, particularly in the
villages and towns of Upper (southern) Egypt. The government
will have to preserve and even expand its social security net for
the poor by subsidizing their basic food and clothing needs,
rather than continue to look for ways to cut the subsidies. Pre-
sumably, reducing expenditures on defense could free up more
money for this purpose. And, because much of Egypt’s rural
poverty is a result of too few agricultural resources, improve-
ments in farming must be made. The continued expansion of
cities and towns into Egypt’s limited farmland must be stopped.
The current emphasis on large-scale efforts to reclaim desert
land should be reevaluated, because of the enormous cost and
typically low returns of these projects. Worldwide experience
suggests that more benefits may come from small-scale, local
efforts to improve existing farming technology.