World hunger and the war in Ukraine - Workers Today
World hunger and the war in Ukraine - Workers Today
There's something I don't understand and hope the fine people of GZD could help me understand:
That whole chunk of what is annoyingly called "middle East" used to be what is called the "green crescent". The area with excellent agriculture, dating back millenia. However, this and some other articles I've seen say Egypt is a massive importer of wheat. How come? Did the climate change so much since the days of the Pharaohs that the Nile valley can no longer support a population? Did the population simply grow beyond the river's ability to feed it? Did wars and colonial conquests destroy too much?
What happened?
According to this article:
Egypt produces half of the 20 million tons of wheat that it consumes with irrigation and imports the other half.
Basically, Egypt's population has ballooned so much that the advances in farming technology has not been able to keep up with the food demand.
For reference, Egypt produces 9 million tons of wheat per year with a population of 102.3 million, while Ukraine produces 33 million tons with a population of 44.13 million.
For Egypt, the areas that can be used to produce wheat are the areas close to the Nile only, while Ukraine is full of rivers pretty much everywhere so almost the entirety of its land can be used to farm wheat.
Egypt during bronze age had pretty advanced farming technology for its time which allowed it to surpass other countries. Now that Ukraine is using the same tech Egypt is using, the difference is the amount of land that can sustain farming, which Ukraine has a lot more of.
Yes, basically this. Nothing out of ordinary happened, you can't increase food production indefinitely with the same amount of land.
Also worth noting is that the "Egypt agriculture degenerated" is a racist take, because after it there is inevitably either clear or unspoken blaming Arabs for this "degeneration". Sometimes as cherry on top you can also find white pharaohs myth nearby.
