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Urbanization is shrinking arable land in Egypt.
Photo: NASA Earth Observatory
Several thousand years ago, when the pharaohs ruled the land on the Nile, about three million people lived in Egypt.
Today there are more than 30 times as many.
And the population's growth rate has risen particularly sharply in the past few decades: in the 1980s it was around 45 million, today it is more than 100 million - every hundredth person in the world comes from Egypt.
And people need space.
More than 95 percent of Egyptians live in cities on the banks of the Nile.
But people also need something to eat.
And many foods have to be grown and cultivated on arable land.
Fertile land is becoming scarce in Egypt.
Currently, only around four percent of the land in Egypt can be used for agriculture.
And because cities keep getting bigger with population growth and new suburbs develop, it can be assumed that the available arable land will continue to shrink.
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"It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a crisis," said the scientist Nasem Badreldin, who conducts research at the Canadian University of Manitoba.
“Satellite data shows us that Egypt is losing around two percent of its arable land to urbanization every decade, and the process is accelerating.
If this continues, Egypt will face serious food security problems. "
These satellite images show how the country has changed.
The area around the city of Alexandria can be seen - on the left in 1984, on the right in 2021. Much arable land has been lost due to the development of the areas.
According to a data analysis, the utilized agricultural area near Alexandria decreased by 11 percent between 1987 and 2019.
The urban areas have increased by the same percentage.
The fact that arable land - partly also forbidden - is being turned into building land is not a new development.
But experts have observed an upward trend since the »Arab Spring« in 2011.
Rising sea levels also reduce the available arable land
Urbanization isn't the only development threatening Egypt's arable land, however.
The rise in sea level also affects the available area: the level is currently increasing by 1.6 millimeters per year.
And that's enough to cause problems.
In particular, on the edges of the Nile Delta southwest of Alexandria, salt water penetrates and salinizes the fields.
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According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), around 15 percent of the most fertile arable land in Egypt has already been damaged by the rise in sea levels and the penetration of salt water.
Experts blame global warming for around half of the rise in sea levels in the Nile Delta.
The other half is caused by subsidence of the ground.
The compaction of the areas contributes to this as well as the extraction of groundwater and oil.
Is the way into the desert the solution?
One response to the loss of arable land is efforts to cultivate and green parts of the desert.
There are efforts in Egypt to create access to the desert with the construction of highways, railways, water and power lines and to develop new arable land there.
The following two pictures below show that agricultural areas are already emerging on the edge of the desert.
This is only feasible through complex irrigation systems that are fed by groundwater pumps.
"It is entirely possible to develop new arable land in the desert by using groundwater resources, but that is a difficult, resource-intensive and expensive process," said the researcher Badreldin.
"The nutrient-poor soils and the intensive resources required for agriculture in the western desert are a poor substitute for the richer, more fertile soils in the delta."
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