Comparative Research On Agriculture In China And In Egypt

Agriculture sector generally plays a pivotal role in rural economies of developing countries because the majority of its population depends on agriculture for livelihood and agriculture feeds the rapidly urbanized population as well. The recent history of agriculture development varies among countries. This study mainly aims at exploring how China managed to produce enough food to feed over23%of the world population with only about7%of the world’s arable land, why Egypt failed to produce sufficient food for its people and finally find recommendations for Egypt from China’s successful model. In this regard, data about food balance sheet from FAO has been used from1980to2009for four main crops (wheat, maize, rice and soybeans) with four indices (production gap, production gap percentage, stocks variation and net export).Self-sufficiency and utility change were chosen to measure food situation. Farmers’ questioners in Egypt has been done about why Egypt failed to produce enough food for its people and what it should do to change this situation. We found that agriculture policies are the key of China’s successful development. In the same time, agricultural policy is the main factor affecting agriculture in Egypt and makes it the world largest wheat importer. This study highly recommends policy makers in Egypt to improve agriculture policies and Egypt’s agriculture field for the purpose of promoting agricultural self-sufficiency.