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Egypt 
Thu Feb 03, 2011 at 09:07:14 AM PST
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Slate has an interesting piece out called "Protesting on an Empty Stomach: How the Egyptian economy is fueling unrest in Egypt." I visited Egypt in 1999 and I was floored by the very apparent and horrific poverty there. Everyone wasn't poor. The lovely woman guiding our tour to the Pyramids was doing very well, thank you. But the beggars in the street - and there were tons of them - were as destitute as I had ever seen. According to Slate, neoliberal policies have allowed the country to prosper on paper, but the gains only went to the wealthiest 20%. At the same time, the poor remained poor.
According to Slate, Egypt is the world's top importer of wheat, and food inflation has topped 20% lately. Already, Egyptian families spend some 40% of monthly income on food, so you can imagine the impact of food price inflation.
According to Slate:
The Egyptian government does subsidize bread and other staples for poorer Egyptians, ameliorating the price increase somewhat. But most Egyptians purchase bread beyond what the subsidy allows. And the threat of instability has already pushed food costs higher in the Egyptian capital and elsewhere. Plus, rising food prices have a long history of causing social unrest in the country. In 1977, the state cut subsidies of basic staples, leading to deadly riots. In 2008, when food prices hit their first peak, Egyptians again took to the streets.
Another point of interest is why Americans HAVEN'T noticed rising global food prices:
So why haven't Americans noticed an uptick in costs at the supermarket? Mostly because raw food costs are a smaller proportion of overall food costs for American consumers. When you buy a box of Wheaties, you're paying for packaging, advertising, and processing, as well as the wheat, making the price more insulated from inflation. In addition, U.S. food producers tend to trade in the futures markets to smooth costs-meaning ingredient costs get locked in months or even years in advance.
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Thu Aug 13, 2009 at 12:35:17 PM PDT
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I've got a few emails with conflicting messages in my inbox. One says that Egypt is banning all GMO crop imports. Another says that Egypt denies banning GMO crop imports. From Reuters:
Egypt's agriculture minister has not issued a decision to ban the import of genetically modified crops, the state news agency MENA said on Thursday, denying an earlier report.
The agency quoted an unnamed official at the Agriculture Ministry as stating that earlier reports citing Amin Abaza ordering that a certificate accompany all imports to show they were free of genetically modified materials were "not correct."
The original report of the decision was published by MENA on Wednesday and picked up by other media.
Egypt is one of the world's largest wheat importers and also imports other products such as corn, edible oils and sugar. It exports products such as vegetables and fruits, particularly to Europe.
Right. So either:
1. Egypt never wanted to ban GMOs,
2. Egypt wanted to ban GMOs, got a backlash, and backed off the ban, denying that they ever did it in the first place, or
3. One rogue official told the press they were going to ban GMOs because he thought they were or because he wanted them to, but the rest of the government didn't want to ban them.
Who knows which of these scenarios is true, but it doesn't appear to me that an Egyptian ban on GMO crops is impending.
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Wed Apr 29, 2009 at 18:37:04 PM PDT
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In a very sad overreaction to the swine flu, Egypt is slaughtering the country's 300,000 pigs, angering farmers. As the article notes, Muslims do not eat pork, so the hogs are largely raised and eaten by the country's Christian minority. The farmers were not exactly patient and understanding about the decision to slaughter all pigs, and I do not blame them:
At one large pig farming center just north of Cairo, scores of angry farmers blocked the street to prevent Health Ministry workers in trucks and bulldozers from coming in to slaughter the animals. Some pelted the vehicles with rocks and shattered their windshields and the workers left without killing any pigs.
"We remind Hosni Mubarak that we are all Egyptians. Where does he want us to go?" said Gergis Faris, a 46-year-old pig farmer in another part of Cairo who collects garbage to feed his animals. "We are uneducated people, just living day by day and trying to make a living, and now if our pigs are taken from us without compensation, how are we supposed to live?"
I visited Egypt, briefly, a decade ago. I've been to over 20 countries around the world and I saw the most devastating, abject poverty in Egypt, more so than in any other country I've visited. It is absolutely criminal that the country is taking away the livelihoods of these poor farmers without any justification (since the disease is being spread among humans NOT PIGS). Taking away their animals without any compensation (as the article implied was the case) is particularly egregious.
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