|
Egypt Technology
Egyptian agriculture was transformed over the last century in
large measure as a result of technological change. Technological
changes included the switch from basin to perennial irrigation,
mechanization, application of pesticides and chemical fertilizers,
breeding new seed varieties, and, in the 1980s, the beginning of
the use of drip irrigation and plastic greenhouses.
At the core of these changes lay the shift from basin to
perennial irrigation. Basin irrigation depended on the annual Nile
flooding, usually in August and September. The floodwaters soaked
the low-lying land, providing moisture for a single crop after they
receded. The silt borne by the river renewed and enriched the soil.
The area irrigated by the river's high waters was extended with
canals and dikes.
Perennial irrigation was more complex but more rewarding. It
regulated the Nile flow through the building of canals, barrages,
dams, and reservoirs, which made irrigation water available
throughout the year, not just at flood time. In 1990 practically
all of Egypt's cropped land was under perennial irrigation.
Muhammad Ali was the first to conceive of perennial irrigation as
a way of increasing cotton production. He initiated barrage
construction at the head of the Delta, but the barrages were not
completed until the 1860s. Meanwhile, temporary canals deeper than
the Nile were built, and water was lifted by pumps. The British
expanded the system after their occupation of Egypt in 1882. Under
their auspices, the Asyut barrages and the Aswan Dam were completed
in 1902. Perennial irrigation enabled Egyptian farmers to double
and even triple crop the land. It also allowed them to add biennial
crop rotation to the traditional triennial rotation.
Except for a few additions, the system remained unchanged until
the Aswan High Dam was built in 1964 during Nasser's presidency.
The dam created Lake Nasser, which extends about 480 kilometers
south behind it, cost about ŁE850 million, and represented
approximately one-third of Egypt's gross capital formation in the
mid-1960s. This control of the Nile waters made possible the
reclamation of about 650,000 feddans and brought about
880,000 feddans under perennial irrigation, in addition to
generating a considerable portion of Egypt's electrical power
(see Energy
, this ch.). It effected a shift in the cropping pattern,
particularly in the cases of rice and corn. By making water more
available, the system encouraged investment in other inputs and
augmented crop yields. Many Egyptians were glad to have the dam
during the prolonged drought that struck the areas where most of
the Nile originates in the early 1980s and lasted until 1988.
The Aswan High Dam turned out to be not just an irrigation
project but also a political project; it became a symbol of
Egyptian nationalism and of Nasser's era, as well as a legacy of
the cold war. The edifice was built with help from the Soviet Union
after the United States and Britain, in protest against the arms
agreement that Nasser struck with Czechoslovakia in late 1958,
rescinded an earlier assistance agreement. In response, Nasser
nationalized the Suez Canal and said the revenues from the canal
would be used to finance the dam. Because of the political tensions
surrounding the building of the Aswan High Dam and its irrigation
system, subsequent criticism of the project has sometimes mixed
political considerations with technical assessment.
The structure was not without difficulties. Some problems
involved miscalculations, such as the underestimation of
evaporation levels from the lake. Other problems were probably
unanticipated, such as the impact the absence of silt in the canals
would have. Under basin irrigation, the annual flood deposited
large quantities of silt that revitalized the soil. The shift to
perennial irrigation kept the silt in the canals, but because they
were cleared regularly, the silt was added to the soil. After the
dam was built, the silt was deposited in the lake behind it. The
seriousness of the impact on the soil and the reasons for it
remained controversial. Another unforeseen consequence of deposit
retention in Lake Nasser was the use of topsoil from the Nile
Valley to make bricks for construction; formerly these had been
made of silt deposits. In addition, the dam's construction led to
the relocation of the Nubians, an operation whose social and
economic costs were not easy to estimate.
Whereas the government invested heavily in irrigation in the
1960s, it neglected irrigation's mirror image, drainage. The
failure to invest in drainage was believed to have caused
tremendous water clogging and soil salinization problems that
reduced soil fertility and led to loss of arable land. More than 70
percent of the land was believed to be affected by these problems.
Since 1974, however, the government with international assistance
has earmarked considerable funds toward drainage in both the Delta
and Upper Egypt. A major tile drainage scheme was under way in 1990
in cooperation with the World Bank. In the 1980s First Five-Year
Plan, tile drainage covered 1.5 million feddans, in addition
to 0.65 million feddans already tiled by 1983. General
drainage covered about 1.7 million feddans by the end of the
plan's period. In other words, from 50 to 60 percent of the arable
land has been provided with drainage facilities. The Second Five-
Year Plan (FY 1987-91) allocated about ŁE1.5 billion for irrigation
and drainage (see
table 9, Appendix), but the allocation of funds
between the two was not specified.
Although agricultural mechanization accelerated in the 1980s,
it remained limited. The main agricultural tasks to undergo
mechanization were plowing, threshing, and water-pumping. Planting,
transplanting, weeding, and harvesting were still performed
manually. Most tractors were privately owned. Large owners, who
benefited from economies of scale, were more likely to own
tractors. There was a widespread private rental market, however,
and mechanical plowing was practically universal. The number of
water pumps, which were introduced in the 1930s, grew rapidly; as
in the case of tractors, they were concentrated in the hands of
larger owners. The traditional saqiyah, the waterwheel drawn
by water buffalo, did not disappear, and small farmers still found
its use economical. A survey of three Delta villages in 1984 found
that more than 60 percent of the less-than-one-feddan farms
adopted pumps. The ratio increased with increased farm size, and
virtually all farms above five feddans used pumps. Similar
trends were found in pest control. Mechanical threshing was also
becoming universal by the early 1980s. The government was trying to
persuade farmers to adopt mechanical rice transplanting by
demonstrating its effectiveness. Overall, however, mechanization
remained confined to tasks that were mechanized before the 1980s
and was not being adopted for new tasks.
Both the government and international donors encouraged
mechanization through subsidized credit, assuming that the labor
market was getting tighter and that mechanization would enhance
crop yields. There was no doubt that subsidized fuel prices helped
spread mechanization by reducing its costs. In the early 1980s, the
labor market was tightening, and labor costs were rising as a
proportion of total costs, from 25 to 33 percent in the early 1970s
to between 40 and 60 percent in the early 1980s for major crops.
The rise in labor costs resulted from emigration, alternative job
opportunities in rural areas, and higher educational levels. But
labor was not scarce everywhere, as was indicated by the
persistence of seasonal labor. Some economists in the late 1980s
questioned the wisdom of pushing the labor-displacing mechanization
process in light of the rise in unemployment, the narrowing
possibilities of emigration, and the inability of other sectors to
create needed employment opportunities
(see Employment
, this ch.).
They pointed out that the assumption that mechanization augmented
yields was not supported by investigations in Egypt or by other
studies.
As part of its reform program, the government wanted to
increase the use of fertilizers and pesticides. To do so, it
controlled the distribution of fertilizers through the cooperatives
and specified the amounts allocated by region and crop. Farmers
received their rations from the cooperatives on credit and were
obliged to buy the minimum amount set by the government. Subsidies
on the prices for inputs increased in the 1970s, and prices for
these items declined in real terms over time. The cost of inputs,
including pesticides and seeds, fell from an average of 25 to 33
percent in 1972 to around 15 percent for major crops in 1984. As a
result, fertilizer application increased, growing steadily from
about 940,000 tons in 1960 to 3.7 million tons in 1978 and to 6.3
million tons in 1986. In 1986 fertilizer application stood at
roughly .5 ton per feddan of cropped area. Consumption grew
sufficiently to support the domestic fertilizer industry, and
domestic production supplied a considerable share of nitrogen
fertilizers, which were the primary type in use.
Egyptian agriculture was susceptible to pests, thanks to the
year-round cultivation and water cover. The government assumed
responsibility for the task of controlling these pests and sought
to develop pest-resistant varieties of many crops. The cotton crop
was the main consumer of pesticides, and the government did the
spraying. In the latter half of the 1980s, the government
increasingly used aerial spraying.
In the 1980s Egyptian farmers began to use drip irrigation and
plastic greenhouses, which had been spreading in other Arab
countries since the mid-1970s. The extent of their use was
minuscule by 1990; about 3,000 greenhouses were installed in
reclaimed areas. Although they could potentially transform Egyptian
agriculture, the technologies were highly capital-intensive,
especially for the greenhouses that were often combined with drip
irrigation. The government in 1990 wanted the greenhouses used only
in the reclaimed areas to conserve the old land for wheat and other
staples.
Data as of December 1990
|
