Wheat is considered to be, by far, the weightiest crop in Egypt.
However, Egypt suffers from a wheat gap that is estimated at 5.4 million tons
in the year 2006. The study period was (1998-2006).
Descriptive and quantitative analysis were used. The study depends on
the secondary data, which collected from local and foreign sources during the
period (1980 – 2006).
The study period are mainly divided into periods as follow:
(1)For studying the impact of economic liberalization policy, the study
period are divided into two periods: (1980-1986) and (2000-2006).
(2)For studying the impact of WTO terms, the study period are devided into
two periods: (1990-1994) and (2002-2006).
Main study results are that: (1) The annual average in the wheat gap is
estimated at 10495.41 thousand ton. (2) About 96 % of the changes in the
value of wheat-product per feddan are due to changes in the value of some
commercial inputs such as fertilizers, seeds, and pesticides; in addition to labor
wages. Total elasticity figures of 1.1 indicates the existence of increasing
returns to scale which means that there is a potentiality for increasing crop < br />productivity. (3) The positive impacts of economic liberalization policies
existed in increasing the production capacities, whereas the negative ones took
the form of more consumption and, consequently, more wheat imports. (4) It
is anticipated that the wheat gap will be extended to reach the 5.04 million ton
mark. Its corresponding value is in the neighborhood of 5.56 billion pounds.
This leads to the importance of varying the sources of wheat imports to
overcome the anticipated political pressures, in addition to expanding wheat
cultivation in the new lands by 2 million feddans (production capacity of 5.4
million ton) which is the size of the gap in the year 2006. (5) The study
showed that the world production of wheat produced biofuel growth at
exponential on incremental increases surpass the growth rate of world
production of wheat. However, this could affect adversely on the remaining
portion used for human food and other industries. Subsequently, could lead to
raising the world prices of wheat; hence affect the agricultural trade balance
for wheat imported countries such as Egypt.