Why Can't Egypt Feed Itself?

dumpthemonarchy

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Here's an article saying the USA should do more about global food security. I doubt they will make an impact.



How about Egyptians growing more of their own food? Not smart enough? Too busy worrying about Israel? Too busy arresting and torturing each other? Worried whether that invisible Allah dude will approve?

Opinion: U.S. must do more for global food security - Catherine Bertini and Dan Glickman - POLITICO.com

U.S. must do more for global food security





By CATHERINE BERTINI & DAN GLICKMAN | 5/24/11 9:16 AM EDT

How do you feed 10 billion people? It is not just a humanitarian question, but a vital U.S. national security imperative.

A recent U.N. report projects a 46 percent population increase by 2100. Africa, home to more than a quarter of the world’s undernourished people and more than 20 violent conflicts in the past half century, is predicted to more than double its population. We must not only consider how to feed all of these people — but what it means if we can’t.

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Food commodity prices are at record highs, leading to instability in already volatile regions. The Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review warns that factors like “climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity” even more in future, leading to “further weakening of fragile governments.”

Clearly, there is reason for the U.S. to get even more aggressive in addressing global food security. Food supply stresses represent an increasing national security threat and are not going away.

These increasing food prices are one likely catalyst of the Middle East upheaval. Last August, for example, Russia banned all wheat exports — including 600,000 tons of outstanding Egyptian orders. Egyptian food prices spiked dramatically – in a country where food is already 38 percent of consumer expenditures, compared to 13 percent in the U.S.

Washington cannot allow food insecurity to exacerbate instability in already volatile regions. We are not doing all that must be done. U.S. policymakers are taking the right, first steps, according to our new report, but more resources as well as long-term commitment are needed.

We are issuing a report card on U.S. efforts to alleviate global hunger and poverty through agricultural development programs. Washington received an overall grade of just B-.

The U.S. has earned praise since 2009 for progress on USAID effectiveness, interagency coordination and support for agricultural education and infrastructure, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
 
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dumpthemonarchy

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The media always talk how expensive food is getting for these people. Maybe it might get cheaper if they grew their own. Then they wouldn't seem so much like crazy and dangerous brown people.

I find it hard to blame the imperialist/capitlaist running dogs for this problem. If you don't want to feed yourself adequately, and play a role in your own food security, don't look at me.
 

MHz

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Probably because the US has been the biggest influence in the last 30 years, they only care if the top 3% of the population gets enough to eat. Food is a better weapon than a big stick., if the population is kept close to starvation levels then they can't get too uppity or that trickle dries up.
 

dumpthemonarchy

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Probably because the US has been the biggest influence in the last 30 years, they only care if the top 3% of the population gets enough to eat. Food is a better weapon than a big stick., if the population is kept close to starvation levels then they can't get too uppity or that trickle dries up.

A little too geopolitically complicated of an answer.

Not everything in the world revolves what they think in the US State Dept or the White House. The latter two orgs only really care about Israel in the mIddle east, and Israel never seems to have food issues like Egypt does. The pop. of Egypt is not starving, they are doing okay, but are too vulnerable. These feeble countries could also blame Mossad too for this. The Israeli secret service gets blamed for everything else.
 

Dexter Sinister

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Pretty much just the Nile Valley and delta are arable, but that's some of the richest and deepest topsoil on the planet, or it was before the Aswan High Dam was built and the annual flooding stopped. I think with a little organization Egypt could probably supply all of Europe with fresh fruit all year 'round, instead what I've generally found in the few European cities I've visited is that the fruit usually comes from Israel. The Israelis know how to run an economy, nobody else in the region does. I've long suspected envy might be a factor in much of the current strife there.
 

CUBert

Time Out
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Egypt, struggling to consolidate a revolution that deposed President Hosni Mubarak in February, faces what could be even worse turmoil because the country is running out of food as well as the money to buy it. "The most populous country in the Arab world shows all the symptoms of national bankruptcy -- the kind that produced hyperinflation in several Latin American countries during the 1970s and 1980s -- with a deadly difference: Egypt imports half its wheat and the collapse of its external credit means starvation," Asia Times Online observed May 10.

"The civil violence we have seen … foreshadows far worse to come. The Arab uprisings began against a background of food insecurity, as rising demand from Asia priced the Arab poor out of the grain market. "The chaotic political response, though, threatens to disrupt food supplies in the relative near term. Street violence will become the norm rather than the exception in Egyptian politics."

This bleak assessment in Asia Times Online's Spengler column was underlined by a warning from Ahmad al-Rakaibi, head of Egypt's Holding Company for Food Industries, of "acute shortage in the production of food commodities manufactured locally as well as a decline in imports of many goods, especially poultry, meat and oil." Egypt is reported to have only four months' supply of wheat on hand and only one month's supply of rice.

Rising food prices is a global problem but the Middle East is particularly at high risk because of chronically high levels of unemployment and low incomes. Mushrooming populations are an added factor. Arab countries have among the highest population growth rates in the world. The overall Arab population was 73 million in 1950. Today, it's more than four times that at 333 million. It will nearly double again by 2050, to around 600 million.

The regional states have little arable land and even less water and worsening climate change will make their food situation even more precarious. "Arab countries are very vulnerable to fluctuations in international commodity markets because they are heavily depe

Post-Mubarak Egypt 'running out of food'
 

dumpthemonarchy

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Pretty much just the Nile Valley and delta are arable, but that's some of the richest and deepest topsoil on the planet, or it was before the Aswan High Dam was built and the annual flooding stopped. I think with a little organization Egypt could probably supply all of Europe with fresh fruit all year 'round, instead what I've generally found in the few European cities I've visited is that the fruit usually comes from Israel. The Israelis know how to run an economy, nobody else in the region does. I've long suspected envy might be a factor in much of the current strife there.

Blaming food woes on the Aswan dam and little arable land is only part of the problem I think. To improve the situation would take some planning, and this is not something military dictatorships do well. They arrest, shoot and torture well though.

So it has come to this. With the USA supporting a dictatorship so Israel can prosper, Egypt is on a slow, steady, and guaranteed path to food insecurity, and all the immense "global" problems that will create. Egypt and about 50 other countries too. tick tick tick
 

damngrumpy

Executive Branch Member
Mar 16, 2005
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Unfortunately the food security system, domestic and globally is nothing more than a publicity
stunt and has little to do with the reality of food security. Most Canadians don't understand
we as farmers are subject to food safety regulations that farmers pay for. That is fine but the
fact still remains that the food coming into Canada from else where is not subject to the same
standards of regulation. America is facing the same problem, so before the world suggests
that America do more, I suggest the emerging nations should do Some it is more than they
are doing now.
Egypt can't feed itself because the have a large population in a concentrated area and the rest
of the country is desert. The nation in many cases has built their homes and commercial
buildings on the agricultural land that would support the food supply, combine that with the fact
their agricultural practices need to modernize, and you soon have a food shortage, that never
catches up with the demand.
 

Bar Sinister

Executive Branch Member
Jan 17, 2010
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Actually very few nations are net food exporters and even nations like Canada and the USA which export more food than they sell are heavy importers of many products. Canada's reason for imports is obvious in that it is a country that uses many tropical and subtropical products without producing any of them.

Even nations that actively protect domestic food producers like Japan tend to import more food than they export. As Tonnigton pointed out the answer for the most part is quite simple; there is a global shortage of farmland. Most of the world is simply too dry, too rugged, or too cold to produce much in the way of food. Again Canada is a good example of this. In spite of possessing an area of about 10 million square km. Canada can only farm about five percent of that. In spite of improvements in agricultural techniques this is unlikely to change very much in the next decade or so. The result is that about two-thirds of the world depends on other nations for basic foodstuffs even though many of those nations are also exporters of some food commodities.
 

petros

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Nov 21, 2008
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Lack of expensive anhydrous ammonia fertilizer.

Should we send a tanker full and watch them meet all their needs and be able to export wheat to compete against Canada, US and the EU too?


Naaaaah
 

ironsides

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Feb 13, 2009
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Here's an article saying the USA should do more about global food security. I doubt they will make an impact.

How about Egyptians growing more of their own food? Not smart enough? Too busy worrying about Israel? Too busy arresting and torturing each other? Worried whether that invisible Allah dude will approve?


Opinion: U.S. must do more for global food security - Catherine Bertini and Dan Glickman - POLITICO.com



U.S. must do more for global food security




Record food commodity prices are leading to instability in volatile regions, the authors say. | Reuters Close



By CATHERINE BERTINI & DAN GLICKMAN | 5/24/11 9:16 AM EDT

How do you feed 10 billion people? It is not just a humanitarian question, but a vital U.S. national security imperative.
A recent U.N. report projects a 46 percent population increase by 2100. Africa, home to more than a quarter of the world’s undernourished people and more than 20 violent conflicts in the past half century, is predicted to more than double its population. We must not only consider how to feed all of these people — but what it means if we can’t.

Continue Reading Text Size
Food commodity prices are at record highs, leading to instability in already volatile regions. The Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review warns that factors like “climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity” even more in future, leading to “further weakening of fragile governments.”





Clearly, there is reason for the U.S. to get even more aggressive in addressing global food security. Food supply stresses represent an increasing national security threat and are not going away.

These increasing food prices are one likely catalyst of the Middle East upheaval. Last August, for example, Russia banned all wheat exports — including 600,000 tons of outstanding Egyptian orders. Egyptian food prices spiked dramatically – in a country where food is already 38 percent of consumer expenditures, compared to 13 percent in the U.S.

Washington cannot allow food insecurity to exacerbate instability in already volatile regions. We are not doing all that must be done. U.S. policymakers are taking the right, first steps, according to our new report, but more resources as well as long-term commitment are needed.

We are issuing a report card on U.S. efforts to alleviate global hunger and poverty through agricultural development programs. Washington received an overall grade of just B-.

The U.S. has earned praise since 2009 for progress on USAID effectiveness, interagency coordination and support for agricultural education and infrastructure, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Aswan dam took care of that by blocking the Nile, no more yearly floods replenishing the land. If it awsen't for the U.S. giving away our food surplus's the world will be much worse. Greedy little mites, do not appreciate what they do get.
 

JLM

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Nov 27, 2008
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Pretty much just the Nile Valley and delta are arable, but that's some of the richest and deepest topsoil on the planet, or it was before the Aswan High Dam was built and the annual flooding stopped. I think with a little organization Egypt could probably supply all of Europe with fresh fruit all year 'round, instead what I've generally found in the few European cities I've visited is that the fruit usually comes from Israel. The Israelis know how to run an economy, nobody else in the region does. I've long suspected envy might be a factor in much of the current strife there.

Spuds will pretty well grow anywhere and like a dry climate, but to do so might require pumping some water from the Nile.

Lack of expensive anhydrous ammonia fertilizer.

Should we send a tanker full and watch them meet all their needs and be able to export wheat to compete against Canada, US and the EU too?


Naaaaah

Why not if there's a shortage where Canada the U.S. and Europe can't supply the demand?
 

MHz

Time Out
Mar 16, 2007
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If they eliminated some cotton would that solve the food problem.

(in part)
Apart from crude oil and petroleum [COLOR=#640000 !important][FONT=inherit !important][COLOR=#640000 !important][FONT=inherit !important]products[/FONT][/FONT][/COLOR][/COLOR], the country also exports metal products, cotton, textiles and chemicals. Before World War II, cotton made up 90% of Egypt's exports, while cotton textiles had grown to 16% of exports by 1970. By 1985, however, oil had come to dominate trade, making up around 80% of exports.
http://www.economywatch.com/world_economy/egypt/export-import.html

If the Thames can have flood gates the Nile could have a series of low gates that could cause the land to flood as it did in the past.
Getting water from a river is free once it is installed. The Nile would me much more efficient.

YouTube - ‪WATERWHEEL PUMP‬‏
 
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MHz

Time Out
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Do the silts help the Mississippi in the years flooding can be held back? The floods don't help if the later times are dry, irrigation water would overcome that and the crops could be growing during the time that the floods would normally make the land unusable.
 

TenPenny

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Jun 9, 2004
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Do the silts help the Mississippi in the years flooding can be held back? The floods don't help if the later times are dry, irrigation water would overcome that and the crops could be growing during the time that the floods would normally make the land unusable.

Actually, the reason that NewOrleans is sinking is the lack of silts coming down the river in the last 50 to 100 years.

You could consider recent events in Manitoba just a refreshing of the land.