This document outlines Helmy Abouleish's presentation on SEKEM, an Egyptian sustainable development organization. It discusses SEKEM's 36 years of transforming desert land into fertile fields using biodynamic and ecological practices. A comparative study is presented that analyzes the full costs of conventional versus sustainable farming for 7 Egyptian crops over 10 years, finding sustainability to be less expensive when accounting for externalities like water and carbon usage. The document promotes SEKEM's holistic approach to sustainable development through integrated value chains and community education programs.

1.
Farming in the Desert
Helmy Abouleish
True cost accounting, London, UK
6th December, 2013

2. Transforming the Desert – 36 Years
of SEKEM
The first SEKEM building in 1979
A SEKEM field in 1979
The same building in 2009
The same field in 2009

3. Ecological agriculture in Egypt
– Compost

4.
- Aiming for the impossible..
Opening ceremony
of the Sinai Project
2008
The land before…

5. …and changing our world.
… and after 18 months.

6.
Integrative value chain & Associations

7. SEKEM – a Learning, Living
Community
• About 2,000 employees in SEKEM Group and Foundation
• Safe workplaces, respect for the dignity of every employee
• Women empowerment and religious tolerance

8. SEKEM – Developing Human
Potential
•
•
•
•
•
Kindergarten and school
Medical centre
Vocational training
Community school
Children with special needs
•
•
•
Adult education
Heliopolis Academy for
research and training
Heliopolis University for
Sustainable Development

9. Holistic
approach to
Sustainable
Development
The Sustainable
Development
Flower
EMERGE 2013, Oxford, UK, 3 November 2013 - Helmy Abouleish

10. Outlines of the comparative study
• A study to compare the full cost of production (cost/ton)
development of 7 crops grown in Egypt under 2 different
scenarios: “Business as Usual” (BAU) and sustainable farming
practices
• For all 7 crops (corn, cotton, potatoes, rice, sugar beat, sugar
cane, wheat) the full cost of production was calculated for the
period of 10 years

11.
Approach and assumptions
• For simplicity reasons only “hard externalities” such as energy, fertilizer price
developments as well as carbon and water footprint were considered.
• Based on activity data from the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture and Land
Reclamation (MARL) of the years 2000-2010
• Based on reference data from the FAO, IEA, World bank.
• Every year 1.25-1.8% more synthetic fertilizer needs to be applied in BAU systems to maintain same
yield “Fertilizer Efficiency”
• Average annual carbon sequestration in sustainable systems is 1 ton of carbon per hectar
• Carbon tax of 12.5 US$/tCO2e as per New Zealand taxation system and 0.1 US Cent for 1 m3 of
water as per price suggested by Booz Allen Hamilton consultant.

12.
Results
Consolidated cost of production internalizing the impact of energy, fertilizer & water
price development as well as a carbon tax . Other costs such as pest and disease
control, labour, land rent, seeds were included as well.

13. Thank you very much for
your attention!
www.sekem.com
Helmy Abouleish
SEKEM Group
P.O. Box 2834 El Horreya
Cairo, Egypt
helmy.abouleish@sekem.com

14. Ecological agriculture in Egypt
– Cotton
• 1991: SEKEM convinces the Egyptian government about the benefits
of biodynamic cotton after its success to harvest first biodynamic
cotton crop.
• As a result, the application of pesticides in Egypt was reduced by over
90%.(Decreased from 35000 tonnes per year to 3000 tonnes only)

15. Transforming the Desert
The first SEKEM building in 1979
The same building in 2013
• 36 years sustainable agriculture at SEKEM
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
20,000 acres (including suppliers)
2,000 jobs
400 small-holder farmers
Over 1 million tons CO2e sequestrated
20-40% water savings
Continuous yield increase
Continuous decrease of inputs