The Egyptian Farmer: Full-time vs. Part-time Farmers
Summary
Egyptian farmers have always been the main source for funding urban projects –through agricultural land taxes and forced crop sale at below market price - via curtailing their agricultural surplus. This preserved their primitive living conditions, tied them – as fulltime farmers - to their farms and villages, and impeded their material change over time. However, education, public employment and migration opened new channels of income that were followed by other paths that enabled farmers to alter their living conditions that in turn affected the overall village context. These changes coupled with other socio-economic, institutional and physical changes have gradually transformed the majority of farmers into part-time farmers.?
The Egyptian Farmer
Egyptian farmers have, since ancient times, always been considered to be a production factor in the process of creating wealth and income for the urban elite, and after the 1952 Revolution for the consecutive regimes. In the early twentieth century, many scholars have argued that the way of life of the Egyptian farmer had not changed for thousands of years, in terms of clothing, food and housing (Gemmill 1920s, Ayrout 1930s & Critchfield 1970s). This notion of a farmer and village life that do not change over centuries is distorted, however, as it fails to consider the numerous political, economic, and social changes that villages and farmers have had to face and deal with, which have affected villagers’ behavior and attitudes (Mitchell 1990). Nevertheless, the limited visible change in farmers could be explained by the control exerted on them, first by big landowners and later by the new regime, by curtailing income (agricultural surplus) – among others through high land rents, the imposition of land taxes and mandatory delivery of cultivated crops at below market price - and thereby limiting farmers’ ability to change their living conditions.?
The transformation came gradually with expanded education, public employment, then migration, first to urban areas in Egypt and since the 1970s - enabled by the “Open Door Policy” - villagers/ farmers’ migration to Oil producing countries that increased their access to income sources other than agriculture allowing them to change their consumption patterns, alter their living conditions and weaken their attachment to agricultural land.?
However, the migration outflow to Oil producing countries, has declined since the 1990s that can be linked to the Gulf Wars and competition from cheap South Asian laborers, the falling of oil prices, and declining demand for construction workers in Arab countries (Zohry 2007; Zohry 2005).?
The outcome was villagers/ farmers’ return to their villages, however, changed and so did their surrounding context. Countered conditions required farmers to change the time they dedicate to agricultural production, i.e. to become part-time farmers by dividing their effort between their own farm and non-farm work against a wage/ salary, as opposed to fulltime farming where the rural household depends on the agricultural land for income and on all family members for the cultivation of the land.
Part-time Farmers
Since the 1990s, many farmers have become part-time farmers as part of their income comes from other occupations, like being a teacher, lawyer, engineer, civil servant, or even a truck or Tuk Tuk driver. There are factors that made it possible for many farmers to become part-time farmers and others that forced them to resort to part-time farming. Examples of both categories are briefly presented below:?
Factors that facilitated part-time farming
Remittances:?Some argue that the use of remittances in financing housing construction in villages was one of the early important sources for the growing of rural non-farm jobs and incomes (Richards et. al 1983).?
Availability of non-farm jobs:?The availability of non-farm rural jobs was limited before 1980s and expanded gradually via the establishment of enterprises and factories that absorbed many farmers. However, the availability of non-farm opportunities differs from one governorate to the other. Therefore, the degree of part-time farming is not the same in the different regions.
Mechanization:?Migration caused agricultural labor shortage, thus increasing dependence on elderly men and women for agricultural production that was made possible using agricultural machinery and financed by farmers’ remittances. Agricultural tractors increased from 36 thousand in 1980 to about 52 thousand from 1985 (World Bank Databank), in addition irrigation pumps and threshers have also spread rapidly in villages (either privately financed, public provision through agricultural cooperative and/ or donor projects).?
Availability of landless farmers:?Landless farmers are willing to work as laborers or as sharecroppers to support part-time farmers.?
Irrigation improvement (on tertiary and on-farm levels):
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The national irrigation improvement projects have installed collective irrigation pumps (operated by diesel or electricity) on the mesqas (tertiary canals) operated by an operator, in addition to piping marwas (on-field channels).?
A farmer from Kafr El-Sheikh stated that
In the past is was difficult for me to cultivate 5 feddan. I used to sharecrop based on a half share of the harvest, where the costs are shared equally between owner and sharecropper. However, after the irrigation improvement I can easily take care of my land. Now I sharecrop the land based on one-quarter share only of the harvest that is received by the tenant.
Factors that forced part-time farming
Population growth and shrinking agricultural land:?The number of rural household members increased beyond the capacity of agricultural land, i.e. they cannot anymore be absorbed as full time farmers;?
Exposure:?Increased farmers/ villagers’ demands and aspirations for modern living standards like those in urban areas necessitated higher incomes that could not be satisfied through agriculture alone (especially for small-scale landowners);?
Education and public employment:?Many farmers/ villagers are engaged in the morning and have only their afternoons and weekends to care for the land.
Diminishing of agricultural cooperatives’ role:?Cooperatives used to help farmers through providing agricultural inputs at subsidized prices, machinery, funding/ loans and marketing their produce – even though at below market price – which made farmers feel secure.?
Low agricultural returns:?Low agricultural returns – due to e.g. increased production cost, low yield prices, soil deterioration, water shortage, waste -??forced farmers to diversify and/or complement their agriculture-based income through nonfarm sources.
Increased food prices:?Instead of buying their food crops from the market at high prices, farmers prefer to continue as part-time farmers to preserve food and fodder for their household.?
Farmers Income Sources
The previous show that many farmers do not depend only on agriculture as the main source of income as in the past. This is also reflected in the findings of the Household Surveys. In 2015, the annual agricultural income of households whose head is engaged in agricultural activities was about 45% of total income that dropped to 35% in 2019/2020, while nonfarm revenues and wages contributed 30% to the income in 2015 and increased to 35% in 2019/2020. Other income sources came from transfers, remittances, and rental incomes that amounted 25% in 2015 and 29.4% in 2019/2020 (Capmas 2015, 2021).
Part-time farming affects among others agricultural land cultivation arrangements in villages. These arrangements are to be addressed in next Wednesday’s article.
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