CAIRO — Egypt is reawakening a decades-old agricultural mission in its Western Desert because it endeavors to feed its rising inhabitants and bridge a wide gap between meals manufacturing and consumption in it.
The Toshka project, Egypt’s first critical try and invade its huge desert, was launched by late President Hosni Mubarak in 1997.
The mission was Mubarak’s formidable plan to create the New Delta in the course of the desert and convey about financial growth that will impact constructive social change in his nation.
Mubarak spent 40 billion Egyptian kilos on the mission, establishing the required electrical energy vegetation and water pumping stations.
He distributed the land of the mission, round 540,000 acres, to native and Arab traders, hoping the non-public sector would drive reclamation efforts in it and spare his authorities the burden of offering the investments wanted by it.
Just a few years later, nevertheless, the mission got here to a screeching halt.
Mubarak-era ministers attribute the failure of the mission to the shortage of mandatory investments and political will.
The mission had slipped into oblivion since then, being overtopped by Egypt’s political developments, together with Mubarak’s 2011 downfall and the turmoil that swept by way of it after this.
Nonetheless, in October 2020, incumbent President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered the revival of the mission and specified 6.4 billion Egyptian kilos (round $413 million) for the wanted infrastructure, respiratory new life into nationwide hopes for turning the desert inexperienced.
“Reclaiming extra land, together with within the desert, has all the time been an vital technique to increase food production,” Essam Seyam, an agricultural economics professor at Cairo College, instructed Al-Monitor.
The mission is simply a small element within the bigger image of Egypt’s wrestle to safe meals for its rising inhabitants and scale back meals imports.
Egypt was as soon as the breadbasket of the Roman Empire. Now, nevertheless, it’s the world’s largest wheat importer.
The Arab nation’s list of food imports is infinite, and invading the desert has turn into one in all its most vital choices to feed the rising inhabitants, specialists like Seyam say.
Positioned round 225 kilometers southwest of the Higher Egyptian metropolis of Aswan, Toshka will act as a hyperlink between a number of Western Desert oases.
The mission will give attention to the manufacturing of vital crops corresponding to wheat, maize, cotton and oil.
It’ll additionally embody the Center East’s largest date palm farm that can cowl 37,000 acres.
The farm will comprise 2.3 million date palms, 1.35 million of which have already been planted over 21,000 acres.
Sisi’s agricultural enlargement plan goals to compensate for the land Egypt misplaced prior to now a long time within the Nile Valley and Delta to its city crush and produce extra meals for the nation’s growing population.
The scheme aspires to extend Egypt’s farmland to round 9.5 million acres from 8 million acres at current.
It’s to be carried out throughout Egypt, together with within the Sinai Peninsula and in different components of the Western Desert.
One of many tasks inside the enlargement plan is positioned within the northwestern a part of Egypt.
Extending over half 1,000,000 acres of land, the mission, known as Future of Egypt, has already begun yielding produce.
A contemporary street community was established near the mission to ease the transport of its produce to totally different cities.
One other mission consists of the institution of 100,000 greenhouses in several components of Egypt for the manufacturing of greens and fruit.
“Agricultural enlargement tasks inside this plan are essential for growing the nationwide meals manufacturing, given Egypt’s rising inhabitants,” Naeem Moselhi, an adviser to the minister of agriculture and land reclamation, instructed Al-Monitor. “These tasks are additionally vital for lowering meals imports.”
Egypt misplaced a few of its most fertile land within the Nile Valley and Delta as a result of its city enlargement over the a long time.
The Arab nation has misplaced round 400,000 acres of farmland since 1980, together with 90,000 acres since 2011, in response to Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli.
Sisi expressed shock on the tempo of farmland destruction in August 2020 when he ordered the Egyptian military to take away buildings constructed illegally on farmland.
In late December 2021, he suggested his countrymen to cease establishing residential buildings and save their cash within the nation’s banks as a substitute.
Nonetheless, Egypt’s want to make up for the farmland it misplaced alongside the Nile by invading the desert shall be removed from straightforward, specialists say.
Turning the sands of the desert inexperienced requires a fortune, which could decelerate progress in a number of the agricultural enlargement tasks declared by Sisi’s administration up to now, they add.
“The non-public sector shall be instrumental in advancing reclamation tasks, however after the federal government offers these tasks with the required infrastructure,” Seyam stated.
Sisi invited the non-public sector to companion together with his authorities in implementing growth tasks greater than as soon as prior to now interval, together with most just lately in late December when he inaugurated a collection of latest tasks in southern Egypt.
Funding will not be the biggest obstacle dealing with the Egyptian chief’s aspiring agricultural enlargement tasks. Water is, specialists say.
With 60 billion cubic meters of annual water revenues, together with 55.5 billion cubic meters from the Nile River — a supply threatened by Ethiopia’s building of a huge dam over the Nile — Egypt has no water to spare for agriculture enlargement, particularly with the nation struggling a deficit of round 20 billion cubic meters.
Prior to now few years, Sisi’s administration spent tens of billions of kilos on water treatment and seawater desalination vegetation to partially bridge the water deficit and make up for scarce water.
“Our restricted water sources will all the time be a serious problem on the street to increasing farmland,” Hussein al-Atfi, the previous minister of irrigation, instructed Al-Monitor. “We will solely develop this farmland by discovering untraditional sources of water, together with by way of treating wastewater.”
Most of Egypt’s agricultural enlargement tasks rely on agricultural wastewater after its remedy.
Among the farmland cultivated inside the Toshka mission will rely on overflow within the reservoir of the Excessive Dam in southern Egypt.
This water shall be channeled to the mission by the Sheikh Zayed Canal, which has a capability for five.5 billion cubic meters of water yearly, the Egyptian authorities says.
This water, it provides, shall be sufficient to irrigate the mission and contribute to meals manufacturing in Egypt.
“We hope this mission and others can improve the manufacturing of vital crops and assist us cease importing them from different international locations,” Moselhi stated.
