, and provides the only sound rationale for a future (moderate) expansion.
The Ministry of Agriculture, in its Sustainable Agricultural Development Strategy towards 2030, has entertained hopes that up to 10 billion m3 could be ‘saved’ by plot-level irrigation improvements; and has called for massive investments in micro-irrigation with the promise that savings could be used to expand agricultural areas. This is widely commented by high-level irrigation officials and experts as being a profound misunderstanding of water realities in Egypt, while also indicating that consistency between sectoral policies remains to be achieved.
In conclusion food production or security in Egypt cannot be radically increased by further expansion of agricultural land. It has to come from reductions in the yield gap by better agronomic practices, more uniform on-farm water application and better rotations between secondary canals, maintenance or rehabilitation of the sub-surface drainage network, enhanced economic attractiveness of food crops vs. other crops, and reduction of post-harvest losses. In sum, doing better with the existing, rather than over-stretching efforts, capital, and water supply.
