Should we achieve wheat self-sufficiency?

Each April, at the start of the wheat harvest, there is a nearly ritualistic scene. Each of the three presidents who have ruled over Egypt play the same role. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Mohamed Morsi, Hosni Mubarak each pose before a camera, a field of “yellow gold” in the background, to officiate the start of the harvest season in desert reclamation projects. For Mubarak, it was Toshka. For Morsi, Borg al-Arab. And now, for Sisi, it is Sharq al-Oweinat. With the arrival of each season, there is a political and media propaganda campaign that links desert reclamation agriculture projects to progress toward greater food security via the planting of wheat, the most consumed local crop and a cornerstone of food security discourse adopted by the Egyptian state since President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s time.

The idea promoted in the litany of speeches, images and carefully designed videos is that we are reclaiming the desert in order to plant wheat. But the situation on the ground is very different.

Most wheat production is concentrated in the Nile valley and delta, “the old lands.” According to a study conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on family-based agriculture at the scale of small landowners in Egypt, small landowners — defined as landowners who are in possession of less than three feddans — are still the primary producers of the main foodstuffs consumed domestically, with 50.5 percent of the land earmarked for wheat production owned by them. Another study, this one conducted by socio-economist François Ireton, indicates that this percentage would include most wheat production in Egypt if we included medium landowners — defined as those who own less than ten feddans — in the valley and delta. It is clear that large farms and desert farms, on the other hand, primarily produce vegetables, fruits, medicinal and olfactory plants and feed crops for export, industry, or to feed cattle. These farms only marginally serve local food consumption needs.

But this fact does not prevent the government and others from using the “self-sufficiency” discourse in wheat production as the reason for the prioritization of desert reclamation projects. The truth of the matter, however, is that Egypt has been facing problems with its self-sufficiency in wheat production over the past few decades.

In many ways, however, this problem does not seem logical because Egypt has succeeded in significantly increasing its wheat yield per feddan in that same time span.

What has caused the crisis then? The government’s favorite explanation for all problems — population increase — cannot account for the self-sufficiency crisis. A more detailed look reveals important variables in the relationship between Egyptians and wheat, such as poverty, prevailing dietary patterns and the state’s food policies.

From the last few years of the aughts to the present day, Egypt has increased its wheat yield by almost 38 percent. Total production has risen from 6.5 million tons in 2000 to almost 9 million tons in 2022, according to the FAO. An increase in the total area of land allocated for wheat cultivation has had a significant effect on productivity,  as Egypt allocated about one million feddans to growing wheat over the past two decades (the land area for wheat cultivation increased from 2.45 million feddans in 2000 to 3.5 million feddans in 2021, or about a third of cultivated land in Egypt).

Another factor that has prompted the increased yield cannot be ignored. Over the past 20 years, the productivity of each hectare (2.38 feddans) in Egypt rose from 5.8 tons per hectare to 6.8 tons per hectare. We can say that the output of a feddan of wheat in Egypt is one of the highest in the world. For example, in Ethiopia or northern India’s fertile lands, the output is no more than 3.5 tons per hectare, whereas in Egypt, it is twice that figure.

The problem of wheat self-sufficiency in Egypt is very complex. Increasing the productivity of each feddan in the country is a success story by technical and agricultural standards, whereby Egypt has been able to write its own history in wheat production in bold letters. Egypt has raised the yield of each feddan four times over the past century, a remarkable increase considering the lack of advancement in technology in general and in agriculture in particular. This can be traced to the Egyptian state’s support of agriculture research centers from the July Republic until recently, especially in wheat cultivation and the development of new local strains. Despite the success story in yield, seed engineering and agricultural mechanisms, Egypt has not achieved self-sufficiency in wheat production and has continued to be the world’s largest importer.

The annual imports of wheat are a big issue nagging at the Egyptian government, despite wheat imports making up only 4 to 5 percent of total Egyptian imports. But the issue is the constant fluctuation in wheat prices, which is mirrored in the price of subsidized local bread and puts pressure on the dollar supply. This pressure can be clearly seen in the balance of payments. Legumes and grains represent an important food source for most Egyptians in light of deteriorating living standards and rising poverty in recent years, and there is therefore less room for the government to maneuver in terms of their supply.

Egyptian wheat imports represent a sizable figure in global terms. In 2022, the amount of wheat traded globally was around 200 million tons, about 25 percent of global wheat production. Egypt’s share of that was 12 million tons (or 6 percent of global wheat production). That may seem like a small percentage, but this concentration is high for the wheat market. China imports less wheat than Egypt from the global market, and other countries with high populations, like Nigeria, import nearly half the amount.

The issue of self-sufficiency has often been traced back to Egypt’s rapid population increase in the last two decades, which, the logic goes, has led to increasing local demand for wheat. But this is a historically shortsighted explanation.

The increase in population alone cannot account for the wheat gap. Since 2000 and up until 2022, the rate of population increase was about 1.94 percent on average, whereas the increase in land area allocated for wheat cultivation was 1.54 percent annually. The increase in output was 1.64 percent as a result of new, more productive wheat varieties. Despite the narrow gap between the increase in production and the increase in population, during the same period, the amount of imported wheat rose from 6 million tons in 2000 to 12 million in 2020, an annual increase over 2.5 percent higher than the population growth itself.

The poor nutritional quality of the Egyptian diet, which is mainly made up of carbohydrates and oils, and rising poverty levels are the main reasons for our rising consumption of wheat. The increase in poverty levels in the same period caused a surge in demand for seeds and wheat to provide enough calories for nutrition. Bread, as well as other wheat products, whether as a commodity on the market or subsidized by the state, are some of the cheapest in Egypt. Therefore, the increased demand for seeds and wheat as a main component of the Egyptian diet can simply be linked to rising poverty levels as well as the focus — even to the point of being reductive — on bread subsidy policies, as all other food subsidies were changed to cash transfers.

We can see this by comparing the per capita share of grains and poverty rates over the last few years. According to the government’s official numbers, poverty rates have gone up from 25 percent in 2010 to almost 29.7 percent in the income and expenditure report covering the pre-covid period, and, with that, wheat consumption rose in the last ten years by almost 4 million tons.

Total consumption of wheat increased, but on the per capita level, there is a more complex story. Between 2010 and 2015, we saw a decline in the per capita share of wheat by about 20 kg, from 160 kg in 2010 to 141 kg in 2015. But since 2017, after the devaluation shock, the per capita consumption of wheat went up by 22 kg in just two years before stabilizing at 156 kg per capita in 2020, according to official data.

The increase in wheat consumption on the whole as well as at the per capita level in the period between 2015 and 2020 was to be expected as it saw a hastening of the adoption of economic reforms, which were accompanied by a 4.7 percent increase in the percentage of the population below the poverty line. Said otherwise, 5 million more Egyptians are now below the poverty line. This period also saw a decline in living standards for most Egyptians and a devaluation of the currency to half its value. These facts were reflected in the total consumption of wheat, which increased by 1.3 million tons between 2015 and 2020, which is double the previous rate from 2010 to 2015.

But the increase in the per capita share of wheat remained fairly limited compared to the total increase in wheat consumption. Perhaps the reason for this is the decline in purchasing power, even to buy cheap food items such as those made from wheat.

The wheat-focused dietary patterns are therefore directly correlated to inflation and poverty rates. Whenever poverty rates go up, so does wheat consumption. And whenever inflation rates rise in other food commodities, such as meats, cheeses and vegetables, wheat consumption rises to make up for the calorie difference. According to FAO statistics, Egyptians receive a third of their daily calories and 45 percent of their daily protein from wheat products. In general, Egypt consumes a lot of wheat, standing in sixth or seventh place in global wheat consumption over the past few years. The only countries or regions that surpass Egypt’s consumption have much larger populations, such as China, India, the EU, the US and Russia. Per capita consumption of wheat in Egypt can reach up to 150 kg a year, whereas the global average does not exceed 67 kg a year, according to FAO statistics in 2018.

This food consumption pattern is a result of political choices and changes in dietary patterns in Egypt over the last 70 years. Corn was the staple food for most Egyptians until World War II. Egypt was self-sufficient in grain until 1930. Consuming wheat bread was an urban phenomenon until the mid 20th century. Despite achieving self-sufficiency in corn and not relying on the import of grains, the preparation method of corn used to cause diseases and deaths in the Egyptian countryside, as professor Ellis Goldberg points out. Achieving self-sufficiency was not enough at the time to solve issues of poverty, hunger and diseases. But actually it was the quality of corn and its transportation from South America, without taking into consideration technology or dietary patterns, that caused the malnutrition and death of many Egyptians due to pellagra, a deficiency disease stemming from a lack of Nicotinic acid or Niacin in food relying on corn. This drives home the point that self-sufficiency in a staple food item alone does not solve food issues in Egypt.

Switching to wheat was a reason the diet of many Egyptians improved and the burden of disease was removed. But 70 years later, we find food problems related to our over reliance on wheat and our very high consumption per capita. It has ushered in a host of health problems that place burdens on the fragile healthcare system, not to mention the dependency on imports.

The change to wheat, however, was not driven only by the state’s desire to improve the conditions of Egyptians. It was also the start of the cheap wheat age, which was driven by other factors, most importantly US wheat subsidies. US subsidies to export its plentiful wheat was an added reason to expand the consumption of wheat. It was effectively a tool of nascent US imperialism. US aid to Egypt in the form of food and facilitating the availability of US wheat, according to the United States Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, which Egypt has benefitted from since 1956, was one of the main reasons to cement the country’s dependency on wheat. A study by the Middle East Research and Information Project shows that, in 1961, aid shipments of wheat made up 77 percent of Egypt’s wheat imports and about 38 percent of net supplies of wheat and wheat flour. This percentage increased in 1962 to make up 99 percent of Egypt’s wheat imports. By 1963, Egypt became the biggest single consumer of US food aid.

The other important reason was to expand the food subsidy system in general and in particular the bread subsidy system, which had existed in Egypt since World War I. After only being used by the urban poor, it began to expand to include larger swaths of the population. By the 1970s, three quarters of the population was partially or totally dependent on subsidized bread as a staple food item.

The main issues that are ignored when we focus on wheat — despite thousands of reports, studies and recommendations on wheat self-sufficiency over the decades — is our ability to be self-sufficient in wheat, the importance of being self-sufficient in wheat and the effect this sufficiency has on diet quality and the improvement of Egyptians’ food. Said more clearly, is it possible to be self-sufficient in wheat? If we do arrive at this sufficiency, will this solve the issues of malnutrition, food poverty, high rates of deficiency diseases and hunger for the poor, who now make up almost a third of all Egyptians? The most readily available answer to both questions is no. We must rethink, in a more profound way, the food system and development model that produce and reproduce poverty and hunger. We must put “wheat” at the center of a bigger problem, which is the scarce supply of safe and healthy food and the scarcity of resources and welfare. Solving the wheat self-sufficiency problem will not lead to solving the issues of malnutrition, poverty and deficiency diseases, which alternatively require thinking from a comprehensive perspective that takes into consideration the matrix of power relations and inequality in accessing food and the effects of policy on the food system and achieving balance in its components instead of focusing on one of them and ignoring the others.