“Welcome O Cotton of the Nile … you are sweet and beautiful,” goes the famous  farmer’s melody that was sung during the cotton harvest season many years ago.  Land workers waited for this particular season to prepare their sons’ marriages, and villages used to buzz with wedding parties.  But now, says farmer Abdulrafie Abdulghani from Gumaiza in Gaharbia Governate in northern Egypt, “Sadness and depression have replaced joy.”

“Welcome O Cotton of the Nile … you are sweet and beautiful,” goes the famous  farmer’s melody that was sung during the cotton harvest season many years ago.  Land workers waited for this particular season to prepare their sons’ marriages, and villages used to buzz with wedding parties.  But now, says farmer Abdulrafie Abdulghani from Gumaiza in Gaharbia Governate in northern Egypt, “Sadness and depression have replaced joy.”

For starters, the high cost of cotton cultivation does not yield profits equivalent to the amount of effort and expenditures, complained land renter Rizq Abdulhadi with a frown on his face.

Abdulhadi explained that cotton crop is planted in April, and harvest season begins from mid-September through different stages ending in November, suggesting that planting one acre with cotton costs about US$500, not to mention the wages of agricultural labor; each acre produces about 730 kg.

Mohammed Hilal Abdulbasit explained that each acre needed about six sacks of fertilizer, but the agricultural association – the state’s arm entrusted with providing farming tools – grants each farmer only two sacks of fertilizers at about US$15 each. The farmer is forced to buy the remainder from the black market at twice the price, along with six sacks of fertilizer at about seven dollars each.

No irrigation water

Abdulghani says that the crisis of irrigation is the most important problem facing farmers. The crisis however is not just the scarcity of water in some areas, which, sometimes, forces farmers to use waste water for irrigation; according to Rajab Sa’eed Arabi – a land tenant – the irrigation of an acre costs about US$90 in crop rotation, and a scarcity of “diesel”, which is used as fuel to run the machines, plays an important role in the aggravation of the crisis, since the price of each liter in the black market has amounted to $.33.

White gold treasures stored in farmers’ homes

After overcoming the two obstacles of getting fertilizer and covering irrigation costs, a farmer finds himself in front of a third obstacle risking all his efforts: nobody, this year, will buy cotton.

Inside Abdulghani’s house, cotton sacks fill the rooms and the balcony. Pointing to his crop, Abdulghani explains how the decline in the world’s cotton prices and the liquidity crisis in the country resulted in stopping sales and purchases completely. Then Egyptian government intervened through subsidy and raised cotton price to about US$200 per 146 kg, but in vain.  That price, according to Abdulghani, “does not fit at all with the cost of farming, and also because traders exploit the crisis and make the price below the specified rate.”

Peasant syndicate might be an answer

Ahmed Adas, head of the Peasant Syndicate in El-Mahalla, said that some farmers were eventually forced to sell their stored cotton at less than its price, explaining that the deterioration of the spinning and weaving industry was one of the most important reasons for the difficulty of cotton marketing because supply was more than demand.