Egypt to plant about 4 million acres of wheat next season: Head of Farmers’ Syndicate

CAIRO – 19 August 2023: Head of the General Farmers Syndicate Hussein Abdelrahman Abu Saddam expected that Egypt to plant about 4 million acres of wheat next season.

Farmers are working with the government to cultivate all the area to be planted with 100% certified seeds to increase our production of wheat, he added in a statement on Saturday.

He added that the Egyptian state is seriously seeking to achieve self-sufficiency in wheat in the implementation of the sustainable agricultural development strategy within Egypt's Vision 2030.

Abu Saddam indicated that the wheat crop, which is grown in Egypt in late November and early December of each year, has developed greatly in the last 10 years.

The Egyptian Ministry of Finance allocated 45 billion EGP to purchase local wheat from farmers this year, with an increase of more than 19 billion EGP compared to the last year, said Minister Mohamed Maait in a statement in April.

The government has started to buy the local wheat from the beginning of this April to the mid-August, with an additional cost to increase the price of one ardab (150 kilograms) by 74% from 865 EGP to 1,500 EGP, Maait added.

The increase in the wheat purchase price comes with the implementation of the presidential directives to support farmers and encourage them to expand the cultivation of strategic crops like wheat, in a way that contributes to achieving self-sufficiency.

Egypt has been suffering from a crisis of wheat supply from conflicting Russia and Ukraine, the two biggest wheat importers to Egypt. So, the government is targeting to increase the area of the wheat crops by 1.5 million feddans over the few coming years in accordance with a new study conducted by the Egyptian Cabinet's Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC).