Ideology vs common sense
Nicolos Hopkins* contemplates the relationship between irrigation, water conservation and development in Egypt
Agriculture in the Nile Valley of Egypt depends completely on the human development of the natural resources of the river. The history of this development goes back millennia, and represents the gradual mastery of the river water for irrigation and for other purposes. It is a history of both engineering and social dimensions. Efforts to consolidate this mastery, yielding the present pattern, can be traced back to the 19th century, though the overall goal of water control is much older. Beginning in the 19th century, the pattern of dikes and canals, designed to have the water reach as much arable land as possible, was gradually systematised and improved under the combined efforts of Egyptian and European engineers. Today, with a growing population and a relatively stable water supply, water conservation is a key future issue.
Currently approximately 85 per cent of the water that enters Egypt is used for agriculture; the remainder is divided between industrial and domestic uses. Clearly agriculture is thus the area where the greatest savings of water are possible. In order to evaluate that we need to look at how the water is used.
Egyptian irrigation is a single system governed by the control mechanism of the Aswan High Dam that makes water available according to the measures laid down by the Ministry of Public Works and Water Resources (MPWWR) in collaboration with others. The water stored behind the dam flows down the Nile and through the various canals. The canals get smaller and smaller until the water reaches the lowest level of canal, often known as the mesqa, where it can be accessed by the farmer. The mesqa generally has water available about half the time, typically one week on and the next off.
The irrigation system as it exists in Egypt is designed to supply water to the farmer at a level slightly lower than the level of his fields. This is known as a "below grade" system, and contrasts with systems where the water flows from the canals into fields by gravity. Thus the farmer must lift water from the mesqa to his fields, and he may lift as much as he needs. The water is then carried within the fields to the location of the actual irrigation in a network of field ditches. The lifting point defines the boundary between the area under government control -- the MPWWR -- and the zone managed by the farmers. The major exception to this system is in the Fayoum where the greater gradient makes gravity flow irrigation possible; in the Fayoum farmers have a time share of a certain flow of water, that is, a certain quantity.
The actual use of the water for irrigation by farmers is in the domain of the Ministry of Agriculture, though of course it is the farmers who decide. In the fields, the style of irrigation is known as flood irrigation. Depending on the crop, either the entire field is flooded so that water seeps into the soil and hence to the plants, or water is guided between ridges where the crops are rooted. This set of techniques, rooted in the old basin system of irrigation, is used effectively by Egyptian farmers to produce some of the highest yields per unit of land in the world. Certainly more water enters the fields than is absorbed by the plants. However, it should be kept in mind that too much water is as deleterious to plants as too little, and Egyptian farmers would not achieve these high yields if they were egregiously over-watering their crops.
From the point of view of rural social organisation, this description indicates several key points. One is the social organisation of the lifting itself, which is generally done by small groups of farmers who must take turns in organising the lifting, and in organising the flow through field ditches that often cross the fields of one farmer to reach another. The lifting is typically done either through animal powered water wheels or through small pumps. Moreover, this is the point of contact between the canal system managed by the MPWWR and the farmers. The Ministry provides water for the mesqa according to its guidelines, but the farmers are responsible for maintaining the mesqa as an effective transmitter of water. Higher level canals are fully managed by the Ministry.
The network of canals and the Nile itself are a system to convey water to farmers and other users. The quantity of water is certainly an issue, but so is the quality, and they are related. Water in the system is subject to multiple pollution sources including domestic waste, chemical runoff from agriculture, and industrial waste. The cleaner the water can be kept the easier it is to re-use it and thus maximise the water available to Egypt.
A vexing point is the pricing of water in this system. At one point, the idea was that if farmers did not have to "pay" for water they would waste it. This is also the theory behind the introduction of the "below grade" system: the effort and cost of lifting water would force farmers to economise. Currently there is a debate stirred up by proponents of the neoliberal economic system.: if farmers are to receive market prices for their produce, then they should also pay for the costs of the inputs. The most obvious "free" input for farmers is their irrigation water. Therefore farmers should have to pay for the water. There is also the notion that users of a system (the irrigation system) should have to pay for at least the operation if not the capital costs of that system.
Pricing water has run into considerable opposition on the part of many in Egypt. Recently the Minister of MPWWR Mamdouh Abu-Zied reaffirmed that there was no intention to put a price on Nile water in Egypt. A counter-argument has been that although farmers may not pay for the water, they should be expected to pay for the cost of supplying that water. Thus the notion of paying for water is rooted in a notion of conservation (forcing farmers to economise) and in a -- perhaps misguided -- theory (neoliberal economy).
The reluctance of the government to institute such a system is generally based on the fact that most Egyptian farmers are poor and could not afford the additional cost. (It is interesting that the concern for poor farmers did not play a role in the changes in the owners and tenants law passed in 1992.) In the 1930s, the British water manager Hurst argued that the country should provide water for free because it benefited in other ways from the agricultural production. In all of this, one should look for the larger interests involved, and that includes the powerful segment of large farmers as well as the ideology of foreign donors.
What is often overlooked is that farmers do pay a price for water. However, they do not pay this to the government, but to each other. They rent pumps, pay for pump fuel, rent draft animals, pay to feed these animals, and must maintain the mesqas and the field ditches. Thus farmer budgets already contain a cost for water.
Irrigation has often been the subject of elaborate social theories and of debates about policy. It is useful to remember that there are real farmers, large and small, trying to make a living for themselves and their families, and for whom irrigation is a taken-for-granted tool. One should not let ideology triumph over common sense.
Are there then changes that could ensure the continued high level of productivity of land in Egypt while at the same time conserving water so that more can be used elsewhere? One obvious change would be to modify the crop mix of Egyptian agriculture to reduce the importance of such water demanding crops as sugar and rice. For political reasons this option may not seem right, but it should remain at least on a side table during the discussions. Another change that has attracted more attention is to change the system in the old lands of Egypt away from "flood" irrigation and towards a combination of sprinkler and drip irrigation, as often used in the new lands. The major drawback here is the high cost of the capital investment, especially for the small farmers who are the overwhelming numerical majority of Egyptian farmers. The need for water pressure means some additional operational costs. Some small scale experiments have been carried out with the help of foreign aid donors, but so far these experiments have not spread. There may also be some environmental consequences; the experience of Jordan's East Ghor project has shown as repeated use of lower-water techniques can lead to salinisation; this should be examined. A third change would be to focus on minimising conveyance losses (evaporation and seepage) by re-engineering open canal systems into covered piped systems. Each of these changes requires careful study -- since the present system "works" one should be cautious not to "fix" it into something less effective. Sooner or later, population and economic pressure will require moves in this direction, however, it is important that planners keep not only engineering goals but also social goals in mind.
* The writer is dean of the School of Humanities at the American University in Cairo and the author and editor of several works on Egyptian agriculture.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 23 - 29 January 2003 (Issue No. 622)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/622/fe2.htm