Egypt was once a considerable exporter of these and
other agricultural products. Since the 1970s, however, Egypt
has imported more food than it has exported, and the imbal-
ance in favor of imports is growing steadily (food makes up
more than 30 percent of Egypt’s import expenditures). Most of
the wheat, the country’s staple cereal, for example, comes from
the United States. The basic problem is the one that bedevils
almost every effort Egypt makes to develop: For decades, popu-
lation growth has outstripped economic development.
Egypt’s approach to the population/economic growth
dilemma has long been to try to increase the number of crops
grown on its agricultural land and to expand its land area
in cultivation. The biggest effort was the construction of the
Aswan High Dam, which has been a mixed blessing for Egypt.
On the plus side, it converted about a million acres (405,000
hectares) of land in the Nile Valley