| Numerous studies have shown that agricultural development is potential resource for people in developing countries to get out of extreme poverty.Many of small farmers in rural areas depend on agriculture for their livelihood.The impacts of agricultural development have been seen in the developing countries as an engine of economic development.Egypt has potential and conducive conditions for better agricultural production of main crops such as wheat,rice,maize and sugarcane with respect to farmer’s thinking and agricultural policies.On the basis of previous studies,this research used age gaps analysis and built an agricultural development evaluation system that specifies different indexes,i.e.agricultural output efficiency index,economic structure transformation index,rural social development index,agricultural sustainability index.The original data regarding these indexes-including land productivity,labor productivity,proportion of agricultural added value,urbanization rate,food production index,proportion of agricultural labor force and permanent crop land use ratio-are obtained from Food and Agricultural Organization of United nations(FAO)and World Bank for the four most developed countries(United States,United Kingdom,France and Japan)and for four chosen emerging countries(South Africa,Brazil,India and China).Other data were collected from the Central Agency for Public Mobilization & Statistics of Egypt(CAPMS)-about investment in agriculture,farming machines,education level,cost of production,yield of main crops and percentage of employees in agriculture and hunting-to evaluate agricultural development level in Egypt and to calculate the expectations of the growth prospect of Egyptian agricultural development in 2030.The overall results of the evaluation show the poor level of agricultural development in Egypt,poor production technology in general,small landholdings,absence of agricultural diversification,high cost of production of major crops,fluctuating market prices of agricultural produce,etc.Accordingly,the agricultural development in Egypt is still in first stage of maturity process as compared with level of agricultural development in developed countries.Actually,the age gaps of agricultural development in Egypt compares to developed countries is very big as these developed countries started early and had reached a higher agricultural development level,the comprehensive age gapes of 2014 is48.86,49.6,45.18 and 43.32 years between Egypt and United states,United Kingdom,France and Japan respectively and 27.58,6.46.21.67 and-3.13 years between Egypt and South Africa,China,Brazil and India respectively.Furthermore,the expectation of the growth prospect of agricultural development in Egypt in total is positive and Egypt will reach a high level of development in 2030.According to the results obtained,the study recommends policy makers in Egyptshould change some policies concerning investment in agriculture and give more support for high technologies machines in new areas.Also,Egypt should catch the chance of One Road One Built for working to revive the development in general.In the view of the new president and new government’s aims in Egypt,full partnership with China-as Egypt is an important country of the Silk Road – is fundamental.Considering the speed of growth ratio of productivity of land and workers,agriculture can have high growth prospect as expected in the new agricultural policies,using high technologies for sowing,irrigation and harvest in new area of 0.63 million hectares added by early 2016 under the sustainable development strategy “Egypt vision 2030”.The current study expects high development level of agriculture sector growth in the coming years,which will have a crucial contribution to sustainable development in Egypt. |
