At the entrances of villages 22, 30 Bassar, and 38 and 39 Darphil in the Belqas Center—north of Cairo— on the banks of the dry Bassar Canal, which irrigates the land of half a million families, hundreds of thousands of stoned acres and plants burn under the summer sun.
At the entrances of villages 22, 30 Bassar, and 38 and 39 Darphil in the Belqas Center—north of Cairo— on the banks of the dry Bassar Canal, which irrigates the land of half a million families, hundreds of thousands of stoned acres and plants burn under the summer sun.
“These areas are dry even though we are at the climax of rice cultivation season,” said Taha Muhammad Abdulqadir, director of the Front Agricultural Association, which oversees 11 out of 44 villages of Hafeer, which have been areas of agricultural reclamation for forty years, irrigated by the canals of Bassar, Kom Teben, Darphil and Naqaa. These villages annually produce about 320 thousand tons of rice, a third of Egyptian production. “The crisis of thirst and crop destruction takes place every summer without justification,” he added.
Too much consumption
The state adopts new water policies to rationalize water consumption, Abdulqadir said, which targets mainly water-intensive cultivations, particularly rice, the most water-consuming crop.
This has prompted the farmers of North Delta, where rice cultivation is spread, to demonstrate on an ongoing basis against the water policies of the state. Before reclamation, their lands were desert-like and only rice cultivation succeeded due to high salinity.
Rice is also the only profitable crop, even relatively, under an agricultural rotation that obligates farmers to supply wheat and other crops at low prices.
“I’ve been cultivating my acre and a half with rice since 1980,” said Ahmed Ramadan a farmer of dry and cracked land. “In 1996, we began suffering from drought, with deliberate marginalization by the departments of agriculture in Belqas. The water of Kuchiner drainage that reaches us is scarce, toxic and full of factory residues, and officials refrain from opening drainages for us,” he said.
Another farmer, Ahmed Abdul Salam believes that depriving his land of water is in favor of the plots of major investors and businessmen, like in a feudalistic system.
Lands were mainly reclaimed for rice cultivation when the state encouraged farmers to plant it. Now, under the control of rice traders, the high price of rice exports and allowing other dealers to bring rice from East Asia, farmers pay for monopoly and export policies.
Engineer Hamdi Omran, the owner of dry land, draws attention to another factor. “Every year at this time, the Nile water we are deprived of goes to the Mediterranean Sea in vain. Our lands are irrigated by the water of ‘Hader Gamssa’. While our lands and crops are drying up, this water, which is warm and full of fertilizers, is held for the owners of fisheries.
“When farmers tried to open the gate of Hader Gamssa to irrigate our lands, militants belonging to the mafia of fish traders opened fire at them, killing two young men from a nearby village. The police did not investigate the incident; rather, it protected the traders and militants” he said.
Criticism of government water policies
Officials at the Directorate of Irrigation in western Mansoura, the capital of Dakahlia Governorate, said, on condition of anonymity, that there was already a poor distribution of water in this sector, caused by the reclamation of new lands in the nearby area of Clabsho.
They claimed that about 30,000 acres have been added without any increase in the region’s water capabilities, while “Hader Gamssa” needed a pumping station costing L.E. 30 million (US $5 million). The Directorate of Irrigation has allegedly provided the government with a study to resolve the crisis, but with no results. They are often forced, the official said, under the pressure of farmers, to open the water of Kuchiner for three days every year.
The trader’s game
Ahmed Saleh, who pointed out that even though the crisis caused losses for farmers, the survived crop compensated losses. One acre produces four tons of rice, which is sold at about L.E. 1,500 (US$ 250), but the monopoly of big merchants in Cairo raises its price up to L.E. 3,000 per ton (US$ 500). Unfortunately, with market starvation and export policies, traders earn, not farmers.
An Egyptian rural sociological expert, Hassanain kishk, recognizes that Egypt has already fallen under the water poverty line, but says the crisis is unequal distribution on the national level.
The state, he says, deprives crops of water but grants free water for golf courses in the areas of luxurious housing. “Water policy is often linked to the state agriculture policies, which are controlled by the World Bank in terms of production and area,” he said. “Being a major capitalist organization, it deprives Egypt of food self-sufficiency, as in the case of wheat. The rice crisis does not seem far away from this trend.”
