Agriculture

For all the industrialization and development that has taken place in Egypt over the last three decades, the country is still largely an agrarian society with 40% of the population engaged in some form of farming. The quasi-feudal system carried over from the Ottoman period was abolished from 1952 with a series of land reform decrees which reduced private agricultural land holdings to 80 hectares, then to 40 hectares and finally to 20 hectares.

The government distributed requisitioned farmland to the Egyptian peasant farmers. Agriculture has been further transformed by the introduction of modern farming equipment and techniques and Egypt now has one of the highest crop yields in the world. The annual output in metric tons of Egypt's agricultural sector is as follows:

Sugarcane 11.6 million.

Maize 5.2 million.

Tomatoes 4.7 million.

Wheat 4.6 million.

Rice 3.9 million.

Potatoes 1.8 million.

Oranges 1.7 million.

Cotton 324,000.

Many other fruits and vegetables are also cultivated in Egypt.

As for animal husbandry in the 1990s, the following approximate figures have been estimated:
Cattle 3 million.

Buffalo 3 million.

Sheep 4.4 million.

Goats 4.8 million.

Donkeys 1.6 million.

Poultry 44 million.