Is the Government of Ahmed Nazif really serious about increasing the cultivation of wheat to reduce the dependence on imports as a step towards self-sufficiency in the near future? When the Russian wheat crisis forced Moscow to suspend its exports, we heard the Egyptian Minister of Agriculture promise to increase the cultivation of wheat, not only to depend less on imports, but also to save the State budget and the national economy as a whole from the constant price fluctuations on the international market. Minister Amin Abaza raised the local wheat price to encourage more farmers to grow wheat and to prove his good intentions, also promising to import high-quality seeds, enhancing productivity from 25 to 30 ardebs per feddan (acre). As a result more and more farmers were eager to grow wheat but were unable to get the promised high-quality seeds from the agricultural societies connected to the Ministry. The only seeds available were sold by private companies at the much higher price of LE150 instead of LE100 per sack, and to make matters worse, adulterated seeds were flooding the market. This problem was ultimately the Ministry's doing and led to an inevitable drop in wheat production this season. An Under- Secretary of the Ministry recently stated that in Mina Governorate alone 170,00 feddans of wheat could not be planted due to lack of seeds. Minister of Agriculture Amin Abaza should speedily solve this problem if he wants to preserve his credibility in the eyes of the people and if he does not want to lose the farmers' vote and therefore, fail to win in the parliamentary elections.
