Luxor4u

This looks interesting...although I haven't seen anything about it in the Egyptian press yet.




Cairo: Egypt and the Korea-Arab Society (KAS) signed Tuesday a cooperation protocol to build a $10 billion integrated agricultural city in the North African country.
The city will be stretched over an area of 300,000 feddans in the southeast part of the Qattara Depression, north west of Egypt, said Prime Minister Sherif Ismail speaking at a press conference following the signing ceremony.
The protocol was signed by the General Authority for Reconstruction Projects and Agricultural Development, an affiliate to the Egyptian Agriculture Ministry, and the Korea-Arab Society, represented by the Korean Arab Company for Economic and Cultural Consultancy.
Within a six-month timeframe, the city is set to be completely built by Egyptian workers, under the supervision of Korean experts, Ismail said.
The city will include agricultural projects by using the latest technologies, the establishment of 50,000 smart greenhouses as well as a number of seawater desalination and solar power plants, besides projects to produce fodder and cultivate stevia, the healthy alternative sweetener and sugar substitute.
The protocol is one of the significant outcome of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s visit to South Korea in March 2016, said Agriculture Minister Abdel Moneim El-Banna.

https://www.arabfinance.com/2015/pages/ ... 84&lang=en

And when completed it will give North Korea a new target to test their latest missiles. That's if North Korea still exists when it is finally completed.

Odd story.

300,000 feddans is a very large activity - particularly when compared with the other Egyptian government agriculture programs.

Korea is not an agriculture expert - particularly in a dried, arid climate. Maybe they have other overseas agricultural investments - if so they have kept quiet about them and operate their local agriculture with high protection to make imports noncompetitive and are not noted for their international competitiveness in agriculture - or in related science..

Desalination is a very expensive way to do irrigation and the pumping of water from the sea quite expensive.

The only high status regional climate change estimate which was done by the German Max Planck (I think - I mentioned it in another post) says the middle east/north Africa is likely to be the worst hit. So its a high risk region to do an agricultural investment.

The proposed agricultural product does not seem to be a high valued added crop which would justify the capital investment. The international sugar market is widely varying in historical price movements and not terribly profitable.

The region is currently exposed to the instability in Libya - which is probably going to be around for a while.

Should be interesting to follow this. If this goes ahead it will be the biggest single investment in recent Egyptian history. If it goes ahead.

If this goes ahead it will be the biggest single investment in recent Egyptian history. If it goes ahead.

My thoughts exactly.

I know next to nothing about this sugar alternative but, if they are investing $10 billion, presumably the South Koreans have done their homework.

Presumably

The absence of any local press coverage to what is an enormous investment is....a little surprising. To say the least

Dry farming methods are all the go now. In the Nappa Valley wine growing regions, what used to use millions of liters of water, now only use a fraction of that by making the roots go down deeper for their water. Japan is making good head way with very successful trials growing a lot of different type crops using this dry farming technique, the crops only needing a fraction of the past water consumption.

Dusak you are right - take this from an inhabitant of the world's driest continent.

Even we know about the technology for minimal water usage and the plant and animal genetics which back this. Interestingly the world corporate and science leaders in this area come from one country. Its in the middle east but is not a Muslim country. It has no investments in Egypt but sells its products everywhere else.

Korea's skills in these areas, this industry and in this region are hard to identify and Egypt's activity and achievements in agriculture and agricultural science aren't easy to find. Normally in this type of situation you turn to experts with a track record.

Dealing with climate change in Egypt will be difficult because the investments/new technologies required are better suited to corporate farming or large scale/capital intensive/profitable family farming with a strong science focus and an educated workforce. You would also need access to finance which is a major difficulty for Egyptian farmers in their dealings with the Egyptian banking "system" which has a strong focus on speculation/property development and spends most of its money loaning to the government. Even the government owned bank which is meant to provide services to farmers spends a lot of its money on property speculation/tourism and has most of its branches in non farming areas.

I think its true to say that 3 generations of western agricultural aid/advice to Egyptian farming has had underwhelming effects - indeed production and productivity as well as profit has probably declined. I've read one or two international agricultural/agricultural science report on Egypt and they are appalling.

The absence of any current reform program for Egyptian farmers and the reliance instead on preference/tax holidays/cheap land/government approvals/cheap or free new government funded infrastructure for large scale corporate international investors is a contradiction which is difficult to understand. Clearly the needs of poor locals is not the highest priority.

What is also missing is basic investment in water conservation. In simple terms the under investment in the government irrigation system wastes a lot of water and the non-rational water charging policies also contributes to waste. Even moderate investment by government in this area could have big effects on exports, productivity and farm incomes. Major adult training programs for farmers also wouldn't be a waste and wouldn't cost a lot of money. Abandoning government regulation/control of agriculture also would only recognize what Russia and China have learnt from generations of failure in this area.

In any event the climate changes in the next generation will require flexibility and innovation - and government policy/control is rarely good at these and there is no government controlled agriculture in the world that has a good track record in even a non climate change context.

Still a deafening silence on the Korean project. Maybe it's a spoof

If it's to be done in 6 months you'd expect some comment in the press....but there's zilch.

Surely the climate issues are largely irrelevant with green houses and desalinated water. I would have thought it's more an arithmetical exercise - crop revenue versus cost of structure, energy, water etc. There's no shortage of available land or cheap labour (albeit under"expert" Korean supervision).

How they make it add up, to provide an acceptable return on a $10 billion outlay, is anyone's guess.

Is climate change an issue for Egypt? Can it get any worse? If I was an Egyptian i'd be praying for another tilt in the earth's axis to move the monsoon rains in the direction of Cairo

Water mis management is a perennial problem in Egypt.

The bulk of the water comes from the Nile, 80% of it provided free to farmers - a guaranteed recipe for wastage.

The specific regional impacts of climate change is still an area where emerging science theories have yet to prove themselves.

One of the very, very few regional predictions has been done on the Middle East by the gold standard Max Planck which i referred to in another post. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/04/climate- ... table.html.

Their predictions are dark.

No one has yet done any gold standard predictions on climate change in the rainfall areas that are the source of the Nile.

There is a generally accepted science view on rising sea levels and this will have big impacts on deltas - including the Nile delta - and on low lying coastal resorts/villages.

No, green houses are not irrelevant to climate change. Increased temperatures in desert areas already noted for high temperatures will have an effect on both plant growth and water consumption.

I have difficulty in understanding the whole project. Its a basic rule in agriculture that you grow near your inputs. Soil and water for example. A desert area with questionable soils, long and expensive water input supply chains and expensive ways of producing and delivering water seems to set up risks of failure no rational investor world want to choose. In addition the market delivery costs and the costs of housing workers would further limit financial viability. In addition to all this South Korean domestic agriculture is a poor performer and the country lacks proven companies with achievements in overseas investment in this area.

No, green houses are not irrelevant to climate change.

I said "largely" irrelevant...and still think so. A greenhouse can create an artificial climate and, at the cost additional outside energy, could deal with even the more extreme predictions of temperature rises over the next century.

I have difficulty in understanding the whole project

You're not alone there