Macro Food Security, Import Dependence and Self-sufficiency Agendas

Even if food security in mena countries should not be confused with selfsufficiency and depends to a large extent on broader economic development and food imports, it does not mean that domestic agriculture does not play a role. It provides for a significant proportion of food consumption and helps create livelihoods for a still substantial part of the population, even though its contribution to value added in gdp terms lags behind and the water consumption it requires is unsustainable in many cases (Babar and Mirgani, 2014).

Table 8.3 shows how much of their own food Arab countries produce on average. Import dependence is most pronounced for cereals, sugar, and fats and oils, which are strategically crucial. Dairy products are also imported to a large degree, while meat, fish and eggs show higher self-sufficiency ratios. Some countries, such as Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, even have export capacities for fruit and vegetables. Self-sufficiency ratios are lowest in the Gulf countries, Libya, Jordan, Lebanon, and the West Bank and Gaza.

Low self-sufficiency ratios are a concern in mena countries, as they are a strategic vulnerability in times of geopolitical crisis. In the past, food imports have been threatened. During World War 1 a naval blockade of the Ottoman Empire by the Entente Forces caused starvation in Greater Syria, although mena as a whole had been self-sufficient before the war. During World War 11 food imports were disrupted because of combat operations and lower shipping capacities; famines in the region were only averted by domestic production and the rationing and distribution system of the Allied Middle East Supply Center (mesc) in Cairo. More recently the us contemplated food embargoes in the 1970s in retaliation for the Arab oil boycott and the Iranian hostage crisis. In the 1990s Iraq saw its food imports and oil exports cut off by a unilateral un embargo (Woertz, 2013b).

Apart from clientelism and the politics of rent distribution, strategic concerns about macro food security have motivated programmes that have sought to increase domestic self-sufficiency, for example in Syria in the 1990s and Saudi Arabia in the 1970s and 1980s. Even Jordan, with its limited natural assets and low self-sufficiency ratio, maintains production incentives for cereals (Harri- gan, 2014a). Egypt increased its self-sufficiency ratio with regards to wheat from

table 8.3 Self-sufficiency ratios (% of consumption) in Arab countries byfoodproduct

category, 2011

source: aoad, 2012.

21 per cent in 1986 to 46 per cent in 1998, mainly by abandoning wheat taxation and introducing improved seed varieties (Kherallah et al., 2003). By 2011, selfsufficiency had reached 60 per cent and Egypt announced a plan to reach complete self-sufficiency. Yet this aim has not yielded tangible results thus far and may prove impossible given resource constraints. Growing reliance on food imports is not going away. As it cannot be avoided it has to be managed.