Chapter One General Statement on Future Water Requirements and the Works Necessary to Meet Them Section One The Need to Expand the Scope of Agriculture The lands currently cultivated, and yet the Nile's summer water supply is insufficient. There is an urgent need to expand agriculture into new areas that are currently barren due to the lack of irrigation water. The reason for this need is the rapid increase in population, which has doubled in the past forty years, while the increase in cultivated land has not kept pace with population growth. The current population growth rate is estimated at... per year. Since Egypt is purely an agricultural country, the scope of agriculture must expand at this rate to reach its maximum. Therefore, it is now necessary to accelerate the control of the Nile first to avoid the severe losses that befall the country almost every year due to the inevitable restriction of cultivation, and secondly to provide the water needed to expand agriculture. Before deciding on the works necessary for this control and determining their locations and dimensions, we must first ascertain the areas that will draw their water from the Nile, basin by basin, until the cultivated area reaches its maximum.

Agricultural Areas in Egypt Although Egypt, within its political boundaries, encompasses a vast expanse of land, the majority of it is desert, mostly rising far above the river's level. As for the actual and small Egypt, it is entirely dependent on the Nile. It can be accurately described as the Nile and what is adjacent to it. This is the land formed from the silt deposited by the annual flood. The most important part of this land is the Delta, or Lower Egypt, which is in the shape of a triangle with its apex at Cairo and its base on the Mediterranean coast. Its area is... feddans, of which... feddans are cultivated. In the second part, from south of Cairo to Aswan (the geographical division of Upper Egypt), the river flows in a single channel, traversing the northern part of Africa, where it forms vast expanses of fertile land, covering an area of... feddans, of which... feddans are currently cultivated. Thus, the total area of land formed by the Nile in Egypt is approximately... feddans, of which... feddans are actually cultivated. Of this total, ... feddans in Upper Egypt are irrigated by the basin irrigation system with a single annual flood, and the rest are irrigated in summer and generally produce two crops a year. Although the area of land formed by the Nile and suitable for cultivation reaches... feddans, it is expected that... feddans will be cultivated. This is because only specific areas (about... feddans) in the lakes of Lower Egypt should be allocated for fish farming. Thus, the maximum that can be added to the cultivated area in Egypt is about... feddans, considering that an additional... feddans will be converted from basin irrigation to summer irrigation.

Egypt's Water Requirements Let us now calculate the water consumption of the arable areas annually, so that we can determine the necessary quantities in the future. The fluctuations in the Nile flood level, from ancient times to the recent past, have caused the succession of lean and abundant years, resulting in a shortage of rainfall in Egypt. Whenever the flood was low, the harvest was reduced. This reduction...