How Egypt Is Using Alternative Raw Material For Bread Production
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Roshan Amiri
- . June 27, 2022
- . Update: June 28, 2022 12:25 pm
Egypt–Egypt is trimming its import of wheat but also trying to supplement its resources at the same time. As it has decided to buy some 180,000 tonnes of wheat from India, it is also looking at ways to extract more wheat from the grains and also through potato.
This is probably one reason that there is a lot of pressure on the labour market in Egypt as of now. As the Ukraine- Russia war continues to wage on, the supply lines for Egypt have started to go dry, forcing the world’s largest importing nation to look for alternatives to meet their wheat consumption needs.
It is worth noting that the same month India had banned wheat exports, barring a few countries like Egypt that were in desperate need for commodity supplies. Food security issues are troubling many North African countries. Separately, Egypt is looking at ways to derive more flour from wheat and raise the extraction percentage for flour used in subsidised bread to 87.5 per cent, from 82 per cent currently, according to a formal statement made by Supply Minister Aly Moselhy.
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With some harvest happening locally, the current reserves are good to go for a period of six months. But Mr. Moselhy has confirmed that the government has already received a total of more than 3.9 million tons of wheat from local farmers during this wheat supply season, up by 10-12 percent from last year.
Owing to their consumption of bread, the government has also improvised ways to reduce the consumption of wheat in production of bread and use sweet potato as a substitute instead.
Prior to the Russia-Ukraine war, Egypt got 80 percent of its imported wheat from these two countries. The country requested in late May $500 million from the World Bank to buy wheat through the Emergency Food Security and Resilience Support Project, according to a document released by the World Bank.
While supplies are being promised from Russia, logistic hiccups are making it difficult for the procurement from ports and therefore Egypt’s needs to improvise its ways to prevent a situation of scarcity.
