June 1895.} EXTKACTS FROM DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR 6l* 



REPORTS. 



EXTRACTS FEOM DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR 

 REPORTS. 



Agriculture in Egypt. 



Lord Cromer's annual report on the progress made in the 

 various administrative departments of the Egyptian Government 

 during the year 1894 contains some details relating to the 

 agriculture of Egypt. 



It seems that although the out-turn of wheat was hardly up 

 to the standard of previous years, the Egyptian agriculturist had 

 little to complain of regarding the quantity and the quality of 

 his produce in 1894. What did affect him seriously was the 

 heavy fall in the price of agricultural products of all kinds. 

 For each and every crop the price obtainable was the lowest 

 ever before reached. As regards the wheat crop, the return 

 realised is now so low as to make it scarcely worth cultivating 

 it if any ordinary expenditure be thereby entailed. What has 

 saved the cultivation of wheat in Upper Egypt up to the 

 present is that it costs comparatively little ; it is sown broad- 

 cast upon the slime, and left to itself until the time for reaping 

 arrives. No ploughing or manuring of the fields is necessary. 

 It is pointed out, however, that should prices fall much lower it 

 is difficult to see how the lands under flood irrigation, and 

 which produce one crop a year, can be profitably cultivated, 



Egypt possesses a College of Agriculture which is now in its 

 fifth year. Students who were first admitted completed their 

 four years' course of study in June last, and were examined by 

 external examiners appointed by the Ministry of Public Instruc- 

 tion. Ten out of a class of 22 succeeded in passing the final 

 examination, and eight of these obtained situations connected 

 with agriculture. 



Samples of foreign barleys grown on the college experimental 

 plots w^ere sent to several English brewers, who are said to have 

 valued two varieties of the same at not less than 30s. per 

 quarter : a price greatly in excess of that obtained for native 

 barleys. It appears that 20 acres of these two varieties have 

 been sown, and arrangements made for the malting of the 

 produce in England. 



Analyses of the natural manures of the country, show that 

 large clay deposits, long used as manure in Upper Egypt, contain 

 nitrate of soda as the principal ingredient, an average of 5 per 

 cent, being present in the 45 samples examined in the chemical 

 laboratory. This would account for the value of the clay as a 

 manure, although the nitrate of soda present is in too small a 

 proportion to pay for its extraction and export. 



