This article is the first of a weekly series launched by Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition in collaboration with the Wadi Environmental Science Centre (WESC) ahead of the World Environment Day (WED) that will take place on 5 June and will be organised by WESC at Al-Azhar Park. The new series will cover the topic of the 2011 WED, which is “land usage and food security”.
Once known for its incredibly fertile soil, Egypt has faced food scarcity and high food prices in recent times. Indeed, some of the most important popular protests in the country have been driven by the rise of the costs of wheat, bread and vegetables.
Today agriculture involves almost 40 percent of the Egyptian workforce, but it still remains the least developed sector in the national economy. While the production of agricultural goods has shrunk, due to intensive cultivation that exhausts the soil and a decreasing water supply, its cost has increased.
The length and complexity of the commodity chain in agriculture industry makes this sector particularly vulnerable to economic crises, political instability and, to a certain extent, climate change.
While Egypt now depends on food imports for nearly half of the country’s domestic consumption, the country’s exports in herbs and organic products has skyrocketed recently.
For the past three years, Egypt experienced a 30 percent annual growth in agricultural exports to European and international markets. Nearly 60 percent of Egyptian-grown herbs and organic food are destined to be exported to European countries, with Germany and Italy ranking first.
It is hard to track the origin of this “market schizophrenia,” but if we look at the development of the organic food sector in Europe, we can find some answers.
According to the latest report released by the European Commission, the organic farming sector in the last 15 years grew from a minuscule to a booming market. Figures for the four largest EU markets – Germany, Italy, the UK and France – are impressive.
Demand increased by 18.1 percent from 2005 to 2009 in France, for example. From 2000 to 2008, demand increased by 14 percent in Germany, 8.7 percent in Italy and 11.9 percent in the UK.
The overall demand of premium quality organic food is clearly outpacing supply as the culture of a healthy and clean food spreads at a fast pace .
All agricultural products sold in the EU, either imported or locally produced, must comply with the EU food safety requirements. The development of the sector in Egypt benefits from funding so it can comply with these agreements.
The European market has the capacity to process high quality goods and produce added value. As a consequence, it is easy to find organic Egyptian herbs and vegetables in Italian and German supermarkets for high prices, while it is difficult to find them in Egypt because its infrastructure is not advanced sufficiently to process and distribute those goods.
Organic food consumption in Europe has become a lifestyle status symbol. Luxury restaurants and hotels sensed that and now offer a special gastronomic choice of organic products.
But why should quality food remain a privilege or an elitist trend rather than an everyday practice that is ecologically and economically efficient?
Such questioned stimulated the birth of the “Food Sovereignty Project” initiative (www.freegyptfood.blogspot.com), a blog created by Pamela Labib, a social ecologist, Sumaya Holdijk, a Montessori school teacher, Dalia Abul Fotouh, an environmental scientist who specializes in political economy and Bassem Khalifa, a Sustainable Development Professional.
The project aims at aggregating and disseminating knowledge skills and experience on the independent production of chemical-free, land-free, low-cost food. People are encouraged to grow their own food using vertical systems of growing food and rooftops and the website provides them with tips to do so.
Co-founder Pamela Naguib explains: “The goal of this project is to approach food production from a non-technical point of view and allow for the spread of information and methods in a decentralized and dynamic way, constantly adapting and changing by creating a lot of room for innovation. It aims at creating a research based on a large experience without being restricted by funding cycles and development agendas.”
Sekem, a company created in 1977, has been a pioneer in Egypt in growing food devoid of pesticides and fertilizers using the methods of biodynamic agriculture to produce organic food.
Biodynamic agriculture treats farms as unified and individual organisms by balancing the relations between soil, plants and animals to create a self-nourishing system strictly devoid of pesticides and fertilizers.
Sekem has now become the leader in the organic products and crop remedies’ market. Over the years, it has built advanced infrastructures for processing, packaging and distribution on the local and international market.
In Fayoum, the Fayoum Agro-Organic Development Association (FAODA) is providing training and support to farms willing to convert from industrial agriculture to organic, as well as helping them become certified as organic farms.
Mohamed al-Medany, the director of the association, said transitioning to organic farming involves risk.
“Organic farming is not more expensive than conventional agriculture, it is just more risky on a technical level, especially in the first two years when the conversion takes place,” he explains.
Medany said that during the first period, the soil has to get used to its new environment and recover minerals and natural defenses, which weakens plants and makes them more prone to diseases and insect infestations.
“But then they rise up again and grow much stronger than ever. Indeed, plants develop defenses naturally, while chemicals weaken them as much as they weaken people who work in the fields,” he stresses.
In the last five years, FAODA selected and trained 1800 men and women farmers in the Fayoum governorate. It reached them through a network of local authorities, NGO operators and trainers and supported them in their conversions to organic farming to make sure their cultivations comply with the standards set by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM).
FAODA issued a protocol with the Central Laboratory for Agricultural Expert Systems to offer assistance for the registration of farms in the authorities’ databases.
They also act as mediators with foreign export companies that actually absorb up to 95 percent of the products grown in the 175 certified farms of FAODA network.
He explains that the association failed to interest the big distribution market in Egypt with its organic products for various reasons, the main one being the local farms’ limited supply-chain capacity.
Medany also points to the limited power of choice the Egyptian consumer has and that there is a general lack of cultural background on clean, fair and healthy food. He said as a result, the association focuses on the local market, particularly in Fayoum, and embracing a “zero kilometer” concept it learned from Slowfood, an Italian organization.
Slowfood was founded in 1989 to counter the rise of fast food and the disappearance of local food traditions, and to promote people’s interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect other countries’ economies.
“The main difficulty in the local market is the cost of transportation,” Medany says. “The price of food includes the transportation costs – minivan rental, driver’s fee, risk component, food conservation and hygienic condition – and raises [it] enormously,” he explains.
Consequently, consumers pay more for the trip than for the food they consume, and direct producers don’t benefit from it.
The Slowfood Conviviums bring the organization’s philosophy to life through events and activities such as simple shared meals and tastings, visits to local producers and farms, conferences and discussions, film screenings, festivals, taste education classes for children and adults, promoting farmers' markets or supporting local and international campaigns.
“Smallscale is the keyword,” Medany says. “In order to overcome the risks, one of the best solutions is to diversify the activities and make the whole process sustainable.
He argues that an integrated approach must be used where cultivating is not the only purpose of the agricultural land.
“For example, we can recycle solid waste, produce compost and make handicrafts from residues of plants which might attract insects and lead to plant infections,” he says.
“People only buy the cheapest products, no matter the quality. Most of the garlic sold in Egypt comes from China, to give an example,” he says.
Medany explains that one of FAODA’s major responsibilities is to communicate the improvement of farmers’ work conditions in organic fields and to warn others from the dangers related to pesticides. “
“We have recorded thousands of cases of farmers with skin diseases, kidney and lung failure and cancer,” he says.
In the long term, the organic farming system appears much more stable than conventional agriculture if negative impacts like the uncompensated social costs – diseases, biodiversity loss, erosion, nutrient runoff, water usage – are taken into account.
“With the revolution, we realized how big our responsibility is,” Medany explains.
He said all Egyptian citizens have human rights and should push for a sustainable use of natural resources.
“We all want a good, well-educated, healthy next generation, and this starts with the quality of the food we eat,” he says.
