How Egypt plans to address its growing water crisis
As Egypt faces its worst water crisis in 100 years, farmers are stuck between their need to cultivate cash-generating crops that require a lot of water and the Egyptian state's ban on water-thirsty crops.
Amidst the worst drought to hit the Horn of Africa in the past 100 years, the Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation declared a state of extreme emergency in early May to last until next August in preparation for the summer crop season. The ministry also launched extensive campaigns to eradicate and burn water-thirsty rice crops.
In villages, farmers intensified their demonstrations against agents from the Department of Agriculture and the Ministry of Water Resources, who sprayed incendiary compounds on rice crops planted in violation of the ministry's decision prohibiting the cultivation of rice, which it confined to an area of about 1 million acres in specific areas of the Nile Delta.
Nabil Al-Shahat, one of the farmers who violated the Al-Sharqia governorate's rice-growing ban, told Al-Monitor, "My children will starve all year if I implemented the government's decision and refrained from planting rice on the one and a half acres that I own." He explained that the high price of rice, which is a staple in the diet of Egyptian farmer families, precluded them from abiding by the ministerial decision, which would lead to hunger among peasant families.
In that regard, a government report indicated that total land surfaces planted with rice had increased by 1 million acres in just one month, rising from 174,000 on April 5 to 1.175 million on May 30.
