I have discovered three agricultural regions in lower Egypt. They are the alluvial floodplains of the Nile River, the larger delta and then the desert lands beyond the delta. The Nile is quite impressive: It’s wide and deep with much ship traffic. The river border areas are densely populated with people, high-rise apartments and office buildings.
Like other such metropolitan areas built on a river, the soils nearby the Nile are profoundly productive. They are usually recent alluvial deposits, the layering of sediments and organic matter that has eroded from topsoil upstream and then carried to the floodplain during a flood event.
However, the Aswan Dam in Upper Egypt (to the south) mitigated the flood events so the recent flood deposits are no longer a regular outcome of eroding soils.
I have not yet visited the fields that remain in the alluvial floodplain. Only from a distance I notice outstanding crop yields. I am told farmers here grow crops all year with a cropping intensity of three crops per year.
The challenge is these crop fields are disappearing as urban growth extends into this now very limited farmland. I do not know the mechanism for urbanization or land-use laws here in Cairo or in Egypt, but I do know there are many signs of new urban growth on these valuable soils.
In fact, often I see a small sliver of land 10 to 20 meters wide and 100 meters long that is farmed between two enormous buildings under construction.
Iâll try to get on-site and evaluate these soils and these crop fields soon. But I can write here that these are the best soils in all of Egypt, and crops grown here look superb.
I have spent half of my time in the Nile Delta region of Egypt. This land is historically part of the Nile River floodplain. These crop fields have been intensively farmed for decades, with an extensive overland network of concrete-lined canals.
The ones I have seen are in good shape and appear to be well taken care of. Some farmers have contracted out well drilling for a water source.
I am told well depth is 325 to 650 feet deep. I have no idea of the laws and regulatory requirements for digging the well and then reporting the withdrawal volume over time.
The soils here range from clay loams to fine-textured and coarse-textured sands. I have seen a handful of soil fertility analyses, and they are generally reporting alkaline soils in the neighborhood of pH 8 with a very low cation exchange capacity and soil organic matter less than one-half of 1 percent.
The major plant nutrient demands are nitrogen, phosphorus and a handful of micronutrients.
Farmers in the delta have access to manufactured fertilizer, some of which is made in Egypt and some from other Northern Africa and Middle East regions.
I saw many retail cooperatives with fertilizer on hand, as well as many small shops in the rural towns with all sorts of specialty fertilizers, including a host of organic and what are called bioperformance plant nutrients.
I am skeptical about most of these, and I suspect the entire fertilizer program here in the delta is built upon the retail trade with very little oversight given by a regulatory agency like the Ministry of Agriculture.
Many or most of the delta farmers have irrigation systems, usually pivots or solid-set sprinklers or drip irrigation. What they do not have is the program for what we call irrigation scheduling, or in other words, the proper use of instrumentation and data to determine the proper timing, volume and rate of supplemental water.
Farmers irrigate using historical methods or following the law of primacy. I suggest they can do a better job of using a limited resource, water, by modernizing their irrigation water management. In fact, that is my primary mission here in Egypt.
Iâll work with the Ministry of Agriculture staff in the near-term to find out if they have the capacity to help the delta farmers. Certainly the ministry is well aware of the need to implement irrigation scheduling.
The delta farmers are feeding the plant directly using the irrigation system. The soils here lack the intrinsic fertility of the Nile River alluvial floodplain soils, and at least in my very brief discussion with the farm groups about feeding the soil, the concept is not understood.
The manufactured fertilizer is added to the irrigation water volume, and so I am calculating a nutrient application rate given the particular irrigation system.
Interestingly, the need to apply the proper volume at the right rate and at the correct time is doubly important because the irrigation water volume is carrying the soluble nutrients necessary for plant growth.
So here is classic case for using systems science to improve two components of crop growth: water and nutrients.
Generally, though, the delta farmers appear to be using good practices simply because the food and feed crops look reasonably good. Some of the newer crops, citrus and grapes, are especially healthy, and my guess is the landowners are doing a good job from a systems standpoint.
Interestingly enough, the Egyptian government encourages farmers to settle the desert areas outside the Nile Delta region. I am told farmers may settle on 5 acres of land, install an irrigation system and then try to grow crops.
I have visited several of these new dwellings, and my concern is managing the expectations of these farmers. The ones I talk with fully know the need for using supplemental water for irrigating. What is not worked out is how the farmers will feed these plants.
The soils here are completely desert soils, practically no intrinsic soil fertility and little to no water-holding capacity. The coarse-textured gravelly sands can support the plant but offer very little in terms of fertility.
However, this is not a hopeless condition. I will be spending a lot of time with several of the farmers, helping them put together a package of using water and soluble fertilizer in the right combinations to help grow the crops.
They are enthused and highly motivated to make this new land productive. They appear to have the inputs necessary, the drip irrigation systems and the manufactured fertilizer.
We just need to put the package together using some ballpark numbers in terms of amount of fertilizer added to the supplemental water and base this amount on timing, volume and rate of application.
Several of the government officials tell me that Egypt is very much aware of the need to increase food production for its growing population. They also tell me that many of the farmers, especially the small-landholder farmers, lack modern management practices. My job is to help them.
I have one month to complete my work here. I view the work primarily as an investment in people, especially the younger scientists and engineers and government officials. They are the ones that will be here for the long haul ⌠and have the energy and passion to make progress. PD
Gangwer is an agricultural scientist with the USDA on assignment abroad.
Mike Gangwer
Agricultural Scientist
USDA-NRCS
