Land and water resources information system in Egypt
Egypt covers an area of slightly over one million square km. Ninety-nine percent of the population (65 million) lives in a small band alongside the Nile river in the Nile valley, in the Nile delta and in coastal areas on about 4 percent of the land.
Agriculture is a key sector in the Egyptian economy. It contributes about 40 percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 22 percent to commodity exports, and 50 percent of overall employment. Thirty-four million people, about 54 percent of Egypt's population, lives in rural areas.
The arid climate of Egypt characterized by high evaporation rates (1500-2400 mm/year), and very low rainfall (5-200 mm/year) leaves the River Nile as the main freshwater supply. However, the favorable climate of Egypt around the year is ideal for a wide variety of crops. This made it possible to adopt an intensive cropping system and thus permitted the production of more than one crop per year in most of the cultivated area. The crop acreage is much greater than the actual cultivated area, making a total of about 6.5 million ha. Soils in the Nile valley and the Delta are Vertisols, characterized by strong expansion by wetting and shrinking by drying.
At present only 5.4 percent of the land resources in Egypt is of excellent quality, while about 42 percent is of poor quality mainly due to development of salinity and sodicity problems, which hinder realization of the beneficial effects of any agricultural inputs.
Irrigation has been practised throughout the Nile valley since the earliest times. After the construction of the Aswan High Dam, this land was converted to perennial irrigation. Before completion of the dam, the cultivated area was about 2.8 million ha. After completion, including the horizontal expansion, the total irrigated area has risen to about 4.1 million ha.
Mohamed Gomaa, |
All irrigation water comes from the Nile. More than 80 percent of the Nile water is used in agriculture. Using this resource more economically will reduce the overuse of Egypt's share of the Nile water (quota 55.5 billion cubic meters) and allow better relations with neighboring countries that are depending on the water of the Nile as well.
Saving water is a major concern for Egypt. Per capita water resources are approximately 950 m³/year, which will decrease to 560 m³/year by 2025. New resources must be developed and irrigation development must continue.
In Egypt, productive lands are finite and irreplaceable and thus should be carefully managed and protected against all forms of degradation. These include physical, chemical and biological degradation processes such as soil crusting, compaction, soil fertility depletion due to nutrient mining, decrease in soil organic matter, pollution of soils by toxic wastes including heavy metals, salinization and sodication. Salinity problems are widespread. Almost one million hectares of the irrigated area are salt-affected.
In 1971, the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation established the Executive Authority for Land Improvement Projects (EALIP), which has the overall responsibility for all types of land improvement in Egypt. EALIP has been implementing a land improvement programme covering the entire irrigated lands of Egypt. The programme includes gypsum application for improving the productivity of sodic soils; subsoiling to improve soil physical properties, break up hard pans, soil compaction and all indurated layers within the root zone; land levelling and reshaping for better water management; and improvement of the drainage and canal system for salinity and waterlogging control.
A Geographic Information System (GIS) has been in use at EALIP since 1997, and a GIS-based soil database was used for production of maps and other related materials on soil salinity, sodicity and water table level, and on gypsum and subsoiling requirements. Information from soil and plant tissue analysis was added to the database, and GIS was used to prepare the base map. The presence and location of particular macro- or micronutrient deficiencies were determined from the maps. EALIP produced information maps for subsoiling, gypsum requirement, watertable depth and salinity for the whole country at the district level (1:100 000), for one governorate at the village level (1:25 000) and for three governorates at the basin level (scale 1:2 500). Work is now ongoing to produce these maps at a scale of 1:2 500 for the all relevant areas in the country. The information is being used for the planning of gypsum application and subsoiling.
The full Egypt country report is available at the Gateway Web site:
http://www.fao.org/WAICENT/FAOINFO/AGRICULT/AGL/sw1wpnr/sw1wpnr.htm
