Why Can't Egypt Feed Itself?
- Thread starter dumpthemonarchy
- Start date
Just because you don't hear about it, doesn't mean it isn't happening. My college statistics professor has a project in Ethiopia, his home country. The first project was completed successfully; it developed a curriculum and expanded the class sizes for students to learn modern agricultural methods. The second project is ongoing, with a focus on reducing post-harvest losses and value added agriculture.
Read here:
Projects
Are you actively searching out information? It's out there.
Ethiopians grow some of the best wheat on tiny little plots with minimal impact and they export huge amounts.
Africa, if farmed properly, could feed the entire world all by it's self.
Africa, if farmed properly, could feed the entire world all by it's self.
It is not quite as simple as you might believe to modernize agriculture. First, small inefficient farms have to be taken away from the traditional farmers. In a country like Egypt that would mean dispossessing millions of people of their livelihood. Considering the unemployment is already very serious problem in Egypt this might not be the best solution. The history of what has been called the Agricultural Revolution that took place in 18th and 19th century Europe was one of extreme hardship for those driven off the land. In fact it was one of the factors that drove hundreds of thousands of migrants to Canada and the United States. In Egypt there is no place for dispossessed farm families to go except into the country's already overcrowded cities.
Other factors in Egypt not having surpluses to export is the fact that it has a population of over 80 million people in a country the size of Ontario and that only 5% of the country is arable. Interestingly, Egypt does export some agricultural commodities, especially cotton, a product that cuts into the amount of land that could be used for food production, as well as a variety of fruit and vegetable crops.
I doubt donkey's can pull an anhydrous ammonia tank when seeding.
Seeding...now there is something I'd like to be doing.
Seeding...now there is something I'd like to be doing.
It has to be on a large scale, to have surpluses, otherwise they are stuck when a famine occurs.Every part of the world has natural disasters, the prairies have floods, we're not immune. But African countries don't look for large, they are often very local, as someone five miles away speaks a different language, and then someone ten miles away speaks another language, so there is no unity there. Sure, there are some successes.
It's not simple to modernize and their is great resistance to it, and in a country like Egypt, tradition is very strong, even if it works against the greater good. Those traditional, small farms are not going to be able to feed a growing population. A population that does not seem to be getting more productive, more mouths to feed with less land to feed them.
It seems to me Egypt's population is not going to stop growing, but it will not industrialize any time soon. They seem to be on a downward spiral.
Did we go from horse drawn plows to GPS guided tractors overnight?
No. They have to start somewhere, and despite your objections to the contrary, there is progress.
Way back some nearly 70 years ago an industrial giant ran an entire war on bio fuels and gases. Ethanol for airplanes, bio diesel for tanks and Brown's gas for everyone else.
Nat gas assisted two stroke bio-diesel tractors are the answer for developing countries. Lots of power, efficient, very light weight, easy to maintain and repair as well as super reliable. They won't pull 60ft air drills at 18 mph which is nearly 1500ft² per sec like my rig but a 60ft air drill can easily be scaled to size and up efficiency, and reduce soil erosion, fertilizer/fuel consumption with a 12ft rig.
Pioneers on the prairies were successful because they pooled their resources through co-ops which increased buying and selling power leaving no-one left to have to haggle their own price.
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You are quite right that resistance to modernization of agriculture is strong. In fact in many supposedly modern regions of the world, such as Japan and Europe there are still many farmers who work on what many Canadians and Americans would regard as glorified backyard gardens. That is why in Japan almost 20% of the population is still engaged in farming, compared to only 4% in Canada. The situation is similar in Europe with a much higher percentage of the population engaged in agriculture. The policy question all nations have to ask is what sort of system do they want to go with? Do they want a country in which small farmers can still earn a decent living or do they want one in which mega-farms dominate and there is no room for anyone struggling along on less than 500 hectares?
Currently there is an ugly trend in many developing nations in which large agricultural conglomerates are moving in and acquiring control of vast tracts of land. These large commercial farms force traditional farmers off the land and introduce cash crops desired by industrialized consumer nations. This actually reduces the land available to grow food, forcing even nations that could grow their own food to become dependent on food imports.
Another problem associated with this sort of forced modernization of agriculture is that the huge international firms that carry out this sort of farming don't give a dam about anything but the bottom line. As a result many of them practice highly destructive agricultural techniques that essentially use up all of the soil nutrients. They then abandon these farms and move on, leaving a devastated region behind that is good for almost nothing and which will take decades or even centuries to recover. In Egypt this sort of development has been taking place for years without much in the way of benefit for the average Egyptian. It has served to make a few large farmers very wealthy, but has left many small farmers landless and destitute.
Japan has too many farmers and their political system supports this corruption. Kind of the same in Canada where a rural vote is worth 2x-4x more than a rural vote, which is why we have food/farmer marketing boards that restrict supply and unfairly raises prices. These are relatively small farmers milking the public for private gain. I'm not interested in subsiding small or large farmers in Canada. Canada will never have mega agribusiness totally dominate, in BC, as far as I know big business doesn't run the aggy biz, the terrain prevents it. The Gulf Islands and Fraser Valley have numerous small farms and they make money.
In Canada, I don't know what we can do if Saudi Arabia and China buy land in Africa and want to grow food. The market here is speaking, speaking for the rich and powerful of course, and often to the detriment of local economic development. Yet the world seems to want more productive agriculture and they are going to get it any way they can.
This isn't a war where people are getting killed, it's change that's occurring that has bypassed local, traditional, pre-industrial people who don't seem to realize you need money first nowadays, and you use money to buy what you need. I'm not willing to pay or worry about someone's attachment to the land any more. The days of being romantic about the land are over. Environmental standards have to be upheld of course, but that can't stop it.
What kind of clue do you mean? The business of agriculture, everyone understands that. Even in Canada, one of the most modern nations on Earth, there are questions and doubts about it, and so there should be as it is one of the most important businesses a country has.
There is the bad business of agriculture I think where seeds are being patented by corporations and farmers are forced to follow this system.
Nobody is holding a gun to farmers heads to use seed, fert, nute packages through contract. You could go without and produce 60% less having to take land out of production for rotation.
I learned to grow old school from a old guy (grandfather) that worked closely with his neighbour, a fellow named Motherwell and I know what is needed in today's soil sciences and crop management to match what Motherwell did back in the day without having to take land out of production.
I don't know much about this, except for what I get from the media. I guess that's the idea, these seeds make the farmer more money, which is what most want. The big grain growers do this I think, it's not in BC much.
Many farmers are going organic to resist this I think, and they can still get high productivity and make good profits.
That's a heap of malarky. You don't get any where near the productivity or as much glutens in the grains. Check into what it takes to be certified organic and compare yields between packed cereals and the organic way.
Well, you should be shopping at Safeway! :lol: Eating chemicals is largely a choice, peel the outer leaves off lettuce, cabbage etc. don't buy any processed food and grow as much as you can in your own garden, shoot a couple of deer, moose, elk etc and limit fruit eating to bananas and oranges as much possible.