Feature: Egyptian gov't boosts farmers to reach wheat self-sufficiency

Egyptian villager Sayed Hassan has enlarged his land to grow wheat this year as the government wants wheat self-sufficiency by 2018.

Hassan is a farmer from Sharqiya Governorate, 60 km north of Cairo. He said he has increased his wheat land from 15 to 20 feddans (1 feddan=1.038 acres) this year.

"The government helps me much to produce high quality crops... they provide us with seeds, fertilizers and agricultural care, and in the end the government buys the crops for a good price," Hassan said as he watched his farmers manually harvesting the crop with metal sickles.

The 45-year old peasant urged all his fellow farmers to focus on planting wheat, not only because of the government support, but also because it is important for the security of Egypt, the world's largest importer of wheat.

"Wheat is important for Egypt's national security. If we produce our wheat at home, no one would control our political will and the future of the generations to come," he added.

Wheat harvest in Egypt starts in mid April and ends in July every year. Modest villagers with small fields use traditional harvest tools and methods, such as sickles and hand harvesting; a manner inherited from ancient Egyptians.

However, up-to-date technologies and machines are used in vast farms that are owned by the government, wealthy farmers and investors.

Apparently the government is serious about increasing the wheat fields nationwide to free itself from foreign wheat imports.

Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi announced on Thursday the harvest of 10,000 wheat feddans in the south-western El-Wadi El-Gadid (New Valley) governorate as part of a national project to expand the country's farmland by reclaiming 1.5 million feddans nationwide, which was inaugurated in late December.

During the inauguration ceremony of the project, agriculture minister Essam Fayed said the harvest was bountiful as the average of productivity of a feddan is expected to hit 15 ardebs, and 70 percent of the project will be cultivated with strategic crops, mainly wheat.

This year, Egypt's ministry of agricultural has set plans to reach 80 percent self-sufficiency in wheat by 2018 in an attempt to achieve food security and reduce the country's rising dependence on foreign imports.

It announced at the beginning of the season that some 3.2 million feddans are planted with wheat, which is the main material to make the cheap subsidized bread for Egypt's 90 million population.

At the same time, the government is trying to maintain high procurement price to encourage additional planting and buy more from local farmers, while it still has to import about 50 percent of the wheat consumed by Egyptians.

According to official statistics, the government purchased 5.3 million tons of domestic wheat last year, up from 3.7 million purchased a year prior.

"We do everything possible to support farmers grow more wheat," al-Bahi Haikal, ministry of agricultural official in Sharqiya told Xinhua. "Our plans so far have yielded good results."

He added that "Egypt needs to plant some five million feddans to reach full wheat self-sufficiency, which is really possible to be achieved within two, or maximum, three years."

Haikal said that Sharqiya is Egypt's first wheat producing governorate this season, with extra 15000 feddans planted with wheat.

This is not the only thing the government is doing on this regard. Farmers and investors can rent large tracts of lands from the government at cheap prices to grow grains that would also be bought by the government.

Mohammed Darwish is an investor who rented some 1000 feddans for 6000 Egyptian pounds per feddan each year from the government in Sharqiya and planted all of them with wheat.

"Last year, I planted 600 wheat feddans, but this year I planted much more for both, making good profit and boosting the government plan of wheat self-sufficiency," Darwish said amid the noise of a giant combine machine harvesting his grain crop.

As an investor, Dariwsh said, wheat growing is the best business he could do as the government helps him since he drops the seeds in the farm till he harvests the crop.

"The quality of our produce is way better than the imported ones... we also get high prices for our wheat products from the government. We cannot get a better business," he added, flashing a smiling. Enditem