Dear Dr. Osama,

This is actually a difficult question to answer as many factors play a great role in this issue such as policy formulation, land management, water availability especially Nile water, political stability, social acceptability to behavioral changes, etc. So a management plan that addresses all these issues are required to improve food and water shortages in the short and long run. Hope this helps.

hanks Dr. Mahmoud for your valuable participation, I totally agree with you, but what are the Governmental measures should be taken urgently?

Whilst, as Mahmoud Ali Abdelfattah correctly says, the political issues are complex, the practical measures necessary are relatively simple - manage the irrigation systems more efficiently.

As in many other arid regions where river water is diverted for irrigation, the concept that ‘more means better’ and water is spread as widely as possible to bring more land into cultivation, eventually wrecks the system. The practice of using the available water to irrigate as much land as possible leads to inadequate leaching and saline build-up in the soil, and can be seen along much of the Nile irrigated area margins.

The same is evident in Pakistan and elsewhere. Unless water use is far more adequately managed, with an appropriate proportion set aside to ensure proper leaching, then soil salinity build-up will increase and will always pose a serious threat to agricultural production.

Fascinatingly, you actually have the solution right under your nose in Egypt. The experts are not the big international Civil Engineers, but the families practising the unique ‘Delta aquaculture’ operations that are so despised by the public sector ‘experts’ there!.

This traditional saline land reclamation operation has been developed by ordinary village people who know exactly how to recover saline land for agricultural production, They employ a unique form of ‘upwards-leaching’ process, using slightly saline drainage water (irrigation ‘waste’ water) to remove the salt from the upper rooting zone. This takes around three years before the salinity is reduced sufficiently for agricultural crops to survive, So to get a small income whilst the land is being remediated they farm small crops of marine fish (mullet - Liza ramada etc)

They don’t get particularly impressive wields (only around 25-50 kg per hectare) but no feed is necessary, and this generates a modest income until the area can be converted to agriculture It is then sold off to traditional dry-land farmers, and that income used to buy new areas of saline soil and start the process again.

This is a perfectly sustainable operation, and could be integrated into all irrigations systems that suffer from saline accumulation through poor water management. The only constraint is the restricted availability of salt-water tolerant fish fry to stock the ponds during the reclamation process, but there are other species that might be used, provided they have a high enough market value to make the initial cost worthwhile.

When the land is converted to agricultural they change the drainage system. Instead of pumping the salt water out of the ponds they dig deeper drainage channels within the reclaimed area which promote conventional downwards-leaching. Then, instead of using saline drainage water they connect up to sweet water supplies in the canals and swap over to conventional irrigation.

This process is perfectly adapted to recovering saline soils in the Nile Valley and elsewhere. In effect it rapidly leaches salt from the surface rooting zone, enabling salt-tolerant crops such as Burseem to be grown within three or four years. As the downward leaching process progresses, less tolerant crops introduced.

This process provides a counter to the almost inevitable loss of agricultural land through salination. It is compatible with conventional irrigated agriculture since it uses saline drainage water from less saline soils nearby. So supposedly ‘useless’ drainage water is actually a valuable resource that can be integrated into a soil reclamation programme where peripheral agricultural land is degrading due to inadequate leaching caused by water shortage on marginal areas

However, one word of caution - the salinity of the discharged water from such ‘mixed’ areas may increase that of saline drainage discharges when the temporary aquaculture system is being emptied. So downstream users who may ‘blend’ drainage water with sweet water from the river or wells may need to increase their use of these resources (or reduce the amount of drainage water they use) to prevent damage to their own crops - as in all river valley systems it is the downstream users who have the most difficult problems to cope with!

I found the Egyptian agricultural public sector extremely reluctant to recognise the value and potential of this remarkable traditional system - not ‘academic’ enough, I guess. But I have recommended this approach to other communities with a similar problem, because it allows reuse of a supposedly waste product - saline drainage water -, to achieve a balanced dynamic irrigation process. With proper planning, this can provide significantly greater and sustainable overall yields from these important agricultural systems, without loss of land due to inadequate water supplies.

Of course, there is a limit to what can be achieved - one has to limit agricultural development to what can be sustained using the available water supply, and avoid spreading the water too widely, neglecting leaching. So increasing the area of agricultural land to increase crop production as demand increases is dangerously foolish if the water supply is not also increased - and we are none too sure what will happen to Nile flows in the future as the climate changes and upstream users divert more water for their own use.

Ultimately, perfectly stable agricultural production can be maximised by ensuring that in irrigated areas, the root zone itself is desalinated and managed to remain so. What happens below that zone is relatively irrelevant to crop production. Once that system is established, further productivity can only be obtained through such practices as ‘aquaponics’. This employs a combined hydroponic crop system to exploit the wastes produced by fish reared in the recycling hydroponic circuit. But in fact, that is not so very different from what the traditional Nile Delta soil reclamation families have been doing for centuries! When you have a problem, it’s always wise to look close to home to see if some village genius hasn’t already solved it independently!

Many thanks