A NEW RESEARCH PARADIGM FOR SUSTAINABILITY RESEARCH IN EGYPT

Sustainability of intensive irrigated agriculture in Egypt has become a critical issue, as land and water resources are limited on the one hand and population is increasing rapidly on the other. Salinization, heavy input use, nutrient export and pollution all threaten the health of soils that have been feeding Egypt for centuries. At the same time, the build-up of newly reclaimed desert soils to economically sustainable productive capacity is a major challenge. In a collaborative effort between the Agricultural Research Center (ARC) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation in Egypt and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), a long-term resource management programme, funded by the European Union, has been developed to address the issue of resource management in a multidisciplinary way. Long-term agronomic trials (with such variables as water quantity, water quality, nutrient inputs and crop rotations) have been set up at sites representing the old lands, the newly reclaimed areas and the rainfed areas. These trials are complemented by extensive long-term monitoring in villages close to the experimental sites. This covers farmers' perspectives, farming practices and the condition of farmers' soils and crops and is aimed at identifying over time the sustainable and non-sustainable production practices and the social and economic factors that underline them. The project activities began with a Preparatory Phase which comprised inventory studies, rapid rural appraisal and multi-disciplinary surveys. This knowledge was used in the planning of the two closely related activities of long-term trials (LTT) and long-term monitoring (LTM). As the programme was implemented, the complementarity of the LTT and LTM approaches became the most important feature of this programme.