473 A Billion Pounds of Foul

Egyptians eat more than 1 billion pounds of foul a year. I’m trying to imagine what 1 billion pounds of foul would look like. If you spread it an inch thick, how much of the country would that cover? OK, time for lunch.

Horrible news from AFP:

Foul times ahead for Egypt’s bean staple
Cairo -Egypt’s staple bean dish – known as foul – is under threat because of the rising cost of imports and a reduction in domestic production.

Agricultural expert Mohamed al-Borei raised the alarm in Sunday’s press, saying the government should start requisitioning land to produce more fava beans.

The cost on the street of the popular foul mesdames sandwich, made with bean stew, salad and spices inside a piece of shami bread, has risen by 25 percent to reach one Egyptian pound (about R1,23).

The rising cost of wheat on the world market has already significantly raised the cost of bread, of which at 400g a day Egyptians are the world’s biggest per-capita consumers.

Egypt, for a long time self-sufficient in bean production and even an exporter of the commodity, now imports half of its annual requirement of 550 000 tons of foul that is needed to satisfy the nation’s most needy.

Agriculture ministry employee Mohammed al-Nahrawy told the Egyptian Gazette that “we grow 240 000 tons, but most Egyptian farmers have given up cultivating foul because of the diseases that afflicted the crop in the early 1990s”.

Borei blamed government policy which promotes wheat and cotton cultivation at the expense of beans.

The deputy chairman of the importers section of the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce blames multinationals.

“These companies export the beans to Egypt at inflated prices. This is sheer monopoly and, this time, small traders are not guilty of upping prices,” he said, calling for government action to stabilise prices.

5 Comments »

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  1. By saying “Foul”, you dont mean like in sports right?
    You mean this:
    http://ayadina.com/images/products/beans/big/foul%20masri.jpg
    As if, Foul=Beans.
    Like Egyptians, I like eating them too – my mom makes them alot, it’s very healthy!
    Problem is the whole famaliy start farting after the meal because of it.. alright, I think that was too much info :>.
    In Hebrew by the way, we pronounce it as “Fool”, like the English word “Full”, Isn’t in Arabic the same?
    -Shavit69.

    Comment by Shavit69 — November 26, 2007 #

  2. Yep, beans. AFP’s headline was a pun. It’s also pronounced “Fool” in Arabic.

    Comment by The Skeptic — November 26, 2007 #

  3. In Arabic, we call Macaroni “Macaroni”.

    Comment by Amr Gharbeia — November 26, 2007 #

  4. Hmm, I wondered why the price of foul had gone up. Though it’s still 75 pt and not LE 1 near me.

    Comment by SP — November 27, 2007 #

  5. […] eat more than 1 billion pounds of beans a year, reports Elijah Zarwan. Share […]

    Pingback by Global Voices Online » Egypt: A Billion Pounds of Beans — November 28, 2007 #

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