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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 April 1999 Issue No. 425 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 April 1999 Issue No. 425
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A happy cow gives healthy milk
By Eman Abdel-MoetiWhen organic fruits and vegetables appeared on the market, confusion spread: hadn't we been eating organic food all along? Those in the know were equally sceptical, albeit for a different reason: they knew that Egypt's agricultural land has been receiving healthy doses of chemicals for six decades now.
According to Youssef Afifi of the Ministry of Agriculture's Plant Protection Research Institute, "any land that has been treated with chemicals has to go through a transitional phase lasting from four to five years before it can be turned to organic agriculture." Afifi explains, however, that the Nile Valley soil is formed of the heavy layers of red silt that have been deposited on both sides of the river for centuries with every great inundation. "Such soil can be cleansed of any chemicals used in it, particularly if flood irrigation is used."
Afifi emphasises that "flood irrigation washes all the pesticides from the soil regularly and, during the phase of transition from chemical to organic agriculture, the land is treated. Samples are taken until the soil is found to be free of any chemicals."
The Ministry of Agriculture is encouraging organic farming today, and cutting down on the amount of chemicals used to combat insects and plant disease. The movement, however, has been spearheaded largely by private sector companies that were able to take the initiative of shifting to organic agriculture and biodynamic farming since early 1980s.
Ali Fahmi, an organic banana producer who owns a farm in Banha, explains that organic agriculture entails a biodynamic preparation of the land, while biodynamic farming implies treating the land with a carefully prepared natural compost fermented for three to four months, in addition to following certain guidelines that view cultivation from a holistic perspective. Biodynamic farming, in other words, involves "treating the farm as a whole, taking into account the animals that live on it, the organisms that thrive in its soil, the birds that fly over it, the sky, the trees, and even the stars shining above it."
In short, biodynamic farming is a system that allows cultivated land to achieve -- and maintain -- self-sustainable development. Each element plays an important part in the whole. "Even the worms and organisms living in a healthy soil can provide it with four tonnes of fertiliser a year," Fahmi notes, concluding: "A happy land yields happy trees."
Fahmi has relied on research and "common sense" in managing his farm. He abandoned his career as a physics professor at the American University in Cairo some eight years ago to run the 30-feddan plantation he had inherited, and which was in desperate need of intensive care. He was particularly interested in biodynamic farming, which started as a reaction to the excessive use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers in Germany in the 1920s before spreading throughout Europe. Fahmi is fascinated by the holistic approach to farming, which, he believes, is similar to a physics theory called the Gaia Hypothesis. "The Gaia Hypothesis considers the planet a whole, an interacting system with its earth and sky and living creatures, a self-regulatory entity, going from one point to the other in phases," he elaborates.
When Fahmi first started putting his ideas into practice on his farm, several farmers in the vicinity accused him of destroying his land because he refused to use any chemicals. But when his land yielded far more than it had done previously, they were convinced.
When banana prices started dropping in 1996, Fahmi established his own company and began to distribute his crop himself. Before that time, he had distributed his produce through a company headed by Ibrahim Abul-Eish, who has been applying organic methods to agriculture since the 1980s. Abul-Eish started out in 1979, planting organic vegetables and fruits on his land in Gharbiya. "We started out exporting to Germany," he notes today with pride, "then put our products in the local market."
In a few years, Abul-Eish became accredited by Demeter Bund, a prestigious biodynamic farming accreditation society. Then he obtained the right to accredit other farms whose owners wanted to turn to organic agriculture.
He established the Centre of Organic Agriculture in Egypt (COAE) to give biodynamic farming certificates to other farmers. Ali Fahmi soon became a member. "We were happy to have 30 founding members in 1985; today we have over 160 members owning hundreds of feddans from Aswan to Alexandria," exclaims Abul-Eish in delight, and something like amazement at the accomplishment.
Abul-Eish later established the Egyptian Biodynamic Association (EBDA) in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture. This is an advisory body that conducts research and offers training to farmers interested in converting to organic agriculture.
Persuading the Ministry of Agriculture to plant organically in the 1980s was not an easy task, according to Abul-Eish. "Had it not been for the courage of Agriculture Minister Youssef Wali, we would have not been as successful as we are today."
Abul-Eish says some officials at the ministry were initially reluctant, believing as they did that, if pesticides were not used to combat insects on one farm, any disease affecting plants or livestock would rapidly reach epidemic proportions. "Many experts and specialists from the ministry monitored the first experiments. We were successful, and they were convinced," he relates. Since then, the ministry has encouraged organic farming and now provides experts, information, and facilities. Although organic farming has spread as a result, according to Abul-Eish, "we still represent only one per cent of the agricultural land in the country."
Abul-Eish was originally a pharmacologist, but opted for a radical career change and took up farming after seeing many people become seriously ill after consuming food that had been treated with fungicides and pesticides. Prevention, he soon discovered, was the best cure.
Like Fahmi, Abul-Eish uses pheromones instead of pesticides to control the number of insects on his farm. Pheromones are hormonal substances, which in this case are secreted by female insects and are used by organic farmers to trap and eliminate male insects. "There are many ways to distract the male from the female," explains Abul-Eish, "that include spreading pheromones, or using organic bacteria to kill the cocoons."
Since the 1980s, organic farming has proved to be a healthier option, for the land and for those who live off it. The Ministry of Agriculture has slashed the amount of chemicals it uses, from 30,000 tonnes a year in the 1970s to 3,000 in the present decade. Quantities are expected to decrease further.
Among the incidents that sold organic agriculture to many agricultural investors was the rejection of a shipment of potatoes destined for export, and which was found to contain too many chemicals. Many farmers subsequently grew worried about the effect the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) could have on their livelihood if they continued to use chemical pesticides and fertilisers. Those who have been able to make the switch to organic farming, on the other hand, are looking to the implementation of the GATT as a windfall.
Biodynamic farming, then, seems to be the way of the future. The Ministry of Agriculture's Youssef Afifi became completely convinced of its virtues when organic techniques scored high success rates in combating the dozen or so different pests that attack cotton crops in Egypt. "Organic methods used in the cultivation of cotton successfully eliminated the threats of all these kinds of diseases," he explains.
But some farmers cannot afford the time and investment the conversion process demands, especially at a time when the law on tenant-landlord relations has made the future so precarious for so many. Having relied on the intensive application of chemical pesticides for decades, those who still have land now find themselves obliged to revert to the very methods they once abandoned to keep up with the competition.
