Determinants of Wheat Consumption, Irrigated Agriculture, and Food Security Challenges in Egypt

Abstract

Wheat is one of the most widely cultivated cereal crops and consumable staple food globally. Internal production efforts are essential to reduce the ever increasing gap between production and consumption of wheat in Egypt. The production-consumption gap can be reduced through advanced agriculture, innovative wheat varieties, land expansion, bio-saline agriculture, and other water management practices. This research study aims to investigate the determinants of wheat consumption in Egypt, find the price, income, and cross price demand elasticities of wheat. For empirical analysis, the annual time series data from 1961 through 2020 is collected from different sources. The data is analyzed through the Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) model to investigate the long-run demand determinants of wheat in Egypt. The estimated results indicate the presence of a long-term relationship among determinants of wheat consumption. The results of own price, GDP per capita, and population reveal that wheat is a necessity food. Similarly, the estimates of rice price, corn consumption, and barley consumption indicate that such commodities are substitutes for wheat in Egypt. Based on these estimates, it is suggested that the policy makers in the Egyptian government and all other stakeholders need to concentrate on a comprehensive policy for parallel consumption of wheat, rice, corn, and barley. It is also recommended that the Egyptian government must focus on exploring ways including bio-saline agriculture to increase domestic wheat production to reduce wheat imports, save valuable foreign exchange, and overcome some of the food security challenges in Egypt