TITLE:
Virtual Water Trade in Egyptian Agricultural Sector in the Light of Scarcity of Water Resources
AUTHORS:
Gaber Ahmed Bassyouni Shehata, Ahmed Hassan Ismaiel Srour, Shmoaa Awad Mohamed Soliman Oraby, Sahar El-Sayed El-Sayed El-Wakeel, Hanan Abd-Elmoneim Mohamed Zahran
KEYWORDS:
Virtual Water, Supply Water, Demand, Egypt, Trade Water
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.11 No.5,
May
24,
2023
ABSTRACT: Agricultural foreign trade has taken many recent
trends in light of many changes and
developments affecting the global economic environment. Countries have resorted to adjusting their trade
policies and reconsidering the commodity structure of their exports to
suit their resources, especially water resources, in order to maintain the
efficiency of the use of these resources and at the same time increase the
export return. The water issue in Egypt faces major challenges on the demand
side of water in light of the relative stability on the supply side. The state
is working to increase the supply side through the reuse of agricultural
wastewater, seawater desalination, and wastewater treatment. On the demand
side, it is working to develop systems Irrigation, reducing wastage in the use sectors, moving towards foreign trade by importing
basic crops, and limiting the export of water-depleting crops to find a balance between the water balance and the
agricultural trade balance, in which the deficit amounted to about LE
182.5 billion, representing about 23.5% of the deficit in the total trade
balance of about LE 777.42 billion in 2019. The problem of the research is
inefficiency of using the water resource in agricultural exports, as most
components of the Egyptian agricultural exports structure are water-intensive
fruit and vegetable crops, while the contribution of agricultural commodities
that is less in the use of the water resource and the best in the export return
is somewhat limited, which indicates the importance of working on modifying the
structure of Egyptian agricultural exports and re-planning them in line with
the variables related to the scarcity of water resources in Egypt. The main
objective of the research is to propose different alternatives for the optimal
planning of Egyptian agricultural exports, which are characterized by high
export returns and low needs of water resources. The research depends on the
linear programming method as a quantitative method
to measure the phenomena and variables related to the research problem. Related
to the research results, the following can be recommended: 1) Supporting the productive
capacities of producers to export crops that use less water; 2) Reducing the expansion of
exports that use the most water resource by limiting the volume of export
support for these commodities; 3) Working
to increase the Egyptian exports of dates, pomegranates, olives, grapes,
fresh kernels, potatoes, eggplant, coriander, jasmine paste and marjoram, as
they are among the agricultural exports with high export returns and the least
in their needs for water resources; 4) Working to reduce or stabilize the
exported quantities of bananas, citrus fruits, mangoes, onions, garlic,
tomatoes, mint and fennel as they are among the agricultural exports with high
average returns and the highest in their needs for water resources.