The Egyptians Knew All Along :) *wink*

A vision without a task is but a dream…
A task without vision is drudgery…
A vision with a task…
Is the hope of the world.

-Inscription on a church in Sussex
England, 1730

Agriculture plays a central role in our existence. It is the mother of cultural tradition and the foundation of our well-being. Modern farming techniques and pesticide use, driven purely by economic considerations, have driven the culture out of agriculture and replaced it with corrupt business deals- agriculture today is known as agribusiness. The consequences of this shift manifests in continuing ecological crises, a continuing rise in degenerative illnesses, and an impoverished community life. There are high hidden costs for modern farming, such as, the exploitation of the agricultural worker, the depletion of the soil caused by chemicals, and the reduction of vitality in the food source. These are being paid in increased taxes, which are used to contain only the more obvious environmental damage, and in increased medical services to care for all the poor-nutrition-related illnesses. The exportation of agribusiness products to the developing world is linked to the deterioration of a subsistence existence that most of the third world is consigned to. We need to fundamentally change our thinking about agriculture in order to conceive of viable solutions to adverse health effects in Egypt.

Centuries ago, Egyptians bestowed upon their country the title of “Um Al Donya”, which means the mother of the world. Today Egypt still carries this title breeding more offsprings than ever. Egypt was recently ranked the second-most populous country in Africa and the fifteenth most populous country in the world, with 78.8 million people. Egypt occupies a strategic site in Africa. It is a tetragon-shaped land bordering Sudan on the South and the Mediterranean Sea on the North, and bordering Libya on the West and the Red Sea on the East. Most of its inhabitants are crowded along the Nile River banks where the only arable agricultural land is found. It is a multidimensional and complex country just like the African continent.

Egypt’s economy depends mostly on agriculture, media and tourism, as well as money coming in from more than five million Egyptians working abroad. Egypt’s exponentially increasing population in conjunction with its limited arable land continues to put great stress on food production. This in turn causes a major stress on the economy. With the intensification of agricultural production to meet the ever increasing demand for food and to achieve some of the country’s food self-sufficiency targets, the incidence of agricultural pests and diseases increased. Unfortunately, there are some seasons where most of the harvest in Egypt is lost due to weeds, diseases and locust attacks. With pests and diseases being one of the major obstacles to higher agricultural production, the farmers turned to chemical pesticides imported from the developed world as a solution to this problem.

The adverse effects of pesticides on human life are several. For example, human pesticide-related poisoning could occur as a result of unguarded or excessive exposure to pesticides, through inhalation, ingestion or contact, such as after spillages or other accidents, while spraying, or after consuming heavily or untimely pesticide-treated crops or livestock products. Pesticides can also induce allergies and asthma-like symptoms and can affect body organs such as the liver, kidneys and the nervous system. Based on laboratory tests on experimental animals, pesticides can cause cancer, genetic mutations, birth defects and male sterility.

As to pesticide residues and environmental contamination, only recently has the full extent of such environmental damage become clear. Some pesticides persist longer than others or break down to even more toxic components, extending the time span in which they could contaminate agricultural crops, surface and underground water, and aquatic bodies. Pesticides affect not only the location of their application but also ecosystems far removed, due to their mobility in the air and water. One especially serious problem is the concentration of residues in the breast milk of mothers and the consequent transfer of these toxics to infants who are typically more prone to health problems than adults.

In Egypt, more than 120,000 subjects participate in the annual application of pesticides in cotton fields. These pesticides include severely restricted or never registered pesticides. Most of the applicators are either temporarily (seasonally) or permanently hired by the government (Ministry of Agriculture). Most of these pesticides are donated from the global elites as a form of health aid to a region where it has been long established that they suffer from a lack of protective equipment, unsafe application and storage practices, and inadequate training of pesticide applicators, which in turn increases their hazards.

Egyptian farmers who turned to chemical pesticides are getting exposed on a daily basis not knowing the adverse effects of these pesticides. These chemicals are absorbed into their bodies through their food, drinks, air, and in some cases through the skin. In Egypt, over a million children between the ages of 7 and 12 are annually involved with cotton pest managements. Children are exceptionally vulnerable to poisoning from pesticide exposure. Pregnant mothers who work in sprayed fields can expose their fetus inutero to these harmful chemicals. Moreover, when they deliver the baby they continue to expose the infant with high concentrations of pesticides while breastfeeding (though breast milk).

Pesticides, as a public health intervention, are applied to crops so that they are able to grow healthier, because pests are no longer able to feed off of them, or lay their eggs on them. Despite pesticide’s relative success in controlling crop diseases and containing disease transmitting pests when applied at the proper time and in the proper quantities, many chemical pesticides adversely affect human welfare and the environment, and in the long-run, loose effectiveness due to the build-up of pest resistance. In fact, a complete long-term cost/benefit analysis of pesticide use would reduce the perceived profitability of pesticides.

Totally controlling pests using chemicals is close to impossible. There is always the problem of pests that develop resistance against the chemical pesticides intended to control them. More complicated resistance phenomena are also likely to occur, whereby pest species develop the ability to survive exposure to related chemicals, or what is more serious problem, the resistance to pesticides with different modes of action. This is only one example of many in regards to the failure of using “un-natural” approaches to nature. The intention might have been controlling pests, but with pests developing resistance this leads to greater pest outbreaks, that need new more potent chemicals to control. More disease will spread because the pests carrying them are immune to the pesticides used. In addition, there is the problem of totally destroying the pest targeted, because in nature this pest was also the predator of another smaller specie, with the total destruction of the primary pest, the secondary specie propagates out of control becoming the new pest specie.

As the negative and dangerous impacts of pesticides on human life (and on the environment) have become better known in recent decades, scientists developed more natural, cost-effective, and less ecosystem-disruptive and harmful methods to control pests without heavily relying on chemical pesticides. For example, the integrated pest management (IPM) program is a pest management strategy combining several benign pest control techniques such as the use of natural predators, biological pesticides and adapted cultural practices, including breeding plants for pest and disease resistance, with a diminished and less frequent utilization of chemical pesticides.


It is ironic that these scientists and global elite programs would participate in brining “pest control” solutions to Egypt of all places. Egypt is known to be the “cradle of civilization” and agriculture is the foundation of their civilization. Global elitists think that they are inventing new approaches to this problem; they think they are civilizing these communities, not knowing that their ancient traditions and techniques in farming have been around way longer than their scientific interventions. Ancient Egyptian techniques already worked out to avoid these pest problems and provided for what is essential in the natural process of food production. Ultimately, these agribusiness corporations create a problem and they offer the “solution” for it at a hefty price.

The modern world could benefit from taking a look into the past and acknowledging the agricultural contributions of ancient Egyptian civilization. This is the very civilization which brought us the foundations of our current understanding of agricultural technology and it is often by examining the roots of something that one can find a solution to the current problems. Some of the innovations that Egyptian agriculture pioneered include cultivation and irrigation technology. Ancient Egypt was the epicenter of agricultural technology, technology that produced efficient and beneficiary systems for food production and maximized public health and wellbeing. Their main focus and goal was to sustain their local community. Due to the Neoliberalism movements, agriculture’s motives in modern Egypt are so much different in the sense that it is concerned with the quantity of production, not the quality. It is all about profiting, not necessarily sustaining lives. Furthermore, much of the agricultural technologies used in Egypt today actually end up harming and threatening lives rather than sustaining them. The shifts in motives are vast. It shifted from having a nature based relationship with the seasons’ cycles to feed people and sustain public health, to exploiting resources and people in order for a small minority (whether it be corrupt governments, or on a larger scale global elites) to prosper economically. This explanation is illustrated in the transformation of the word agriculture, which is a culture of producing food for sustainability, to the now commonly used term, agribusiness. Growing food is no longer a community health issue; it is just that- a business. Living in a world where the prosperous minority is spreading capitalism, all we are going to see is more money being made by reducing the quality in order to maximize quantity to maximize profits. That is what it boils down to- profits.

Ancient Egyptian agriculture was made up of centuries of human innovation, practice, and time tested approaches to working with the innate cycles of nature. The wisdom gained over time among the collective population used techniques such as relying on natural predation rather than chemicals to manage pest control and create symbiotic relationships among plant and animal life. For years civilizations were founded and maintained on this indigenous wisdom and communities were able to provide for themselves and ensure the health and well being of their people.

The solution to this problem is to go back to the era before modern farming and chemicals, and use the ancient Egyptian farming techniques. The Egyptian farmer can therefore create a system where these pests are not eradicated by pesticides, instead, keep them at a manageable level by a complex system of checks and balances. This approach is a holistic approach that seeks to work with the webs of interactions between the myriad of organisms that constitute the farm, On the contrary to more “modern” farming practices which often use these pesticides to kill both harmful and beneficial life forms indiscriminately.

Let us examine this problem globally…In this time of globalization and capitalist interest, outside interests prey upon the simple yet wise traditions of indigenous people of Egypt. Through scientific advancements in chemical pest control and genetic modifications, major corporations have developed their own systems of agribusiness which bypass the natural cycles of agriculture and create a controlled environment with controlled substances. A very foreign concept to any farmer who knows that farming is about risk and being at the mercy of nature to provide food for its consumer’s. Farming has always been about the fostering of a relationship between man and nature. However, agribusiness attempts to take nature out of the equation. After all, when capital gain is of main concern, the risk of losing crops or having unknown variables is too risky for investors to deal with.

Government must look to the future rather than just looking to short term capital gain. It is also the responsibility of global elite governments to restrict the export of such products, if they themselves already know of their danger and have determined them to be unsafe for their people. They must carry this over to all people and keep them from harming the global community. This is what public health is about … the health of the public, not the capital gain of the private sector! Unfortunately this type of solution is not an easy fix nor is it necessarily feasible within the capitalist paradigm. In order to pursue the sustainability of human health, a larger shift in perspective must take place, a shift in values. As long as people in power put business before health, the solution will never be realized.

In conclusion, there should be an establishment and enforcement of policies to control the use of pesticides in Egypt. There should be a cross-sectional research to be able to asses how much of the traditional agricultural techniques are still used and encourage farmers to use them. The utilization of bio-safe techniques like the ones used in ancient Egypt will help control pests and avoid pest resistance problems. Establishing community based interventions that strengthen old farming traditions and train new farmers. In addition, educating the farmers on issues concerning the adverse effects of pesticide use will be important.