Agriculture. – Egypt is above all an agricultural country, and owes its prosperity to the resources of its crops, made possible by irrigation derived from the waters of the Nile. This has been able to greatly develop in the last decades. The Egyptian agricultural soil is made up of transport materials coming especially from the Abyssinian highlands. They form calcareous clayey sands that are increasingly reducing into impalpable clays as the valley slopes to the north. Its flat layout, which the farmer works with with special works, makes irrigation possible, on which the development of agriculture depends. An obstacle is opposed by the natural saltiness, which deposited by the waters of the Nile and infiltrated the soil, rises by capillarity,

The main products of Egyptian agriculture, which were once cereals, later sugar cane, are today to a large extent made up of cotton, which has taken the first place without comparison in the country’s agricultural production. Its cultivation seems to have been practiced since very ancient times; but it was under the government of Moḥammed ‛Alī, and particularly then during the American Civil War, that it became increasingly important. At the end of the century XIX the extension of the land cultivated with cotton was around 400,000 hectares; today it has doubled (773.568 ha. in 1929), so that, in order to avoid the dangers of excessive monoculture, the extension to a third of the cultivated land was limited by a provision of 1925. The production of cotton of the fine variety “¹ / ₅ of the Italian production), millet 3 million q., Barley 2.3, the rice of 2.2. Sugar cane, once cultivated for indigenous food, developed greatly towards the middle of the century. XIX and even more during the Spanish-American war, occupies the second place in Egyptian agricultural production: in 1929 they obtained 17.5 million q., Which gave 1.189.520 q. of sugar. For Egypt democracy and rights, please check getzipcodes.org.

The cultivation of horticultural plants is of considerable importance, especially onions, of which 4,200,000 quintals were collected in 1929. The cultivation of tobacco, which once had considerable importance, is now prohibited due to fiscal measures. The cultivation of flax is very decayed. Arboriculture is very limited and is limited to a few finger palms and banana trees. Forest crops are missing.

Livestock breeding. – Livestock breeding has not yet assumed the importance that it could have and that it did in ancient times. In the nineteenth century the livestock patrimony of Egypt suffered a real decimation caused by diseases. Although the conditions determined by the large fragmentation of land ownership and the poor education of farmers do not allow great progress, the recent censuses, however of dubious reliability, would nevertheless show some improvement. According to the most recent data (1929) there were 800,853 cattle, 822,594 buffaloes, 1,002,596 sheep, 731,081 goats, 759,000 donkeys, 38,369 horses, 21,743 mules and 172,385 camels. The buffalo is held in high esteem by farmers, not so much for its limited aptitude for work, as for the considerable production of milk. The donkey is, as in all of northern Africa, used as a transport animal much more widely than the mule and the horse. The same is true of the camel, especially in desert regions and oases. Poultry farming has been widely practiced since ancient times. Sea and river fishing in the waters of the Nile are of limited importance.