Standing behind a stack of baskets filled with tomatoes, onions and potatoes, Khaled Rouby, a Cairo vegetable seller, complains about the quality of the produce he buys from the wholesaler.
“Some days up to a quarter of the tomatoes are bad,” Mr Rouby says. “I separate the bad ones and sell them cheaper. But everything is now expensive. There simply is not enough produce in the country.”
Every day Mr Rouby sets up his few baskets in the street market in Dokki, a middle-class area of Cairo. Dokki boasts some well-stocked shops with large displays spilling out on the pavements, and many small vendors sitting on the ground or selling from carts shielded by parasols from the scorching sun. No shop has air-conditioning and nothing is refrigerated.
Street markets such as this one and small retailers dominate Egypt’s internal food trade. There are very few big supermarkets with modern supply chains serving a country of 80m people.
Experts say an under-developed internal trade system bears part of the responsibility for mounting food prices that in recent months have prompted much public disgruntlement and even small protests. They say too many middlemen between farmers and consumers push up prices and that a lack of modern facilities, such as refrigerated trucks and warehouses, makes for more spoilage.
Safwan Sabet, chairman of Juhayna Food Industries, says only 6 to 7 per cent of the domestic trade in food goes through supermarket chains that are able to buy directly from growers.
“There are three to four layers of middlemen between the farmer and the retail outlet, whereas there should only be one or two,” says Mr Sabet.
The problem of middlemen taking a cut is compounded by waste. Mr Sabet points to Egypt’s tomato crop. The country is the second-largest producer of tomatoes in the world, he says, but some 55 per cent of the crop spoils by the time it reaches market.
The sight of open pick-up trucks carrying uncovered baskets of tomatoes on hot summer days is familiar to travellers on roads from the countryside into the capital. Because of their fragility, tomatoes are an extreme example, but Mr Sabet says high proportions of other crops are lost because of bad packaging, transport and storage.
The result is higher prices. Official figures put food price inflation in August at 21 per cent year on year – one of the highest rates in the world, according to economists. August coincided with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when consumption usually increases.
At the same time, Russia imposed a ban on wheat exports that raised international cereal prices, putting further pressures on consumers in Egypt, the biggest wheat-importing country in the world. But even before August, food prices had been rising dramatically, with fruit, vegetables and meat leading the way.
“Prices are terrifying,” says Sami Mohamed, a self-employed engineer buying vegetables in the Dokki market. “You can’t now say that the middle-classes like doctors and engineers do not feel the price rises. Tomatoes are now five pounds a kilo [90 US cents]. We are all suffering.”
Egypt imports 60 per cent of its food, so domestic prices usually mirror rises internationally. But most fruit and vegetables are grown locally by smallholders who have problems getting their products to market. The farmers compete with modern agribusinesses that have reclaimed desert land, but much of the latter’s output is exported.
“It is very important that there should be marketing co-operatives grouping small farmers,” says Hussein Mansour, who is setting up the state’s Food Security Agency, a new body. “It makes it possible for a buyer to come and contract a whole region to grow a certain product with particular specifications.”
He points out that co-operatives would be able to invest in proper warehouses, giving produce a longer shelf life. Such facilities would make it possible to sort and grade products, and find suitable buyers for each category.
As things stand, Mr Mansour says ministry of agriculture officials trying to advise farmers find it difficult to deal with the huge number of smallholders working separately. Dealing with farmers organised through marketing co-operatives would be easier, and would help solve the problems of low crop yields and poor quality.
The government has been working on legislation to change the mandates of existing agricultural co-operatives to allow them to enter contracts on behalf of their members. Yet so far this has proved a slow process and the law has yet to be presented to parliament.
“Co-operatives would also help reduce prices because production costs would go down and productivity would increase,” Mr Mansour says