First published in 1986, Agrarian Change in Egypt based on extensive original research as well as field survey of eighteen villages, analyses and explains the changes in the agricultural sector in Egypt. It shows how various policies and other factors have affected agricultural output and how developments triggered by the ‘open door policy’ such as inflation, migration, and the shift in the pricing system have affected agriculture. The Egyptian experience is fairly typical of agrarian change in many parts of the developing world where government reforms in the 1960s and 1970s tried to combine considerations of efficiency and equity but ended up with stagnation. The Egyptian case therefore provides a good example of the general crisis in agriculture in the developing world. This book is an essential read for scholars and researchers of agricultural economy, development studies and political economy.

Nicholas Hopkins, a professor at the American University of Cairo, studied the Upper Egyptian village of Musha in the early 1980s, mainly to document the effects of rapid mechanization on the agricultural labor process. He also succeeds in creating a vivid picture of an Egyptian village. His descriptions of Musha society and politics; of how Musha's land is owned, recombined into vi- able farm enterprises, and cropped; and of the practical reality of the state trying to impose its agricultural policies at the village level make the book good general reading on modern Egyptian rural life. The author com- bines his observations and interview findings with data from local civil records and two surveys to fashion a final product that reads better than either the customary anthropological treatise or a numbing presentation of household-survey results. The book makes clear that in Egypt, agricultural change is occurring in a rural milieu dominated by inequality. In Musha, 15 percent of the landholders officially farm 51 percent of the land. The unofficial concentration is probably even greater. Technical change has induced new kinds of relations between larger and smaller farmers. When the larger farmers own the tractors and irrigation pumps, the result is new ways for them to benefit from their poorer neighbors. -- Trom JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org (May 23, 2013).

What emerges is a picture of a rural Egypt that is full of life, dramatically evolving, and treading a delicate line between progress and impoverishment.

This book uses both microeconomic theory and social and political analysis to show how the interaction of social classes, technical change, government policy, and the international and state systems have shaped Egypt's agricultural development.

This volume based on recent fieldwork by distinguished specialists includes information on the changing economic situation in the countryside, particularly after the 'owners and tenants' law of 1992. Along with the effects of structural adjustment on agriculture, marketing, and rural life, several chapters address the declining trend of rural Egyptians to emigrate. Other chapters examine changes in consumption patterns and health, various rural social processes and the 'new lands' being reclaimed in Egypt's desert areas, representations of the rural population in the media and in statistics, and their own changing self-image. What emerges is a picture of a rural Egypt that is full of life, dramatically evolving, and treading a delicate line between progress and impoverishment. Although nothing is typical of rural Egypt, these papers provide a revealing account of the struggles and rewards that characterize the Egyptian countryside today. Contributors: Mohamed Hassan Abdel Aal, Lila Abu-Lughod, Soraya Altorki, Kamran Asdar Ali, Kirsten Haugaard Bach, Ray Bush, Donald Cole, Nicholas Hopkins, François Ireton, Sohair Mehanna, Günter Meyer, Timothy Mitchell, Mohamed M. Mohieddin, Detlef Müller-Mahn, Hans-Christian Korsholm Nielsen, Malak Rouchdy, Reem Saad, Hania Sholkamy, James Toth, Kirsten Westergaard, Peter Winch, Ahmed Zayed.

The inverse relationship between farm size and productivity is accepted as a "stylized fact" of agriculture in developing countries. This study uses Egyptian fieldwork data to examine factors creating this relationship, and the impact of economic and technological change on the relationship.

The latest population census in Egypt shows that there are more people now living along the narrow strip of land by the Nile than ever before, 95 million (CAPMAS 2017). The country’s rapidly growing population, its limited water resources, and its dependence on food imports all reinforce the importance of an integral agricultural policy. With the recent series of economic reforms that saw the flotation of the Egyptian pound, the imposition of a value-added tax, and decreases in energy subsidies, Egypt has a unique opportunity to focus on sector-level policies, including those within agriculture. This paper reviews agricultural and other related policies and their impact on the overall economic performance of the agricultural sector in Egypt. This stocktaking of policies is to serve as the basis for developing a more comprehensive agricultural strategy and policy framework that aligns sectoral policy objectives with policy measures in an effective and consistent manner. The paper is intended to serve as a reference for policymakers, researchers, and institutions. It highlights agriculture’s place in the Egyptian economy and examines water and irrigation policy and the provision and distribution of agricultural inputs, research, and extension, and reviews the price and procurement policies for key crops. Other public policies and their impact on agriculture are also evaluated via a look at the food subsidy system, land rent and tenure, land reclamation, and trade policies. The concluding section of the paper presents a summary of key messages and proposed questions for further research.

After a long period of stability, Egypt’s agricultural sector experienced sudden change due to the 1973 oil price increases and Anwar Sadat’s Open Door economic policies. Workers left rural Egypt for the cities and high-wage jobs in the oil-exporting countries. The resulting “labor shortage†and rising real wages in agriculture coincided with a

Agriculture was the basis of the Egyptian economy when Muḥammad 'Alī, "Founder of modern Egypt," was appointed governor of Egypt by the Ottoman sultan in 1805. Dr. Rivlin's purpose is to discover if Muḥammad 'Alī had a well-conceived agricultural policy of lasting significance for the development of Egyptian institutions. The conclusion reached after careful analysis of the problem from every facet is that far from having an agricultural policy per se, Muḥammad 'Alī merely utilized the agricultural wealth of Egypt for the purposes of personal aggrandizement and the attainment of a position of great power and independence for himself and his descendants within the Ottoman empire. The measures taken by Muḥammad 'Alī affecting land tenure replaced one class of landholders by another to the detriment of the peasant class and the religious institution. Although the Pasha can be credited with changing the Egyptian economy from a subsistence to a cash crop economy by the investment of capital in the development of agriculture, the financial benefits gained thereby accrued primarily to the Pasha himself. Instead of using these profits for economic purposes, Muḥammad 'Alī embarked upon a program of military adventurism that eventually undermined the economic life of the country and brought only limited political gains to Egypt. Muḥammad 'Alī's domestic policies established the social and economic pattern which prevailed until the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 and are largely responsible for many of Egypt's present problems. Dr. Rivlin's study is of major importance to students of the contemporary Egyptian scene, and should serve as an object lesson for present planners in underdeveloped countries. -- from dust jacket.

Working paper on the impact of agrarian reform on rural development in Egypt from 1952 to 1975 - constitutes part of a WEP research project on rural area employment policy, and discusses the effects of agrarian reform on land ownership and income distribution, the role of cooperatives in rural development, etc. References and statistical tables.