Agriculture sector provides job opportunities for 25% of workforce in Egypt

 

CAIRO - 25 December 2021: The agricultural sector contributes to providing job opportunities for nearly a quarter of the workforce in Egypt, said Assistant Minister of Agriculture  Mohamed Al-Qersh on Friday.

 

He added that the agricultural sector in Egypt has witnessed a boom and leaps over the past years, noting that this sector constitutes nearly one-fifth of Egypt’s exports and positively affects half of the Egyptian population.

 

Al-Qersh said that the development of the agricultural sector focuses on two axes; the first is increasing the cultivated areas with a horizontal expansion of the state, and the second is maximizing the use of the land and water units to increase productivity.

 

The Assistant Minister said that the size of the cultivated lands is more than 9.4 million feddans (one feddan is equal to 1.03 acres), and the state is currently working on reclaiming more than 4 million more feddans.

 

On December 15, 2021, Governor of South Sinai Khaled Fouda stated that the total area of cultivated land in the desert governorate has reached 31,000 feddans.

 

A report released in July by the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation revealed that the state has spent hundreds of billions of pounds on the infrastructure, with the major New Delta project coming atop.

 

The project aims to develop 2.2 million acres, which represents 30 percent of the old Delta, and is a major leap for the new republic.  

 

The report indicated that the area targeted for cultivation is one million feddans at a cost of about 300 billion pounds, and the rest of the area is integrated projects that rely on groundwater and treated agricultural drainage water to confront the problem of water poverty.