Egypt’s diminishing food production In spite of the continued efforts under-
taken by the government to strengthen the country’s food production by
means of land reclamation in desert areas, and to protect it from too much
stress by propagating birth control, the increase in arable land has not fulfilled
expectations and population growth is still considerable (see Figure 1.2). From
the mid-1940s to 2000, the per capita harvested area diminished to one-third.
Whereas the total of Egypt’s agricultural land remained more or less the
same, the area harvested increased greatly owing to repeated cultivation of
land in the same year, made possible through the availability of more irriga-
tion water. But this success was undermined by the enormous population
increase. During this time, Egypt turned from a food-exporting country into
a food-importing one, although 29 per cent of the working population were
still employed in agriculture in the year 2000.