الوضع الراهن لإنتاج و استهلاك الأرز في مصر و دور الكفاءة الفنية للإنتاج في الحد من الفجوة الغذائية

الملخص EN

The rice crop is one of the most important cereal crops because it is a strategic food crop as a main source of energy, in addition to being one of the main export crops in Egypt, in addition to being considered one of the geographically important crops that require cultivation in order to maintain soil fertility and protect agricultural lands from salinization.

The government has adopted policies to limit the areas planted with the rice crop due to the water challenges facing Egypt, which led to a decrease in the cultivated area of it and then the total production and the emergence of a food gap that resulted in the transformation of foreign trade from export to import.

In light of this, the research aimed to identify the production and consumer situation, technological efficiency, foreign trade, and then the food gap, in order to identify the most important factors through which self-sufficiency rates can be raised.

It was found that the area and productivity, and then production, took a general declining trend during the period (2000-2020) with an annual decreasing rate estimated at about 1.5%, 0.33%, and 1.8%, respectively.

It was also shown that rice cultivation is concentrated in 9 governorates at a rate of 99.4%, in which the governorates of Dakahlia and Kafr El-Sheikh contribute about 50% of the area and production of rice, then the governorates of Sharkia and Beheira contribute about a third of the area and production of rice in Egypt during the period 2010-2020.

It is also evident that the productive efficiency of the governorates corresponds to a large extent with their arrangement in terms of area and production.

By tracking the foreign trade of rice, it was found that the quantity and value of exports fluctuated, but they took a general decreasing trend at an annual rate estimated at 17.5% and 13%, respectively, while the quantity and value of imports took a general increasing trend with an annual growth rate estimated at 20% and 22%, respectively.

It was also clear that the rice self-sufficiency rate decreased at an annual rate of 7.3%.

Estimates of the technical efficiency of the rice-producing governorates indicated that the average efficiency amounted to about 93% during the period (2010-2020), and indicated the difference in technological efficiency between the governorates in a way that does not correspond to the relative importance of area and production, as is the case in the governorates of Kafr El-Sheikh and Sharqia.

The rice crop is one of the crops with a high water ration, and thus the trend towards horizontal expansion is one of the solutions that are not feasible, which necessitates the trend towards adopting all possible strategies to increase the productivity of the unit area, as it activates the role of scientific research in devising new varieties of rice with high Quality and productivity, as well as activating the role of guidance, as the arrival of production in the rice-producing governorates for technological efficiency compared to the most efficient governorates (Dakahlia) can increase the total production of rice by 295.4 thousand tons, which represents about 6% of the average total production of rice during the period (2010).

-2020), which can cover nearly half of the gap in the average study period, in addition to the need to study the reasons for the increase in the percentage of rice losses during the last years of the study period, as it rose from 1.9% during the period from 2010-2014 to about 3.9% during the period 2015-2019 period.