Climate change poses a serious threat to Egypt’s agricultural sector, as it raises the rates of desertification, threatens biodiversity and increases water scarcity, impacting crop productivity and causing food deficits and low levels of agricultural investment, Agriculture and Land Reclamation Minister Ezzedine Abu Stait warned on Monday.
At the opening session of the regional workshop supporting nationally determined contributions on climate change in the agriculture and water sectors, organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Stait added that the Ministry of Irrigation is implementing a giant project to modernize the surface irrigation system in the Delta and the Nile Valley, which will rationalize water consumption over an area of five million acres.
He pointed out that the Agricultural Research Center has successfully developed eight new varieties of rice that consume less water. The cultivated rice area will be limited to a maximum of one million acres to protect our water resources, he added.
Egypt is implementing a number of giant projects in the agricultural sector to face climate risks, he said, including the establishment of 100,000 greenhouses that can provide vegetables throughout the year at competitive prices in order to control rising prices and introduce high-quality agricultural products.
Abu Stait added that the horizontal expansion project for the reclamation and cultivation of 1.5 million acres includes agricultural industrialization projects.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
