Desert land reclamation programs and family land dynamics in the Western Desert of the Nile Delta (Egypt), 1960–2010

Alary, Véronique; Aboul-Naga, Adel; Osman, Mona-Abdelzaher; Daoud, Ibrahim; Sahar, Abdelraheem,; Salah, Ehab; Juanes, Xavier; Bonnet, Pascal

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.11.017

Cited by 24 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Hence, by granting land to women, the "Mubarak Project" has enabled rural women to participate actively in shaping their society.' Very little research has been conducted on changing social norms in the New Lands even as desert land reclamation has continued to be an important national policy in Egypt (Alary et al, 2018). By locating part of our research in the New Lands in Egypt, we also understand if resettlement in new communities might create opportunities for women to participate in irrigation and water management.…”

Section: Irrigation Gender Norms Technologies and Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women, irrigation and social norms in Egypt: ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same?’

Najjar¹,

Baruah

Garhi

2019

Water Policy

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This paper explores how women and men participate in irrigation activities in Egypt, drawing from a survey administered to 200 men and 202 women and qualitative information from 150 interviews. Women participated in irrigation activities in 78% of the 402 households surveyed, suggesting that women are far more actively engaged in irrigation efforts in Egypt, and possibly in the wider MENA region, than is generally assumed. The diffusion of certain irrigation technologies such as drip, sprinkler and tatweer in recent years has made irrigation more socially acceptable for women to perform although some women had also been irrigating land long before these technologies became available. We identify land ownership, educational attainment, institutional support from government, donors and NGOs, and access to training in irrigational technologies as factors that enable women to optimally undertake irrigation. These factors enabled women to participate meaningfully in public institutions related to irrigation, such as water user associations (WUAs). Finally, we discovered that desire and ability to participate in WUAs declined dramatically for both women and men when institutional support was withdrawn or eroded. Thus, the paper concludes that we must look at a variety of social categories and relationships to understand women's involvement in irrigation and to identify ways to strengthen it.

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Section: Irrigation Gender Norms Technologies and Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women, irrigation and social norms in Egypt: ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same?’

Najjar¹,

Baruah

Garhi

2019

Water Policy

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“…The materials and methods used in this study were based on those described in our previous paper (Alary et al, 2018). The study was conducted in the desert reclaimed lands of Nubaria, West Delta, as part of the national Egyptian program to expand the cultivated lands over the desert areas around the Nile Valley.…”

Section: ■ Materials and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In each of those five regions, around 10 to 12 farmers from three to four villages were selected to reflect the diversity of land beneficiaries. We found mainly three types of land beneficiaries: i) the university graduates, coming mainly from urban areas, who benefited two hectares from the program, ii) the common beneficiaries, generally land renters in the Nile Valley, who benefited one hectare, and iii) the new buyers coming from rural or urban zones, who had been interested in investing in agricultural land more recently (Alary et al, 2018). The total sample included 174 farms.…”

Section: ■ Materials and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a previous paper (Alary et al, 2018), we studied the households' dynamics in those desert reclaimed lands of Egypt with regard to land regimes and policy programs. We showed that beyond those formal policy programs, settlers have found different ways to secure their livelihoods and were able to diversify their production systems toward mixed crop-livestock systems.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Opportunities and challenges of integrating crop and livestock systems in the desert reclaimed lands of Egypt

Naga¹,

Alary

Osman³

et al. 2020

Rev. Elev. Med. Vet. Pays Trop.

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The Mediterranean agriculture is constrained by high competition for land and water utilization. One of the challenges for farmers is to increase land productivity through a better use of livestock in mixed crop-livestock farming systems. To assess the opportunities and challenges of integrating crop and livestock activities in irrigated areas, a survey was conducted among 175 small-scale farms in the West Delta desert land of Egypt in 2013/2014. Five regions were investigated and comprised the old reclaimed lands where settlers came in the 1960s, the intermediate reclaimed lands where farmers settled down in the 1980s, and the new reclaimed lands that were attributed to new farmers in the 1990s. The study highlighted two types of farmers’ strategies: 1) diversification and specialization with focus on fruit tree plantation by university graduates, who had benefited from the attribution of around two hectares of land in the settlement program since the end of the 1970s; and 2) diversification with emphasis on livestock by common beneficiary settlers from the Nile Valley, who had benefited from the attribution of one hectare of land since the 1990s. Graduates focusing on fruit trees corresponded to a strategy of developing new business activity, whereas common beneficiaries diversifying their farming systems through livestock corresponded to the need to secure a stable source of family income all year round. Whereas diversification appeared to be a driving force for agricultural development in this context, specialization could be a social and economic risk as graduates became more dependent on national and international markets. This was reflected in the perception of farmers who underlined the need to integrate technical, ecological, economic and social constraints in their decisions.

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“…While Nasser's policy was to reclaim large areas in the form of state farms and to lease (rather than sell) them to small and landless peasants, Sadat's policy was to distribute reclaimed lands to agricultural high school and university graduates, a policy that continued in the early years of Mubarak but was extended to graduates of different schools and faculties and to all beneficiaries who lost their jobs with the adoption of the economic reform and structural adjustment program (ERSAP) in 1991. Lands were allocated in slots of 5 feddans (1 feddan equals 0.42 hectares or 1.038 acres) for graduates and 2.5 feddans for nongraduates (Alary et al, ). After 10 years of Mubarak's reign, ERSAP was launched in 1991 along the lines of the International Monetary Fundand World Bank recipes.…”

Section: Egypt's Agricultural Development In the Last Four Decadesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Rural Egyptians Better Off? Trends in Inequality and Real Consumption Expenditure in Rural Egypt

Helmy

2019

Poverty & Public Policy

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This article uses three selected national household surveys conducted in Egypt in 1981/1982, 2004/2005, and 2015 to assess the evolution of rural consumption inequality and trends in real rural consumption expenditure at the beginning year of Mubarak’s era, his end years, and the post‐Mubarak era, respectively. After evaluating inequality using inequality measures, we construct two consumer price indices (CPIs), a general and a food CPI, for rural Egypt for the period 1981 till 2015 to evaluate rural real consumption. The article concludes that rural consumption inequality had slightly fallen from the beginning of the Mubarak era toward its end, but slightly rose again in the post‐Mubarak era. Despite the changes, estimates of rural inequality were moderate. Nevertheless, such moderate levels of inequality are expected to be higher if the new rural areas in reclaimed desert lands are accounted for separately in national surveys. The article also concludes that according to our CPI, real rural consumption expenditure had fallen in most expenditure brackets throughout the whole period, with the exception of some small‐sized brackets at the very top and very bottom ends of the consumption expenditure distribution.

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Desert land reclamation programs and family land dynamics in the Western Desert of the Nile Delta (Egypt), 1960–2010

Cited by 24 publications

References 31 publications

Women, irrigation and social norms in Egypt: ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same?’

Women, irrigation and social norms in Egypt: ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same?’

Opportunities and challenges of integrating crop and livestock systems in the desert reclaimed lands of Egypt

Are Rural Egyptians Better Off? Trends in Inequality and Real Consumption Expenditure in Rural Egypt

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