Egypt's Minister of Agriculture, Ayman Farid Abu Hadid, on Tuesday decided to send two delegations to visit Sudan on Saturday to verify whether 250,000 acres are fertile enough for cultivating crops needed in Egypt.
The two delegations will include wheat and sugar crop experts.
A ministry statement released Thursday said the move follows recommendations that resulted from a meeting in May between Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf in Sudan. During the meeting, both states agreed that Egypt would cultivate 1.25 million acres of land in Sudan.
The delegations will analyze the soil, draw up maps required for the project and determine the crops best suited for the land.
The project is the biggest to result from bilateral cooperation between the countries, Abu Hadid told Al-Masry Al-Youm.
An earlier agreement between Egypt and Sudan involves locating Egyptian families to the targeted areas and granting them partial ownership of 5 acres each to guarantee their commitment to land cultivation.
Senior government sources told Al-Masry Al-Youm that Bashir had welcomed 10 million Egyptians living in Sudan as a part of the Four Freedoms agreement signed in 2004 between the countries, which grants both Sudanese and Egyptians the freedom of movement, residence, ownership and work in either country.
Translated from the Arabic Edition
