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American Thinker
April 20 2014
Say Goodbye to Egypt
By David Archibald
In 2011, the clerical intellects in Egypt proposed that the pyramids
be destroyed because they were idolatrous reminders of Egypt's
pre-Islamic past. Egypt's real problem is more prosaic -- the
mismatch between an agricultural system that can feed 40 million and a
population of 84 million. Egypt had been a grain exporter for
thousands of years. It is estimated to have had a population of 4
million at the time Napoleon Bonaparte visited its shores in 1798. By
1960, the population had risen to 28 million and they were importing
one million tons per year of wheat. Grain imports, wheat and corn,
are now running at 15 million tons per year.
With a population growth rate estimated at 1.8 percent per year,
another 1.5 million Egyptians are created every year. On a spare,
almost completely vegetarian diet of 350 kg per year of grain, each
year's cohort of new Egyptians will require over half a million metric
tons of grain as adults. Thus Egypt's grain requirement ratchets up
by half a million metric tons every year. Egypt's ability to grow
grain has peaked, limited by the available water from the Nile. The
switch from high-water-consumption crops such as rice and cotton to
wheat has already taken place. On the current trajectory of rising
demand, the import requirement will be 28 million metric tons of grain
by 2030.
The situation may very well be worse than that. There has been a
population explosion in the last three years after the Arab Spring.
Between 2006 and 2012 there was a 40% increase in the number of births
in Egypt, with births in 2012 560,000 higher than in 2010.
What holds Egyptian society together for the moment is subsidized
bread. Three-quarters of the population have ration cards that
entitle the holders to subsidized bread, sugar, cooking oil, propane,
and gasoline. The total food subsidy system costs about $4.4 billion
per year. With the bulk of the population's calories provided by
subsidized bread from effectively communal bakeries, there is almost
no resilience in the food supply system in Egypt. If the imports or
the subsidies stop, Egyptians will starve.
Whatever his failings as a fair and just ruler, Hosni Mubarak, the
former president of Egypt, ran the country as an ongoing concern. By
late 2010 the country's foreign exchange reserves had risen to $35
billion. Following his resignation, Egypt's foreign exchange reserves
began to fall at the rate of $2 billion per month. By early 2013,
they had fallen to $13 billion. President Morsi was overthrown in a
military coup not so much because he is an Islamist but because
Egypt's only potential savior, Saudi Arabia, would not contribute to
Egypt's treasury while the Muslim Brotherhood was in charge. The
Saudis duly tipped in $5 billion within a fortnight of Morsi's
overthrow.
Even the Sun is ganging up on Egypt. NASA researchers have found some
clear links between solar activity and Nile River levels. The Nile
water levels and aurora records tracking solar radiation have two
somewhat regularly occurring variations in common -- one with a period
of about eighty-eight years, known as the Gleissberg cycle, and the
second with a period of about two hundred years, called the de Vries
cycle. Solar activity is now declining to levels last seen in the
17th century. That decline will result in drought in East Africa at
the headwaters of the Nile.
Egyptian society has a number of unpleasant features. The female
genital mutilation rate is 90 per cent. The rate of consanguineous
marriage is very high, at 35 per cent, giving rise to a high incidence
of congenital defects. Christian Copts, who constitute about 10
percent of the population, are less inbred than the Moslem Egyptians.
As happened to the Armenians in Turkey on the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire nearly a century ago, the Copts are likely to be slaughtered
first during the collapse of Egyptian society -- forfeiting Egypt the
sympathy of the West in its plight.
President Obama's backstabbing of President Mubarak and his support of
the subsequent Muslim Brotherhood regime, which earned the United
States a reputation for double-dealing and the enmity of the Egyptian
people, happened just in time. If Egypt had stayed in the nominally
pro-Western camp, there would have been a period during which the
United States and perhaps other Western nations would have thrown
money into the black hole that will be Egypt in collapse. The Mubarak
regime collapsed in part because of withdrawal of support by the Obama
Administration. This is a case of the right result for the wrong
reasons.
David Archibald, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of World Politics
in Washington, D.C., is the author of The Twilight of Abundance: Why
Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Regnery,
2014).
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/04/say_goodbye_to_egypt.html
April 20 2014
Say Goodbye to Egypt
By David Archibald
In 2011, the clerical intellects in Egypt proposed that the pyramids
be destroyed because they were idolatrous reminders of Egypt's
pre-Islamic past. Egypt's real problem is more prosaic -- the
mismatch between an agricultural system that can feed 40 million and a
population of 84 million. Egypt had been a grain exporter for
thousands of years. It is estimated to have had a population of 4
million at the time Napoleon Bonaparte visited its shores in 1798. By
1960, the population had risen to 28 million and they were importing
one million tons per year of wheat. Grain imports, wheat and corn,
are now running at 15 million tons per year.
With a population growth rate estimated at 1.8 percent per year,
another 1.5 million Egyptians are created every year. On a spare,
almost completely vegetarian diet of 350 kg per year of grain, each
year's cohort of new Egyptians will require over half a million metric
tons of grain as adults. Thus Egypt's grain requirement ratchets up
by half a million metric tons every year. Egypt's ability to grow
grain has peaked, limited by the available water from the Nile. The
switch from high-water-consumption crops such as rice and cotton to
wheat has already taken place. On the current trajectory of rising
demand, the import requirement will be 28 million metric tons of grain
by 2030.
The situation may very well be worse than that. There has been a
population explosion in the last three years after the Arab Spring.
Between 2006 and 2012 there was a 40% increase in the number of births
in Egypt, with births in 2012 560,000 higher than in 2010.
What holds Egyptian society together for the moment is subsidized
bread. Three-quarters of the population have ration cards that
entitle the holders to subsidized bread, sugar, cooking oil, propane,
and gasoline. The total food subsidy system costs about $4.4 billion
per year. With the bulk of the population's calories provided by
subsidized bread from effectively communal bakeries, there is almost
no resilience in the food supply system in Egypt. If the imports or
the subsidies stop, Egyptians will starve.
Whatever his failings as a fair and just ruler, Hosni Mubarak, the
former president of Egypt, ran the country as an ongoing concern. By
late 2010 the country's foreign exchange reserves had risen to $35
billion. Following his resignation, Egypt's foreign exchange reserves
began to fall at the rate of $2 billion per month. By early 2013,
they had fallen to $13 billion. President Morsi was overthrown in a
military coup not so much because he is an Islamist but because
Egypt's only potential savior, Saudi Arabia, would not contribute to
Egypt's treasury while the Muslim Brotherhood was in charge. The
Saudis duly tipped in $5 billion within a fortnight of Morsi's
overthrow.
Even the Sun is ganging up on Egypt. NASA researchers have found some
clear links between solar activity and Nile River levels. The Nile
water levels and aurora records tracking solar radiation have two
somewhat regularly occurring variations in common -- one with a period
of about eighty-eight years, known as the Gleissberg cycle, and the
second with a period of about two hundred years, called the de Vries
cycle. Solar activity is now declining to levels last seen in the
17th century. That decline will result in drought in East Africa at
the headwaters of the Nile.
Egyptian society has a number of unpleasant features. The female
genital mutilation rate is 90 per cent. The rate of consanguineous
marriage is very high, at 35 per cent, giving rise to a high incidence
of congenital defects. Christian Copts, who constitute about 10
percent of the population, are less inbred than the Moslem Egyptians.
As happened to the Armenians in Turkey on the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire nearly a century ago, the Copts are likely to be slaughtered
first during the collapse of Egyptian society -- forfeiting Egypt the
sympathy of the West in its plight.
President Obama's backstabbing of President Mubarak and his support of
the subsequent Muslim Brotherhood regime, which earned the United
States a reputation for double-dealing and the enmity of the Egyptian
people, happened just in time. If Egypt had stayed in the nominally
pro-Western camp, there would have been a period during which the
United States and perhaps other Western nations would have thrown
money into the black hole that will be Egypt in collapse. The Mubarak
regime collapsed in part because of withdrawal of support by the Obama
Administration. This is a case of the right result for the wrong
reasons.
David Archibald, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of World Politics
in Washington, D.C., is the author of The Twilight of Abundance: Why
Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Regnery,
2014).
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/04/say_goodbye_to_egypt.html