How long will Arabs beg for their bread?

Arab governments neglect wheat production despite its importance in bread-making - a staple food for all people - its political role in social stability, and its economic significance in international trade. Over the past decades, Arab states have imported three out of every four loaves of bread consumed by Arab citizens, with self-sufficiency not exceeding 30%. Although Arab countries make up 5.5% of the global population, they produce only 3.3% of the world’s wheat and import 20% of the wheat available on international markets.

Amid global economic crises, bread has at times disappeared from Arab markets. It was one of the main triggers of bloody popular uprisings historically known as bread riots in Egypt in 1977, Tunisia and Morocco in 1984, Algeria in 1986, and Jordan in 1989. Bread topped the demands of protesters during the Arab Spring uprisings that swept the region and toppled regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, and Syria.

The global average wheat yield, measured as output per hectare, has reached 3.5 tonnes per hectare. Wheat productivity in Arab countries remains stalled at 2.8 tonnes per hectare, about 20% below the global average. The world surpassed this level years before 2000, meaning the Arab region lags behind by about a quarter of a century in wheat productivity.

No self-sufficiency

Egypt has become the world’s largest wheat importer, followed by Algeria in fourth place and Morocco in ninth. No Arab country is self-sufficient in wheat, including Sudan, often described as the world’s breadbasket, which also imports wheat. The primary reason is that Arab governments neglect improved seed technology and provide only 20% of what is required for cultivation.

Crop breeding scientists have found that 50% of gains in wheat productivity are due to the use of high-yield seeds resistant to drought and plant diseases, and that the technology for these seeds is not costly. An investment of five billion dollars in high-yield seed technology would be sufficient to double wheat production in Arab countries, an increase that could achieve self-sufficiency in this strategic crop. The question remains: who listens, and who has the political will?

After the January 2011 revolution in Egypt, I visited, accompanied by a fellow researcher at the Agricultural Research Center, the late Abdel Salam Gomaa, known as Abu Al-Qameh (the father of wheat), at the Agricultural Research Centre in Cairo. At the time, he held several positions linked to the wheat file in Egypt and the Arab world, including director of the Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands, affiliated with the Arab League; head of the Plant Production Division at the Academy of Scientific Research; head of the Agriculture and Irrigation Division at the National Specialised Councils; head of the Grains and Legumes Council; and head of the Syndicate of Agricultural Professionals. Earlier, he had served as head of the Agricultural Research Centre, head of the Desert Research Centre, and chairman of the Egyptian Agricultural Company for Seed Production. 

Anyone holding these positions would be close to the late agriculture minister Youssef Wali and subsequent ministers. What caught my attention upon entering his office were models of giant wheat ears decorating the spacious room. I asked him: Why were these wheat varieties not distributed to farmers to cultivate and achieve wheat self-sufficiency?

He replied that they were ordinary plant varieties grown next to piles of organic manure at the edges of some farmers’ fields. These varieties yield 20 ardebs per feddan, equivalent to roughly 3,000 kilograms per feddan or 7.1 tonnes per hectare. Although this exceeds the global average wheat yield of 3.5 tonnes per hectare, the agriculture ministry struggles to persuade farmers to buy them. As a result, average wheat productivity nationwide stands at about 17 ardebs per feddan, approximately 2,550 kilograms per feddan or 6 tonnes per hectare.

He added that Egypt cannot be self-sufficient in wheat because its climate is desert and it does not lie within the global wheat belt, characterised by cold weather and abundant rainfall during a long winter, as in Europe, the United States, and Canada in the north, and Brazil, Australia, and China in the south. There, farmers sow wheat in vast valleys and plateaus before snowfall. The crop then germinates after the snow melts, grows, matures, and is harvested without the need for artificial irrigation, conditions not available in Egypt and the Arab region.

Strangely, 13 years after that visit, at a conference on Arab agriculture, a senior official who heads the largest official agricultural institution in the Arab region, with branches and agricultural companies in almost all Arab countries, was a guest speaker. During sessions held in Doha, a participant asked the same question I had posed to Abu Al-Qameh in Egypt. The answer was identical, to the extent that it seemed as if both had agreed on it or received it from the same source.

Absence of political will

The answers given by both men contradict scientific facts and do not reflect reality. Egypt has never been located within the alleged wheat belt. It was once the granary of the Roman Empire and supplied wheat and bread to the region from antiquity until the mid-20th century. It later became the largest wheat importer due to irresponsible agricultural policies and military rule.

Iran is self-sufficient in wheat despite being outside the wheat belt. Saudi Arabia, a desert peninsula in an arid continental desert environment, achieved wheat self-sufficiency within a few years when it decided to do so, and even became a wheat exporter. This was due to a farmer support policy similar to that applied by the US since the mid-20th century and by other wheat-producing countries.

However, around two decades ago Saudi abandoned this goal in a manner resembling what happened to wheat in Egypt. It squandered the infrastructure of a successful experiment worth billions of dollars, including giant centre-pivot irrigation systems, modern harvesting machinery, and storage silos. It is now returning to the goal of wheat self-sufficiency, setting an incentive price for Saudi wheat farmers that covers costs and delivers a generous profit margin.

There is hope that this policy will continue, yield results, restore wheat self-sufficiency, and provide a practical response to governments that neglect support for their farmers and submit to import policies.

One scientist who worked with the Egyptian Abu Al-Qameh in the national wheat advancement campaign told me that farmers refrain from buying high-yield seeds because the agriculture ministry offers them at high prices. He said Abdel Salam Gomaa halted breeding programmes for high-yield wheat varieties using nontraditional genetic methods at the Agricultural Research Centre for unclear reasons, relying instead on varieties developed through classical breeding methods during the 1980s and 1990s.

More than one expert specialising in wheat breeding told me they had developed strains producing double the yield of varieties approved for circulation by the agriculture ministry. However, the agriculture minister, through councils overseen by Al-Qameh, prevents their provision to farmers.

Impoverishing farmers

Regrettably, Arab governments deal with Arab farmers, most of them smallholders, through a taxation approach. They produce 90% of strategic crops – wheat, rice, and maize – which provide bread and food that underpin social and political stability and support the survival of these governments in power for decades.

In return, these governments deny farmers agricultural support, bank financing, and subsidised fertilisers, seeds, and pesticides. They impose compulsory delivery of crops to the state at low prices, resembling systematic impoverishment, and deny incentive prices that would encourage production. Poverty has become a rural phenomenon in Arab countries.

Large and multinational agricultural companies, by contrast, invest in marginal crops such as strawberries, grapes, and cantaloupe, exporting them abroad. Governments provide these companies with agricultural land at low prices or free of charge, supply bank financing, seeds, fertilisers, irrigation water, and electricity, and then grant direct financial support of no less than 10% under the banner of enhancing export competitiveness in global markets. These policies conflict with fair resource distribution, transparency, support for small farmers, and addressing rural poverty. They are among its main causes.

Poverty has spread among Arab farmers, and the term “rural poverty” has emerged after the countryside was once a source of wealth and prosperity. Reports by the International Fund for Agricultural Development show that 70% of the Arab rural population lives in poverty. The World Bank and United Nations agencies have found that investment in agricultural development is the most effective approach to overcoming rural poverty in most countries and that GDP growth generated by agriculture is at least double that generated outside the sector. Agriculture has been 3.5 times more effective in reducing poverty than growth outside agriculture.

Despite this, extreme poverty has consumed Arab farmers and taken root in the Arab countryside due to government agricultural policies that deliberately aim to impoverish the Arab farmer.

Article translated from Arabic by Afrah Almatwari. To read the original, click here. 

Abdel Tawab Barakat is an Egyptian academic and writer with a PhD in agricultural sciences. He is an assistant professor at the Agricultural Research Center in Cairo, specializing in agricultural development research, food security policy, social justice, and rural poverty alleviation. He has also served as an advisor to Egypt’s Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade.

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