Fifty Years of Food Security in Egypt (1975–2025): Wheat Dependence, Bread Subsidies, Land Reclamation and the Limits of Self-Sufficiency

Egypt is the clearest case in the Middle East of a country whose food security depends on a single imported staple. Between 1975 and 2025 its population roughly tripled, from about 37 million to more than 107 million, while the cultivable area confined to the Nile Valley and Delta grew far more slowly. This review traces the country's food-security trajectory across five decades using production and trade data from the United States Department of Agriculture, yield statistics from the World Bank, national strategy documents and the peer-reviewed literature. Domestic wheat production rose almost fivefold, from about 2.0 million tonnes (Mt) in 1975 to roughly 9–10 Mt in the 2020s, driven by improved varieties and a doubling of yields. Consumption, however, rose from about 5.7 Mt to 18–20 Mt, so that imports climbed from 3.8 Mt to around 12 Mt per year in 2017–2021, making Egypt one of the world's largest wheat buyers and leaving self-sufficiency at 46–49% in 2023–2024. The universal baladi bread subsidy, defended since the 1977 bread riots, has served as the backbone of household food access, reaching about 70 million people, but its fiscal cost exposes the state to global price and currency shocks, as shown in 2008, 2011, 2016 and 2022–2024. The first increase in the subsidised loaf price in three decades (from 5 to 20 piastres in June 2024) marked a turning point. Egypt ranked 77th of 113 countries in the 2022 Global Food Security Index. The review concludes that full cereal self-sufficiency is neither feasible nor necessary, and that resilience will depend on water productivity, diversified import sourcing, strategic storage, targeted social protection and climate adaptation in the Delta.