Farmers across Egypt continue to face severe water shortages. Faiza Rady examines the plight of a community of 30,000 smallholders from the Kishn district in Beni Sweif "While the Egyptian media focusses on water shortages in Al-Daqahliya and Kafr Al-Sheikh in the northern Nile Delta region, southern rural areas are -- as always -- forgotten," says Mustafa Mohsen Mohamed Taha, mayor of Al-Qodaby, a small village in the Upper Egypt governorate of Beni-Sweif. Located 200km south of Cairo, Al-Qodaby is one of six villages that make up the Kishn district, home to 30,000 impoverished farmers. Water supplies to the district are irregular and have, of late, been reduced to a trickle, say the farmers. The situation may have worsened in recent months in light of the dramatic water shortages that have affected rural areas across Egypt, but it has long been bad. "In Al-Qodaby we have suffered from insufficient water supplies for 20 years. It all started when a rich landowner-turned-politician used his position to divert one of Kishn's main irrigation canals to increase the water supply to his own property," says Taha. Such thefts have cut the water supply allocated to remaining farmland by as much as one- third, leading to an inevitable decrease in the quality and quantity of agrarian production. "Falling production levels are compounded by the increased salinity of the soil caused by inadequate water supplies. Our income has shrunk accordingly and now we can barely make ends meet. We stagger from one season to the next," explains the mayor. In recent years things have gone from bad to worse in Al-Qodaby, say the farmers. Not only have they lost a major canal but they have been the victims of supply policies that favour the increasing demands of urban and industrial consumers. "If it wasn't for the ground water that we pump out at considerable expense our land would be barren by now," says Salah Zaki, Al-Qodaby's sheikh. In the village the water shortage is palpable. Though the fields of onions, tomatoes and potatoes look deceptively lush, the subsidiary canals that channel water from the Nile to the fields, a distance of 20km, are dry. Village children, who would normally be jumping into the water to cool off on hot summer days now play in the dirt, pretending it is water. They mimic swimming in the canal. If the kids have managed to maintain their vitality, the farm animals appear listless. Emaciated and dehydrated, donkeys and water buffaloes lie low behind walls or in the shadow of trees. "We just don't have enough water or food for the animals, they are barely making it," says Zaki. "The condition of the animals is an indication of the farmers' extreme poverty," explains agricultural engineer Makram Shafik, who is visiting the village from Al-Wasta, a neighbouring town. "Farmers always feed their animals well because they are an integral part of the economy -- providing both labour and produce. What we are witnessing here is the extent of damage caused by shrinking water supplies." In the distance a lone pump irrigates a field. If and when water is available the farmers get their supplies in turn, according to a strict schedule that entitles them to irrigate their fields every 10 days. But since the government cut back gas subsidies two years ago, the villagers have had to pay ever more to run the water pumps: at LE100 per turn annual irrigation costs per feddan now amount to LE3,600. "As if this isn't bad enough, the government- run cooperative no longer supplies us with the fertilisers we need," says Taha. "Cultivating one feddan takes six bags of fertiliser a year but the cooperative now only sells us two bags per feddan at LE86 per bag. We get the rest from a mushrooming black market, where prices have doubled, sometimes tripled." The total cost of cultivating one feddan -- even without factoring in the costs of extra labour and land rental -- now amounts to LE4,500 annually. Subsidy rollbacks and soaring black market prices may hurt the farmers, but it is the water shortage that threatens to put an end to their livelihoods. "The lack of water kills our crops and our animals. It is very simple, our survival as a farming community depends on water," says Zaki. As Al-Qodaby's farmers point out, the water crisis didn't begin with recent media coverage. It dates back to the 1980s, and its severity is contingent on Egypt's ongoing water management policies. Under the 1959 water-sharing agreement with Nile basin neighbours Egypt's annual allocation of Nile water is 55.5 billion cubic metres (bcm). With a population of 30 million in 1959, the country's per capita share then amounted to some 2,100 cubic metres -- making Egyptians water-rich by international standards. Since then soaring population growth, sprawling urbanisation and state-sponsored water- intensive mega projects, have put considerable strain on the system. With Egypt's population estimated at close to 80 million in 2006, the per capita share of water has shrunk to less than 790 cubic metres per year. From being water- affluent in the 1950s, Egypt has slipped below the UN's per capita water supply requirement of 1,000 cubic metres. The World Bank describes the country system as being "under water stress". According to Water Resource Planning in Egypt, a paper compiled by Martin Hvidt, the future is even bleaker. "In 2025, per capita water resources are expected to drop to about 337 cubic meters per year. And if present [water] management practices prevail this could mean that 60 per cent of the agricultural land will not be irrigated." For the impoverished farmers in Al-Qodaby, the Delta and Cairo's poorest neighbourhoods, the future has already arrived. Yet as water shortages slowly destroy their crops and animals, vast amounts are being pumped into the desert, south of Aswan. The Toshka project, conceived to make the desert bloom, is fed by one of the world's largest and most sophisticated water pumping stations, inaugurated in 2005. Eventually it is expected to divert 10 per cent of Egypt's share of Nile water from Lake Nasser to irrigate the country's hottest and most barren desert.
