Egypt: Agriculture

Ben Smith

Egyptian Agriculture

Industrial Agriculture is essentially the mass production of chemically induced crops to maximize total agriculture output. It utilizes monoculture as it uses massive crops of the same plant to maximize the efficiency of growing as many plants as possible. It relies on chemical fertilizers to replace nutrients in the soil, since nutrient deprivation is the significant flaw to monoculture.

Traditional Agriculture mixes crops within a garden and rotates crops over time in order to non-chemically maintain healthy soil. It typically requires intensive experience with or knowledge of the plants, and potentially the local ecosystem. It is not as efficient as Industrial Agriculture, but is arguably significantly healthy for both the consumer and the land.

Intensive farming focuses on creating the highest outputs possible with the lowest labor possible (Princeton.edu). Industrial Agriculture is a version of Intensive Farming. Extensive farming produces lower yields, but strives to be sustainable, so that the land can be farmed for longer periods of time.

According to Egypt’s State Information Services, Egypt has been modernizing (industrializing) its agriculture heavily since 2007. It has begun works on mega-agricultural projects, and currently accounts for 30% of its labor and over 14% of its GPD (SIS.gov.eg). Egypt is testing new irrigation techniques to mitigate environmental restrictions on where food can be grown, since currently all agriculture must be along the Nile, specifically in the Nile Delta.

Egypt grows food, textile and lumber crops primarily. The country has been known for generations for its cotton, but Egyptian cotton is becoming less profitable, and therefore less popular to grow.  Egypt faces sustenance challenges with such a high population and such little farmland, and is making large investments in making unusable land usable enough to farm on.

 Works Cited

"Agriculture." State Information Services of Egypt. SIS.gov.eg, 20 July 2009. Web. 2 July 2014. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sis.gov.eg%2FEn%2FTemplates%2FArticles%2FtmpArticles.aspx%3FCatID%3D342%23.VIAkWfldUuc>.

"Intensive Farming." Princeton University. Princeton.edu, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2014. <https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Intensive_farming.html>.