Egypt sows seed for revolution in its impoverished agricultural industry

Cairo: On a narrow strip of ploughed land west of Cairo, agricultural labourers move slowly up the brown furrows, bent double as they sow the new season's wheat.

They are working for Samir Abdul Fattah, a smallholder. He says he is "quite well-off" because he owns a tractor and equipment for lifting water from the canal that runs alongside his land.

Abdul Fattah rents 17 acres distributed in small parcels around the area. He grows wheat, corn and berseem, an Egyptian variety of clover used to feed livestock.

"I can't afford to put any more money into farming," says Abdul Fattah. "Something like a greenhouse for instance would require water and electricity. I couldn't afford it. "We consider that if we have enough money for dinner we are doing well."

Smallholders such as Abdul Fattah make up the majority of farmers in Egypt. Most are unable to accumulate the surpluses needed to invest in modernising their farms, gain access to better markets or process produce in order to add value and increase their income. As a result, much of rural Egypt remains stuck in poverty.

But now, in an attempt to improve farmers' livelihoods, the Egyptian government is preparing legislation aimed at opening up agriculture to investment.

"Farmers have to have the tools to enable them to increase their incomes," says Ameen Abaza, the minister of agriculture. "But this won't happen as long as they remain smallholders.

"They have to come together as part of a strong entity, and the only such entities we now have are the farmers' co-operatives. So improving them is key to any reform."

Co-operatives have long been used as tools for political mobilisation in the Egyptian countryside, but Abaza says they will be restructured so that they can play an economic role.

"For instance, so far it has not been possible for a company which makes tomato paste to go to a farmers' co-operative and contract them to grow tomatoes," says the minister. "It was not permitted.

"But after the law, the co-operative will even be able to own a stake in the company making the paste. A co-operative [will be able to] own distribution outlets or collaborate with others to export."

It is an irony that Egypt's agricultural exports have been steaming ahead, fuelled by an increase in the output of new farms reclaimed from the sands of the desert over the last two decades rather than by the produce of the age-old fertile lands of the Nile delta and valley.

But unlike the old smallholdings, the desert farms can extend over thousands of acres. They use modern technology to grow high-value crops, such as fruit and vegetables for export to Europe and elsewhere.

Ownership of the traditional lands was fragmented by socialist laws introduced after Jamal Abdul Nasser's 1952 revolution that overthrew the monarchy. Big private estates were broken up and small plots were distributed to poor peasants. Holdings became tinier as land was passed down through generations of children and grandchildren.

"We are four brothers farming just two acres which we inherited," says Shahin Mohammad Shahin, another farmer from the village of Ausim, west of Cairo. "Fertiliser and seeds are too expensive."

But turning Egypt's traditional farmers into modern entrepreneurs is not going to be an easy task.

"People are still very individualistic," Abaza says. "They will have to learn how to work together. At the moment, farmers still argue about who gets to water his land first. We will have to use the logic of what is in everybody's interest rather than force people to do things."

Not least of the challenges is winning farmers over to modern irrigation methods that use less water. Traditional agriculture depends almost totally on the Nile, but the country's share of its water is limited by international agreements.

"Reforming irrigation is essential," says Abaza. "We can't have land which uses 10,000 to 12,000 cubic metres of water when it only needs 4,000 or 5,000."

Much water is lost through the traditional style of irrigation, which involves flooding an entire surface.

Modern methods used in the reclaimed farms have demonstrated that it is possible to achieve high productivity while delivering exactly the right amount of water. This, however, requires investments in irrigation systems.

The government is about to start a trial of a $5.4 billion, project over 10 years to overhaul irrigation across the country. "This will be totally paid for by the new land we will be able to reclaim from the savings in water consumption," says Abaza.

- Financial Times