التنبؤ بالمساحة و الإنتاج للمحاصيل العضوية في مصر و محددات الطلب المحلي عليها

الملخص EN

For most farmers, organic agriculture has become the best possibility for restructuring their production based on food products demands.

Today, Egyptian organic farming areas represents about 3.1% of total agricultural land and number of organic producers and exporting companies reached 970, and 242 respectively.

During the last years, organic cultivated areas has increased from 105 in 2017 to about 116 thousand hectares in 2018, representing an increase of about 9.5 % within one year.

Nevertheless, current organic cultivated areas remains limited due to low local demand for organic products, and ignorance of different consumers of importance of organic food in reducing incidence of disease.

This research aims at firstly, studying current situation and identification of main factors affecting demand for organic products in order to increase consumers' interest based on organic products importance.

Secondly, prediction of areas planted with different groups of organic crops.

Finally, prediction and estimation of planted organic potato and tomato crops areas during the period from 2019 to 2023 using the Box-Jenkins method.

To realize these objectives, this work relied on both descriptive and quantitative analysis.

The general chronological trend equations were used in identifying the evolution of different crop groups organically cultivated, beside area, productivity and production of organic potatoes and tomatoes.

The integrative self-regression model, ARIMA and E-views 10 program were used in predicting planted areas with organic potato and tomato crops leading to the following results: 1- Area, productivity and production were increased at an annual growth rate of about 0.22%, 0.01% and 0.29% respectively for organic potato crop, and of 0.42%, 0.02% and 0.42%, respectively, for organic tomato crop during the period (2019- 2023).

2- Cultivated areas with field crops, fodder crops, sugar crops, fiber crops, vegetables crops and fruits crops were increased from 26448, 30624, 13940, 13900, 77952 and 27840 acres respectively, in 2018, to about 30690.37, 34503.93, 15725.89, 16853.25, 62034.67, 94,648.59, and 47858.44 acres respectively in 2023, representing an increase of 16.04%, 12.6%, 12.9%, 21.2%, 21.4% and 71.9%, respectively.

On the other hand, areas cultivated with medicinal and aromatic plants were decreased from 80,736 feddan in 2018 to about 62034.67 feddan in 2023, representing 23.2% decrease of total cultivated area in 2018.

3- Reduced demand of organic products is mainly due to their high price (51%), locations of their outlet are unknown (15%), complete ignorance of presence of organic products (9%), and other reasons (25%).

Based on the research findings, it is recommended to: Adopt and apply the used prediction model of this study in prediction of organic potatoes and tomatoes planted areas, and in sitting and design of future economic development plans as well.Conducting more studies for forecasting to provide a database that helps decision-makers in setting various policies to increase both crops production, and to expand available outlets for selling organic products.