FUTURE VISION OF WHEAT CROP UNDER LOCAL AND GLOBAL ECONOMICAL CHANGES

Wheat is one of the most important agricultural crops in Egypt. Wheat is also considered one of the strategic crops that are related to the Egyptian food security. Also, most consumers rely on wheat for thermal energy due to its high percentage of carbohydrates, up to about 75%. The produced quantities of wheat is not enough for consumption, and in the light of the economic liberalization of the Egyptian agriculture policy, freedom of decision-farm, the continued increase in the number of population, changing consumption pattern for most consumers, and therefore the government resorted to import large and increasing amounts of wheat to fill that gap. The research aims to develop a future vision of the wheat crop in the light of local and global economic changes through the review of the main features of the world wheat market in terms of the evolution of variables and factors affecting on wheat crop, the research aims to study the main features of the Egyptian wheat market and evaluates of its variables, as well as study the impact of local and global variables on the amount of Egyptian wheat imports. And using many of the statistical analysis methods and tools, such as arithmetic mean, percentages and equations of general time trend of economic variables, in addition to use Stepwise regression method in terms of knowing the most important independent factors affecting the amount of wheat imports in Egypt. The results showed the impact of the global and local variables on the quantity of wheat imports, that the national income factor occupied the first order in terms of impact on the amount of wheat imports as it increase national income by a billion pounds, leads to increase the amount of  wheat imports by about 0.003 billion pounds, then the price of imported wheat comes in the second order, where the results confirmed that the increase of the price of wheat import by about pounds/ ton, resulting in the reduced amount of  wheat imports by about 0.001 pounds. This study recommended that the state must follows the pricing policies to encourage farmers through as announcing the supply price policy of wheat, giving farmers the value of the crop immediately after delivery, as well as increasing domestic production of wheat through selecting the high-yield varieties, horizontal expansion in new lands, and the rationalization of consumption of wheat by reducing losses in bread consumption, and increasing the domestic supply of wheat, as well as diversify its sources of imported wheat that serves to reduce the price of imports and away from economic dependence.