Egypt Banks on Cornmeal to Cut Back on Wheat Use

The market for corn in Egypt has always been small. Farmers planted it to feed their animals along the Nile and their large families, but it never caught on as a staple.

Now the Egyptian government is encouraging farmers to grow more corn and help turn out Egypt’s most important commodity: bread.

The government is introducing a loaf made from wheat and 20% corn flour, a move officials call the first step toward making one of the world’s biggest wheat importers self-sufficient.

“We want to reduce our dependence on imported wheat,” said Alaa Kouli, first undersecretary of the Supplies Ministry, which is in charge of Egypt’s food imports. “What if the country we import wheat from suddenly becomes cross with us and stops?”

Cutting the import bill is a concern as well. Egypt imports $1 billion of wheat a year from the United States, and economics may prove as pressing as national security.

Egypt’s 60 million people consume about 440 pounds of wheat per person a year. Egypt has more than doubled its wheat output since the mid-1980s to reach 5.8 million tons a year, but it still only produces about 45% of its needs.

Bread, one of the main wheat products, is the foundation of the Egyptian diet. The flat, round loaf accompanies every meal, sandwiching anything from watercress to beans. For the poorest families, it is sometimes the entire meal.

Mindful of this, the government pays $750 million a year to keep the price at five piasters a loaf, or the equivalent of a penny.

“We can’t live without bread. This is what fills our stomach,” said Salwa Mahmoud, a housewife standing outside a government-run bakery in the Cairo neighborhood of Mohandiseen.

Her purchase of 10 loaves will help feed her five children and husband for about a day and a half, she said.

“It would be cruel if the government raised the prices any more than this,” Mahmoud added.

The last bread price hike was in 1977, when President Anwar Sadat was trying to meet the demands of international creditors to cut subsidies. More than 70 people were killed when Egyptians rioted, and Sadat promptly retreated and lowered the prices.

The price has remained the same since, but the size of a loaf has shrunk by about half. More expensive--and less subsidized--varieties of bread have been introduced in an attempt to cut imports.

The government hopes more corn will keep bread plentiful and affordable while also reducing the amount of wheat Egypt must import. That would in turn help cut the government subsidies, although officials cannot provide a figure.

Egypt produces 5.1 million tons of corn a year, and officials hope to increase that by 1 million tons over the next five years.

To persuade farmers to produce more, the government announced last year it would buy any surplus corn. Kouli called the plan very successful, but said figures for the amount purchased were not yet available.

Kouli said the new bread was tested last summer in Cairo and two neighboring provinces, and that he received no complaints. Now the bread will be sold--alongside all-wheat loaves--in Cairo and six provinces.

It is still not clear when the new loaf will replace the all-wheat one. That depends on how quickly farmers increase the corn crop. Also, the government has yet to adapt wheat mills to grind corn and to work out storage and transport.

And there is the question of consumer satisfaction. Kouli calls the new bread more nutritious, but experts say it will go stale quicker and that its texture will be coarser.

Saadiya Abdel-Latif, a housewife and mother of two, sampled the new loaf during the government’s short experiment.

“It wasn’t bad,” she shrugged. “But we take whatever there is because we cannot do without the subsidy.”