Analysing Egypt's food industry

The island of Ireland has 2m cows producing 10bn litres of milk while Egypt has 4.5m cows producing only 4.4bn litres. The efficiency difference between both countries is clear – but does it matter?

You can make milk in Egypt by importing cows, importing feed and availing of farm help at low cost. It makes good financial sense. At the moment, milk prices in Egypt are 43c/l and production costs are 32c/l. By far the biggest cost is the imported forage and concentrate.

Listen to "The future of milk production in Egypt" on Spreaker.

The Egyptian dairy industry is totally dependent on other countries to provide feed – mainly Argentina, Ukraine, Brazil and America. In comparison, the Irish sector is mainly dependent on home-grown forages.

Figure 1 compares the Egyptian and Irish dairy industries. While Egypt has over twice as many cows (4.5m v 2m), it produces slightly over half the amount of milk (4.4bn v 10bn litres). In addition, 80% of the cows in Egypt are in herds where there are two and three cows, essentially making milk for the family. Only 20% of the sector is involved in selling milk to a company.

Irish companies sell dairy ingredients to Egypt. Dairy product trade is increasing and evolving. After completing a trade mission to Egypt, Bord Bia and the Department of Agriculture are hoping even more business will be completed.

If you stand back and look at it from a macro level – we have the resources in Ireland to help supply dairy ingredients in Egypt. We are an island that has rain, fertile soils, technology, a supply chain and companies who have been working in the dairy industry for generations. Egypt is rich in resources like natural gas, oil and people. It has warm, sunny weather all year round. Its challenges include water, business infrastructure, and financial strains. Balancing the differences is the challenge.

Unlike Ireland, the main dilemma in Egypt is not carbon efficiency, hedgerows or trees. It’s basic nutrition. It’s who is going to feed the nation.

Ireland’s climate and access to natural resources allows it to produce enough food for 30m with 10% of the land area in Egypt.

The population in Egypt is growing rapidly every year. The gap between dairy supply and demand is going to widen. Egypt and other countries on the continent are currently dependent on importing dairy ingredients from countries like Ireland.

Are we in Ireland designed to produce low-yielding organic potatoes halfway up a hill in Wicklow for a rich man in Donnybrook to pay twice the normal price? Or, are we privileged with the resources we have to be able to produce higher yields of vegetables, cereals, meat or dairy that can be sold to feed a dynamic population? It goes without saying that we need sustainable Irish food production that can continue into the future – damaging land, air, water is not in question.

The first rule with any country is it needs to provide food for its people, and the same is true for Egypt. We can’t just remove the industry. The country has a number of competitive strengths, including its fruit, vegetables etc. Do we limit production in Ireland or the EU to reduce global carbon production by a fraction or do we continue to provide food for the world? Put it another way – are Irish companies morally responsible to provide nutrition to the world?

Dr Abderaouf Al Gohary farms near el Khatatba Road in west Monufia, Egypt. It’s about a three-hour car journey northwest of Cairo heading for Alexandria. As we got closer to his farm, we saw fields of grapes, oranges, lemons, vegetables and bananas. February is a winter month in Egypt, even though it’s 24°C.

Dr Al Gohary showed us around his three farms – two dairy farms and a beef farm. The dairy farms milk all year round and on the beef farm he had imported 2,000 dairy-bred bulls from Brazil for feeding.

The first dairy farm had 157 milking cows, bulling heifers and calves. Essentially all the stock were in an open-air, walled enclosure, in sand corrals surrounding the parlour. There was sun shade over the area around the feed face and at the back of the sand pens. On each side there was a feed face and the cows had free access to a TMR diet of mainly maize silage, cottonseed, and soya bean.

The parlour is an eight-unit double-up herringbone with jars and a 10ft wide pit. Dr Al Gohary has plans to replace the parlour with better technology, so milk quality can be monitored better. In June and July, temperatures rise over 45°C, putting the cows and people under intense heat stress. It’s the biggest challenge for the farm, according to Dr Al Gohary.

“Animals go off feed and in extreme cases the animal can die from heat stress. We have to sprinkle water on the cows and turn on the fans.”

According to Dr Al Gohary, on this farm the average production is in the region of 33l per day, with three times per day milking. Farm help is relatively cheap and readily available (€10 to €20/day).

Maize silage is harvested in August, normally yielding 20t/ha, but a lot of the feed is imported into the farm. Dr Al Gohary budgets on feeding 5t of silage per cow. He has approximately 400 dairy stock.

Buying soya accounts for a big chunk of the farm cost structure. It comes into the farm at about €400/t. Maize silage is another big part of the cost and comes into the farm at €210/t. On this farm, the TMR diet is fed out twice a day with an old Bulldog feeder wagon and Belarus tractor.

Milking cows have been imported from countries such as Germany, Italy, Hungary and Holland. The breeding focus is for more volume. Dr Al Gohary showed us his most recent test results – 3.45% protein and 3.75% fat, with good TBC and SCC.

The bull calves from the dairy herd are kept for fattening. The plan is to get them to reach 500kg at 12 months of age. If we assume 40kg birthweight, it suggests an average of 1.25kg per day weight gain from birth to slaughter.

Milk from the farm goes to a number of processors, including Beytii, Greenland and Juhayna. Milk is processed and sold as UHT milk, drinking and spoonable yoghurt, and feta cheese. Dr Al Gohary said the cost of production at the moment is running at 32c/l including feed, labour etc.

At the moment, milk price is in the region of 43c/l. He said the return on investment for the dairy enterprise is about 30% compared to a 20% return on investment in his beef enterprise (See beef report on farmersjournal.ie).

Irish dairy companies that took part in the Egypt Trade Mission were;