Rain Fed Areas in Egypt: Obstacles and Opportunities

Abstract

Rain fed agriculture exists in the Egyptian North coast, where North Sinai and Marsa Matrouh are located. Few field crops are cultivated in these areas, in addition to few fruit trees. Most of rain fed areas is farmed using old, traditional and primitive soil and crop management practices. There were scattered studies on crops structure in rain fed area in Egypt and suggested improved management to overcome drought effect. Furthermore, there were no studies on the effect of climate change on it. The objectives of this chapter were to study existing crops structure in the rain fed areas in Egypt. In order to close the gap in our understanding of how climate would affect sustainability in rain fed area, integrated modeling approach was used, where BISm model was used to calculate potential evapotranspiration and crop coefficients. Yield-Stress model was calibrated using these values then used to simulate the effect of application of supplementary irrigation on growing crops in these areas. Under climate change in 2030, weather data were used to run Yield-Stress model to evaluate its effect on crops productivity. Furthermore, simulation of the effect of manure application on these crops was done to explore its effect on improving productivity under drought conditions induced by climate. We also suggested using crop rotation and interplanting as adaptation to climate change. Although we were not able to simulate the effect of all of them, the simulation results of application of supplementary irrigation and manure were encouraging to assume that additive effect of the four suggested practices could overcome the risk of drought under current climate and under the projected climate change in 2030. Finally, using modeling to predict rain fall dates and amounts is an important procedure to be done by extension workers in rain fed areas to increase the resilience of these areas to face rain fall variability.