Samar is a 20-year-old housewife living in an informal area near Nasr City. She is newly married and curses the poverty that has left deep marks on her family's life. First, her father forced her to marry a cousin who could “at least afford a home and food.” Then her two sisters, 10 and 13, were forced to quit school and work to help their father make ends meet. And now the 13-year-old sister is engaged to a cousin, yet another decision by the father to reduce his financial burdens. Food insecurity has been a major part of her family's suffering. “My sisters have been losing weight and are so sad that they had to quit school,” Samar lamented. She adds that since the 25 January Revolution, her father, a construction worker, has not been able to find permanent work. Her mother saves part of the money he manages to earn to pay for emergencies. Put the constant economizing is taking a toll. Said Samar, “We have only had fried potatoes and aubergines for dinner most of the week.” Samar, herself very thin, says her sisters have chronic anemia and suffer recurrent influenza, especially in winter. Samar's family is not alone in its struggle to buy food. Manal, a nurse and a single mother of four children, says she can no longer afford to feed her children properly. “In the past we used to stuff cabbage with rice and eat that when we did not have any money. But now even this can sometimes be unaffordable because of the rising prices,” Manal said. “Our kids were always malnourished, but it's been getting even worse.” FOOD INSECURITY IN MENA: A report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), issued in February, warns that countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are facing “enormous challenges” to food security. “The number of chronically undernourished people in the region in 2010-13 reached 79.4 million, representing 11.2 per cent of the population,” the report said, warning that the number was higher than in the 2008-10 period. Perhaps even more alarming is the fact that an estimated 43.4 per cent of children under five living in the region are stunted due to chronic undernutrition, according to the FAO. In the meantime, the report warned, nearly one quarter of the region's population is obese, almost double the global average, due to the consumption of unhealthy but affordable foods. Egypt was among the six MENA countries listed in the report as having the highest rate of childhood stunting in the world. The FAO study warned that regional averages of the undernourished may actually be higher than those outlined in the report due to the fact that several countries in the region “remain under protracted conflict, with limited data update.” Among the challenges outlined in the FAO report, entitled “Food Agriculture in the Near East and North Africa Region”, were high population growth, inefficient agricultural practices that result in a reliance on imports, and exposure to threats such as climate change and regional conflict. The region is still suffering from a high population growth of 2 per cent, compared to 1.2 per cent globally. In the meantime, the region's high rate of urbanisation, with 70 per cent of the population expected to be living in cities by 2050, remains a challenge for food safety in the region. “A rapidly increasing urban population,” says the report, will have “distinctly different food consumption habits and a greater dependence on the market than the rural population.” The demographic change will also lead to rapidly decreasing agricultural productivity and an increasing reliance on food imports, according to the FAO. The region already relies on food imports, which expose countries to price fluctuations on the international market, a major risk to food security. “The average share of food imports in total merchandise imports stands at 10 per cent for the region, i.e. twice the world average,” the report points out. In the meantime, “the high incidence of natural and manmade disasters” compounds the problem. Climate change and global warming increase the risks of drought and agricultural vulnerability in the region. Local and regional conflicts are also causing a major drop in food security, especially in Syria, where the report estimates that 6.3 million people are highly vulnerable and in critical need of sustained food and agricultural assistance. Although most countries in the region have met the hunger component of the first set of Millennium Development Goals (MDG1) by halving the proportion of their populations experiencing chronic hunger, the report warns that they still need to deal with major food security challenges. EGYPT NO EXCEPTION: In Egypt, still recovering from the economic fallout that followed the 25 January Revolution, overpopulation remains a major challenge to food security, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP). “The country is facing the challenge of feeding an increasing population, which reached 83.7 million in 2013 compared to 72.8 million in 2005,” the WFP stated in a recent report. “Young people between 18 to 29 years old represent a quarter of the Egyptian population, and slightly over half of them are impoverished and unemployed.” The WFP said that because of political turmoil, “the country has witnessed a challenging economic context marked by a 2.1 per cent real GDP growth for 2012-13, compared to an average of 6.2 in previous years.” The report continued to say that Egypt, “although classified as a middle-income country, faces a set of development challenges characterised by substantial regional disparities, with the rural parts of Upper Egypt ranking lowest on the socio-economic scale.” Egypt ranks 112 out of 187 on the 2012 UNDP Human Development Index. An earlier joint study by the WFP and the Egyptian government estimated that food insecurity had already increased to 17.2 per cent (13.7 million people) in 2011, compared to 14 per cent in 2009. Many expect these figures to have risen still higher after three further years of political instability and economic crisis. The study, carried out between 2009 and 2011, also reported that “some 15 per cent of the population moved into poverty, twice the number who moved out of poverty” during that period. It warned that “poor dietary diversity continues to be the most compelling aspect of food insecurity in Egypt” and said that estimates by the UN World Health Organisation (WHO) had revealed that 31 per cent of Egyptian children between six and 59 months old were stunted due to malnutrition. A 2009 study by the WFP estimated total losses from malnutrition in Egypt at LE20.3 billion or 1.9 per cent of the country's GDP. Egyptian families were found to bear 73 per cent of the costs of this, while the remaining 27 per cent came out of the Egyptian healthcare system. The same study showed that Egypt could save up to LE732 million annually if it reduced current levels of undernourished children by half. “A reduction of up to 10 per cent could yield an average annual saving of LE907 billion,” the report said. While the government invests US$60 million annually in the National School Feeding Programme, which reaches 5.3 million of 17 million school pupils, UN reports show that “food distribution is not consistent in all schools throughout the academic year” and “girls living in rural areas are least likely to attend schools.” There are at least 1.6 million children involved in hazardous work in Egypt. Another report on Egypt, by the Australian research institute Future Directions International (FDI), estimates that the number of Egyptians who cannot afford sufficient quantities of nutritious food is increasing. The report said that one in five people face food insecurity because of “structural issues in the food supply system.” The FDI report says that the average Egyptian household spends over 40 per cent of its income on food, while poorer households spend more than half their income, meaning they are even more vulnerable to price increases. The report suggests that food insecurity in Egypt is “an issue of economic access,” where “a growing number of people can't afford to purchase enough nutritious food.” The report describes an “accumulation of crises” causing Egypt's “burgeoning food security issues.” Among these were “the avian influenza epidemic in 2006, the food, fuel and financial crises of 2007-2009, the 2010 global food price spike, and the economic deterioration caused by political instability since the 2011 Revolution. “Poverty has risen by 40 per cent in the past decade to affect over a quarter of the population, some 12 million people,” the FDI said. “Almost another 20 million are hovering just above that level.” Rapid population growth will lead to an increasing demand on food, the FDI report warned, noting the gap between the country's long-term agricultural production potential and estimated population growth. Poverty, experts agree, often results in an over-reliance on cheap food that has limited nutritional content. “As a result, nutritional outcomes are worsening, chronic malnutrition among children has reached high levels, and Egypt now has the world's highest rate of double nutritional burden (consumption of low-nutrition calorie-dense foods that can cause people to be overweight, while also suffering from nutritional deficiencies),” notes the report. These reports may sound alarmist, but there is evidence that the warnings are not without cause. A recent report by the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) shows that the percentage of people living in poverty rose by 1.1 per cent to hit 26.3 per cent of Egypt's population in the year 2012-13, up from 25.2 per cent in 2010-11. “Out of Egypt's 90 million people, nearly one million people have joined the ranks of the poor over the span of one year,” Nader Noureddin, a professor of agricultural resources at Cairo University, told the Weekly. On Youth Day on 12 August, CAPMAS reported that more than half of Egypt's young people are poor. Approximately 27.8 per cent of Egyptian young people live in poverty, while 24.1 per cent live near the poverty line, it said. Again, this marks an increase from last year, when a total of 51.3 per cent of Egypt's youths were living in poverty or near poverty. “Hunger, nicknamed as extreme poverty, is also shown to have increased in the same report,” said Noureddin. CAPMAS estimates that 5.2 per cent of the Egyptian population is suffering from severe poverty. “That means that one in twenty people in Egypt cannot even fulfill their calorie needs from cheap food, meaning that they are all too literally facing hunger.” CAPMAS also estimates that 12.6 per cent of Egypt's population, up from nine per cent in 2011, are unemployed; calculations by international bodies offer a higher unemployment figure, 19 per cent. “These alarming rates of poverty and unemployment indicate that more people are facing threats of food insecurity and hunger in Egypt,” Noureddin concluded. GROWING RELIANCE ON IMPORTS: “Egypt relies on the global market for up to 60 per cent of its food needs,” the FDI study said. Whereas Egypt is self-sufficient in the production of most fruit, vegetables and livestock, it is unable to produce enough grains, sugar or vegetable oil — foods that make up a large part of the country's diet — to feed its people, the FDI said. Egypt is the world's largest importer of wheat, importing 10 million tons out of a total consumption of 15 million tons per year. It is also the fourth largest importer of maize (5.3 million tons per year), and the seventh largest importer of food oils (96 per cent of its total consumption). The country imports 70 per cent of its beans, 99 per cent of lentils, 66 per cent of its red meat and 60 per cent of its butter needs, according to Noureddin. “We are among the countries listed by the FAO as suffering a serious gap of more than 55 per cent between food production and consumption,” Noureddin said. This growing reliance on food imports makes Egypt “highly vulnerable to fluctuations in international food prices,” according to the FAO. Food prices are also expected to rise due to fuel subsidy reductions made by the government in July, according to a recent FAO statement. “The reliance on imports, compounded by the recent increase in the levels of poverty, makes the country increasingly vulnerable to food insecurity,” Noureddin said. The fact that little effort has been made in the direction of adopting corrective agricultural measures has compounded the problem. “Efforts to reclaim land were stopped in 2010 until the issue of water scarcity could be tackled and the threat of the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam settled,” Noureddin said. “The gap between what we need and what we actually get in terms of water is almost 30 billion cubic metres, which has been reduced to 20 billion cubic metres by water re-use in the irrigation system,” he said. Egypt is facing further threats to its water security due to its growing population, global warming, inefficient irrigation and the threat of losing its share of the Nile due to the construction of the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The UN already predicts that Egypt could be water-scarce by 2025. “Water shortages will have a severe impact on Egypt's food security,” the FDI predicts. “Of Egypt's total water supply, 80 per cent is used in agriculture. As water flow shrinks and available agricultural land is used up, Egypt's food production capacity will fall. The impacts of resource scarcity will be exacerbated by the changing global climate.” LOOPHOLES IN THE SYSTEM: Egypt's arable land has already been shrinking due to decades of faulty government policies that discouraged farmers from growing essential crops. Because the government no longer supplies farmers with seeds, fertilisers and pesticides, the finances of farmers are being hit hard by a private sector monopoly, corruption and the black market. Private-sector smuggling has led to a severe fertiliser shortage. This means that farmers either have to grow fewer crops or buy fertilizer at inflated prices on the black market. Seeds, fertilisers and pesticides are expensive, and sometimes of poor quality, causing farmers major financial losses. Unable to cope with the high costs, many farmers now either grow fewer crops or have abandoned their cultivation and built structures on arable land, causing major losses to the areas under cultivation. “Although Egypt used to be one of the world's largest exporters of cotton, many farmers have abandoned growing cotton because of the losses they faced when they were unable to market it in the absence of government support,” Noureddin said. “This crop is dying out due to the fact that the government does not encourage it, banks no longer finance it, and farmers are left to lose money because of their inability to market it,” Noureddin said. “In the meantime, they have been left to face businessmen who buy agricultural products at a low price and then sell them at many times that price, again without drawing the attention of the government, where decision-making has been monopolised by tycoons.” Some farmers have also abandoned the production of crops that are an essential part of Egyptian diets, like beans and lentils, and switched to the production of cucumbers, cantaloupes and watermelons to earn better profits. The total area cultivated with beans has fallen from 500,000 feddans to only 120,000, while lentils are cultivated in less than a thousand feddans instead of the previous 85,000, according to Noureddin. “This has meant that Egypt now imports 99 per cent of its lentil needs,” he added. At the same time, the government has neglected agricultural research, failing to provide money for research that could improve agricultural productivity. This has led to major losses in the marketing of products for export. In the current conditions, many observers expect food insecurity to worsen, possibly leading to violence and further political and social instability. “The government has to help farmers make profits and encourage agriculture before a ‘hunger revolution' erupts,” Noureddin warned. Many agree with Noureddin that the government should step in to provide fertilisers, seeds and pesticides at affordable prices, and also buy crops directly from farmers at good prices. These products could then be sold to consumers at affordable prices through government-affiliated markets. A WAY FORWARD? In a step to counter food insecurity, the government recently adopted a new bread subsidy and smart-ration card system that is supposed to reduce wheat consumption and waste, fight corruption and diversify subsidised foods for the poor. The system was designed to counter expected prices increases following the government's reduction of fuel subsidies in July. Under the new bread subsidy system, using the smart-card system, Egypt's 18 million families (69 million citizens) will get five loaves per person a day at the subsidised prices of 0.05 piastres. The government will no longer provide bakers with subsidised wheat, but will instead reimburse them based on sales data gathered from smart cards. The system should bring to an end the highly profitable smuggling of subsidized wheat by unscrupulous bakers. Whereas some have welcomed the move, many poor families have complained that the quota is not enough to provide for three meals a day. To diversify the foods available to the poor, the new subsidy system also allows ration card holders to choose from a list of 20 subsidised food items (to be expanded to 100 in the future), including milk, vegetables, fruit, meat and chicken. Previously, people received fixed quotas of essential food staples. As well, the government now allows a LE15 subsidy per individual, instead of the former LE22. This means that a cardholder will not pay anything if his or her purchases total less than LE15. Following the launch of the new system, however, many cardholders complained that most of the listed items were not available. “The government has been taking haphazard policies without actually preparing supplies that will help meet public expectations,” Noureddin said. “If hunger is not tackled, stability can never be reached. That is what policy-makers have to realise.”
