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 gyptian agriculture is one of mankind's oldest and proudest achievements. Skilled use of limited water and land resources since ancient times has enabled the narrow strip of arable land beside the Nile to support great civilizations; today, these limited resources are under tremendous pressure. The population, expected to reach 70 million by the turn of the century, is projected to reach 100 million by 2025.
Will there be enough water? A century ago, there were 5084 m3 of freshwater resources per person; today there are only 930 m3, and this could be slashed by over half in the next 25 years. This could be catastrophic; Egypt has no effective rainfall except in a narrow strip along the northern coastal area, where the average annual rainfall is 200 mm. So irrigation is a way of life. Indeed, 84% of the available water is used for agriculture, so if there is an answer, it will have to be found in the agriculture sector.
Will there be enough land? There was 0.21 ha per person in 1897, but only 0.05 ha in 1993. Much of the land is being taken away from agriculture by increasing urbanization--perhaps as much as 30,000 feddans annually (a feddan is about 0.42 of a hectare). As the available land becomes more and more precious, it will be necessary to protect it from environmental damage. The threats to it are real; and they have much to do with the
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way water is used--and reused. In modern Egypt, soil and water are as inextricably linked as they are anywhere.
Already, Egypt is making huge efforts to conserve water through increasing water-use efficiency and the reuse of agricultural drainage water in irrigation. Nearly 2 m ha in the Delta are served by a 1600 km drainage sys
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precious irrigation water that is reused from 4 to 7 BCM. This does make sense. After all, it is still only a small percentage of the 45 billion-plus m3 used for irrigation. But it will exacerbate the problem. And there is another problem, which cannot be separated from water-use efficiency--fertilizer misuse, and its attendant dangers for water quality.
ICARDA and Egypt's Ministry of Agriculture, Agrarian Reform and Land Reclamation (MOA) both attach high priority to the protection of the natural-resource base. MOA has been evaluating the options for water conservation and reuse for many years. In 1994, ICARDA and the Ministry came together to start a Resource Management Program (RMP) to explore the options for, and constraints to, dealing with these issues. Fieldwork is done by Egypt's Agricultural Research Center, and ICARDA provides technical input. Implementation on the ICARDA side is through the Center's Nile Valley and Red Sea Regional Program, based in Cairo. The RMP, which is now in Phase II, was made possible by funding from the European Union.
The project started with a year of preparatory studies. This included a review of relevant work to date--in order not to reinvent the wheel! We ended up with several volumes of literature. This was followed by
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tem; the amount of water reused can exceed 4 billion m3 (BCM). This is a considerable achievement, but it has a side effect: soil salinity. Caused largely (but not only) by an inefficient drainage system and recycling of irrigation water, it now affects about 30% of the soil. What constitutes excessive salinity is, in some ways, an open question; it depends on what you are growing, and how likely that salinity is to be leached out. In some parts of the Delta, the concentration in irrigation water is about 750-1000 parts per million (ppm), which we would not regard as very serious for irrigation. However, in some northern areas, where it is aggravated by the artesian upward seepage of saline groundwater and by seawater seepage, it is nearer 3000 ppm.
There are plans to increase the amount of
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