Egypt small farms playing big role but struggle to survive

Egypt small farms playing big role but struggle to survive

SINDIYUN: Egyptian smallholders grow nearly half of the country’s crops, a lifeline role increasingly important after grain imports were stalled by war in Ukraine — but they are struggling to survive. Despite their crucial role providing food for the North African nation’s 103 million people, smallholders are cash-strapped and indebted, frequently selling their harvests at a loss.

“The farmer is dead, trampled,” farmer Zakaria Aboueldahab told AFP, brewing tea on his rented plot of wheat and onions in Qalyubia, 30 kilometers north of Cairo. “I’m trying to sell my onion harvest but I can’t find a market,” he said, the remnants of his crop scattered across the soil. “I just want to break even. I don’t know how I’m going to pay rent”. His onions would sell in Egypt: but financing, marketing and infrastructure hurdles create massive gaps between supply and demand.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), small farms are the “primary producers” of food for domestic consumption in Egypt. Farmers cultivating less than three feddans (1.2 hectares, three acres) – an area the size of a football pitch – till 35 percent of arable land. Yet they produce some 47 percent of Egypt’s field crops, the