Aggregate Trends in Four Main Agricultural Regions in Egypt, 1964–1979

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Abstract
In the past two decades, the rate of growth of agricultural output in Egypt has been quite low and, in particular, has fallen behind the country's population growth rate. Most observers seem to agree that despite certain natural constraints, such as limitation of arable land, the sector's performance could have been much better if the Egyptian government had chosen to pursue more supportive policies toward agriculture. There is, however, much less agreement over the specific policies that have been most responsible for the sector's past stagnation. Several recent studies have emphasized the role of price policies, pointing out that the government has taxed agriculture heavily by keeping the relative prices of most major crops quite low. Others, on the other hand, have held the government's investment policies responsible, arguing that the sector's resources have remained undeveloped because of insufficient public investment in research, extension, and infrastructure. While the debate over the relative importance of these sets of policies has generated a number of valuable contributions to the understanding of Egyptian agriculture, the past analyses of the sector's production system have not sufficed to settle the differences. One of the main problems is that, so far, most studies have concentrated on outputs and prices of individual crops and have thus failed to provide comprehensive analyses of the sector as a whole.