Egypt's Agricultural Development, 1800-1980

One of the principal factors underlying Anwar Sadat's willingness to sign a peace treaty with Israel was the deplorable state of the Egyptian economy. Multiplying shortages, deteriorating infrastructures, and spiraling foreign debts fill the economic news from Egypt. A central component of this domestic crisis is agriculture. Agriculture forms the basis for a vast portion of the Egyptian economy, accounting for nearly half the country's employment and nearly a third of its gross national product, as well as providing materials for over half of its industry. This book describes and interprets the transformation of Egyptian agriculture from the beginning of cotton cultivation in the early nineteenth century to the current changes under Sadat. The author uses both microeconomic theory and social and political analysis to show how the interaction of social classes, technical change, government policy, and the international and state systems have shaped Egypt's agricultural development. Arguing that these forces are bound up in a complex web of reciprocal causation, he places the current dilemmas of Egyptian agriculture in historical perspective.