Food Security Concerns and Sustainable Agricultural Production in Egypt

Abstract

Agriculture is one of Egypt’s most important sectors and a principal economic and social concern. The challenge to Egypt’s agriculture is to sustainably expand agricultural production to meet escalating domestic demand for food and serve as a pathway out of poverty. However, the agricultural sector faces many difficulties and challenges that have characterized the sector in recent decades. This paper outlines the key characteristics of Egypt’s agriculture and the significant threats to agricultural production and productivity. Besides, it summarizes current trends in productivity growth rates of the major grain crops. The overall objective of the article is to analyze the impact of food security concerns on agriculture sustainability in Egypt and the consequences of unsustainable agriculture systems on food security. The nexus of food security concerns – the growing number of poor people, increasing demand for food, escalating food prices, resource constraints to increase food production, struggling economy, and the burden of food imports- has stimulated agricultural intensification. On the other hand, unsustainable cropping systems could lead to the exhaustion of scarce water resources, deterioration of soil fertility, and pollution of water and land resources. Such consequences caused by agricultural intensification jeopardize Egypt’s ability of food production into the future.