CAIRO: The Egyptian government is working on a plan to reclaim 3.4 million feddans of desert land for farming to improve Egypt's food security by 2017, according to Egypt's State Information Service. The reclamation plan was outlined in a report released Sunday by the Egyptian Cabinet's Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC). The project, which aims to reclaim and cultivate the land by 2017, will require 30.4 billion cubic meters of irrigation water to implement, according to the report. Water is the key issue in these types of development projects, according to Mohamed Omran, an economist and private consultant who has worked with USAID and the African Development Bank. "The key is to develop strategies to implement land reclamation projects that provide for efficient uses of water, as the availability of water for irrigation can be a major stopping block to reclamation projects, Omran told the Daily News Egypt. Indeed, the outcome of government reclamation initiatives like the Toshka project, a 200,000-acre agricultural investment allocation in the Minya, Sinai and Toskha regions, is predicated on the availability of water. Egypt and its Nile Basin neighbors have historically fielded tensions over the rights to water usage from the Nile, with Egypt claiming superior rights based on a colonial-era treaty with Sudan. The conflict was eased by the inauguration of the Nile Basin Initiative in 1999, through which Egypt, Sudan and eight other Nile Basin countries are working to agree on an equitable division of water resources. Land reclamation has been an ongoing government policy in Egypt since the 1950s in the face of urbanization and rapid population growth. Ninety-five percent of Egypt's 80 million people live on 5 percent of the country's land in the Nile Valley and Delta, Egypt's most fertile regions. This population concentration on the country's prime farmland means a yearly loss of 74,000 acres of fertile land to urbanization. Egyptian officials hope that reclamation projects, and accompanying programs that offer discounts on reclaimed lands to college graduates and investors who promise to cultivate, will help facilitate a broad population transfer to areas outside the Nile Basin in the future. A total of 400,000 hectares of desert land have been successfully reclaimed during the past decade, and reclaimed land now accounts for about 2 million of the country's 8 million cultivated acres. In addition to reclaiming local desert land, Egypt has also entered into agreements with African countries for agricultural cooperation to boost food security. Egypt has struggled with food security, especially with regards to essential staple crops including wheat and sugar. Egypt is a net importer of these two vital crops, though plans are in place to expand production in the future to ensure the country's food security. The long-term plan for land reclamation is aimed at increasing reclaimed land to 31 million feddans by 2030. This, along with projects for increasing the productivity of wheat and corn crops, should help Egypt achieve long-term food security, according to government officials.
