Is Egyptian government pushing farmers to stop growing wheat?
Complicated bureaucracy and shifting subsidizing policies are pushing many Egyptian farmers to give up cultivation of one of the country's most important crops.
In November, the Egyptian government announced that it would start buying wheat from local farmers at the average global price to encourage Egyptian farmers to grow the crop. Egypt is seeking to reduce the gap between domestic production and actual consumption, seeing that the country consumes about 18 million tons of wheat annually but has a domestic production of less than 9 million tons.
This year's wheat harvest season, which started in mid-April and ends in mid-July, has been hit by several crises that have burdened Egyptian farmers. Egypt’s governorates have been battling a wheat supply crisis in storage houses and cooperative associations affiliated with the Ministry of Agriculture.
Ramadan Jaafar, a farmer and owner of agricultural land in Beheira governorate, one of the most prominent wheat-producing regions in the country, decided to grow wheat after the government announced in November that it would pay 1,300 Egyptian pounds ($146) in subsidies for each planted acre. But Jaafar was unpleasantly surprised when the government renounced its earlier decision and decided in April to instead buy wheat at a price of 420 Egyptian pounds per ardeb (equal to roughly 150 kilos), with a slight increase over the global price.
Jaafar said that he decided to proceed with his wheat cultivation plan, even though the government had slashed the subsidy aimed at boosting the Egyptian economy and paving the way for cutting imports and reaching self-sufficiency with the domestic crop.
