The agricultural sector provides employment opportunities for 25% of the workforce in Egypt

Dossier- Rice cultivation in Egypt – Photo by Hussein Tallal

CAIRO – December 25, 2021: The agricultural sector helps provide employment opportunities to nearly a quarter of the workforce in Egypt, Deputy Agriculture Minister Mohamed Al-Qersh said on Friday.

He added that the agricultural sector in Egypt has experienced a boom and leaps in recent years, noting that this sector constitutes almost a fifth of Egyptian exports and positively affects half of the Egyptian population.

Al-Qersh said that the development of the agricultural sector is focused on two axes; the former increases cultivated areas with horizontal expansion of the state, and the latter maximizes the use of units of land and water to increase productivity.

The deputy minister said the size of cultivated land is over 9.4 million feddans (one feddan equals 1.03 acres), and that the state is currently working to recover over 4 million additional feddans.

On December 15, 2021, South Sinai Governor Khaled Fouda said the total area of ​​cultivated land in the desert governorate had reached 31,000 feddans.

A report released in July by the Department of Agriculture and Land Reclamation found that the state had spent hundreds of billions of pounds on infrastructure, with the big New Delta project in the lead.

The project aims to develop 2.2 million acres, which is 30 percent of the old delta, and is a big step forward for the new republic.

The report says the area targeted for cultivation is one million feddans at a cost of around £ 300 billion, and the rest of the area is integrated projects that rely on groundwater and drainage water. agricultural processes to deal with the problem of water poverty.