As we consider food sustainability, it becomes apparent that many countries and economies have realized the need to re-invigorate their own food production in order to secure everything from their borders to their own economic security.
In Africa, it has long been the case ( for the past 30 years or so) that ill-conceived advice given to developing nations included abandoning their own food production in order to leap directly to industrialization, has subjected those very same nations to the dependency of subsidies, the volatility of price shocks, and the resulting criticism that inevitably arises for failing to “see it coming.”
In Egypt, the situation is a particularly complex and illustrative example of the problem of promoting food security, and therefore social stability, in a region that has been historically unstable. Egypt makes a good portion of its income from charging ships for their passage through the Suez canal….as much as $700,000 per trip, per vessel. When oil prices plummeted, ships chose to sail around the tip of Africa instead. With oil prices high, they utilize the Suez.
The majority of poor Egyptians utilize the state-subsidized bread program, buying loaves which cost a few cents per day. The grain, flour and other supplies are subsidized and delivered, and until the “Arab Spring,” were considered an essential component in battling the social unrest fomenting during Hosni Mubarak’s regime.
Predictably, it came to pass that a loaf of bread could not provide sufficient solace for the iron hand of a repressive regime, and Mubarak was exiled, and Egypt thrown into transition.
Political worries were then magnified by the fact that Egypt is the only country in the Middle East which has officially recognized Israel’s right to exist as part of the peace process following the Camp David Peace Accords in 1978. Jordan also subsequently signed a peace treaty with Israel. Jordan and Israel now have a closer, more symbiotic relationship with each other than Egypt and Israel have with one another. Jordan is not having a “revolution.” Israel is a technologically advanced country. Egypt, until its younger adult generation began forming a revolution on Facebook and Twitter, was not considerted to have the same capabilities.
So how does all of this geopolitical confusion play into food security? That is the trickiest question of all. There are those who think that those in power are trying to play a giant shell game with the Arab masses, balancing their perceived ignorance and their natural desire to share in what’s happening in the rest of the civilized world, with their own cultural history. It’s not merely that Israel is a Western enclave, there is the constant question, “How come their lives are some much better than ours? They’re living on the same land that we are!”
Experimental farms in Jordan have done a fantastic job of adopting Israeli techniques for making the desert bloom, with raised orchard beds, of orange and pomegranate shrubs, and a composting style which leaches the harmful salts from the soil. If Israel and Egypt were to emulate the relationship between Israel and Jordan, and bravely cast aside some of the media stories designed to either cater to Wall Street Investment Bankers and their desire to woo clients with a pretense of spectacular analysis of profit potential, and instead decided to join forces in an alliance of patient capital for purposes of food sustainability, it would undoubtedly produce a “shock” that is long overdue in the heavily-manipulated Middle East.
Source article from 2008: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2008/0606/p04s05-wome.html
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