Cairo - Away from the crowded capital and on the Cairo-Alexandria, about 60 miles from Alex, a large agricultural project has been created in Nubaria, one of the country's new cities. There, a group of poor farmers have started a new life, struggling to make a living from cultivating the vast desert land. In recent years, the circumstances for Egyptian farmers have been deteriorating. This is why some of them have settled in Nubaria, where, in 1997, a wide-scale agricultural project was launched, funded in co-operation with IFAD and IDS. Until 15 years ago, when the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) project started, the poor farmers of West Nubaria were suffering from a lack of clean water, poor hygiene and illiteracy. One of the farmers, 39-year-old Sayyed Mohamed Abdel Moneim, told this newspaper that he started cultivating land in West Nubaria when the project started. "I grow fruit and vegetables and make enough money to feed my eight children. I hope my children will follow in my footsteps, getting more land to cultivate from the governmental agricultural agencies,” he said. The IFAD project involves small-scale farming. Many of the farmers were young and unemployed, having been dispossessed of their land. They were compensated with 1 or 2 hectares of reclaimed land in Nubaria. Ahmed Salah, an agricultural engineer, works for the West Nubaria Rural Development project, funded by IFAD and the Italian Debt Swept (IDS); IFAD provides 60 per cent of the funding, IDS 20 per cent. "The project targets three groups: small farmers, graduates and landless people. They are given funding and land, as well as being given advice on irrigation and growing high-quality produce," he explains. During a presentation about the project, Salah said that the IFAD project supports 36,000 families through the adoption of on-farm water management practices, developing small and medium enterprises in the agricultural sector, and providing marketing and extension information. Ahmed Abul Yazeed, a chairman of one of the marketing units in the project, is proud of the fact that they have been exporting Egyptian potatoes to Europe for the past 15 years. “This project is very useful. We've been shown how to market our produce,” he stresses, adding that he hopes to gain a global Good Agriculture Practice (GAP) certificate for his potatoes, and then for his apricots, tomatoes and other vegetables. The Government has banned exporting potatoes to Russia, but Abu Yazeed is hoping for more stability under the next Government, adding that the hasty decisions made by the incumbent ministers have harmed their exports. The total cost of the project comes to $108.2 million, including an IFAD loan of $70 million and an IFAD grant of $1 million. The loan will be distributed over eight years, between 2012 and 2020, directly benefiting 50,000 households. The project has invested in 11 agricultural development programmes and projects designed in collaboration with smallholders, the Government and other partners in Egypt. The IFAD project has been unaffected by the unrest in the country. "The unrest during the transitional phase hasn't had any direct impact on our rural programmes in Egypt," the IFAD President told a conference here last week. "Our projects normally concentrate on rural, not urban areas," Kanayo F. Nwanze added. At the conference, Nwanze and Egyptian Minister of Agriculture Mohamed Reda Ismail discussed employment generation, food security and reduction of poverty. In April, IFAD and the Egyptian Government signed an agreement for the above-mentioned $70 million loan and $1 million grant for the promotion of income in rural areas. The idea is to improve marketing, in order to help reduce rural poverty and enhance food security, according to an IFAD press release. The project will benefit 50,000 farmers in seven governorates: Assiut, Beni Sueif, el-Minya, Qena, Sohag, el-Beheira and Kafr el-Sheikh. It will finance 11 projects with loans totalling $337 million and grants worth $3 million, benefiting some 1.3 million households. In the wake of the Egyptian revolution, the agricultural sector has been hard hit. Prices of local and imported agricultural inputs (for example seeds and fertilisers) have increased, due to the disruption of transport, the depreciation of the Egyptian pound and stockpiling by traders. In the meantime, the co-operation has helped create more jobs and boost SMEs, most of whose beneficiaries in Nubaria are youths. Nubaria has become a community in itself, with its members having succeeded in improving their educational facilities and healthcare, as well as benefiting from the latest technological developments. According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), 51 per cent of the population living in rural areas in Upper Egypt is poor. According to the World Bank, Egypt had almost 18 million people living beneath the national poverty line as of 2008, three-quarters of them living in rural areas. Income inequality has also persisted in Egypt, despite periods of high growth. Unemployment rates are highest among young people and women in rural areas, who are seriously affected by the lack of economic opportunities.
