Egypt's Nile Delta farmland salts up as temperatures, and seas, rise (Reuters) 

Farmers in the Nile Delta are racing to adapt to encroaching salinity, writes Reuters in a report from COP27. The Nile Delta, a densely populated and fertile triangle of green that fans out towards the sea north of Cairo, accounts for more than a third of Egypt’s agricultural land. One farmer says, “If you leave the land 10 days without watering it, you’ll find salt on the surface.” According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, yields for food crops in Egypt are expected to drop by more than 10 percent by 2050 due to higher temperatures, water stress, and increased salinity of irrigation water. Claudia Ringler, a water resources expert and senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute explained that the Nile Valley is particularly challenging because of the arid, desert climate. “You have to do a much better job in a place like the Nile Delta because the water just evaporates quickly.”