Rationale
Egypt is facing a high population growth rate, which demands for an increase in agricultural production efficiency. This is at present more urgent with higher food prices.  Consequently, agricultural field residues such as straw will only increase in the future. At present, these waste streams are not economically re-used and will create even larger problems for air and surface water pollution and having therefore a negative effect on people and planet.

Objectives
The goal of this project is to identify economically viable and environmentally sound alternative uses for the approximately 4 M tons of rice straw in Egypt that are produced each year and thereby reduce the environmental impact of field burning, which is the current disposal method.

 

Rice Straw Seminar
As part of this project, a Seminar on Alternative Concepts and Technologies for Beneficial Utilisation of Rice Straw was organized in June 2009, with a purpose to present and discuss past and current initiatives on rice straw utilisation in Egypt and elsewhere, and share results achieved so far with a wider public of stakeholders from various sectors. An overview of the seminar, including downloadable presentations and reports can be found here.
 

Main Results
There are multiple opportunities for Rice Straw utilisation in different sectors of the economy (see Figure 1). These include applications near the source, such as in-field recycling and composting, applications within the region, such as decentral energy production, and applications at the national level such as sustainable building materials.

A number of very promising developments and new concepts are in development, and these can provide an important alternative for existing wood products, energy, and reducing the cost of agricultural production. However, in many case further product development is necessary to improve the products and their production process, in order to make them more economically attractive. For those technologies that have reached maturity, further demonstration and extension are needed.
 

     Alternative Utilisation options for Rice Straw (click on chart for larger print)
 

For further information, please contact:
Dr. Robert Bakker –Project Coordinator
Wageningen University and Research Center, Wageningen,
Tel: +31 317 48 11 67; E-mail: robert.bakker@wur.nl

Dr. Hans van der Beek – Agricultural Counsellor
Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
Tel: +20 2 27363863; E-mail: kai-lnv@minbuza.nl
 

Please click here to download this information in pdf format.