Long-Run Performance Indicators of Egyptian Agriculture

Abstract

The study examines the performance of Egyptian agriculture during the period1961-2021. It is evident that the decade of 1991-2000 witnessed the peak of annual growth in crop production, animal production and aquaculture production and consequently in total agricultural production. The 1990s saw the largest rate of growth in agricultural land where a total increase of 1.56 million feddans was observed. In contrast, the least rates of annual growth coincided with the periods of 1971-1980 and 2011-2021. The study reveals that the aggregate production function for Egyptian agriculture is agreeable with constant returns to scale. The production elasticity with respect to arable land is 0.575. The study concludes that technical progress is responsible for 46.2% of the growth in agricultural production while arable land is responsible for only 22.2 percent of growth during the period 1981-2021. Therefore, adoption of new technologies and constant improvements in the methods of production are necessary for future expansion of Egyptian agriculture in order to overcome the difficulty of expanding land and water resources.