ANALYTICAL STUDY FOR PREDICTING PRODUCTION, NATIONAL CONSUMPTION AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY RATES OF THE MOST IMPORTANT LEGUME CROPS IN EGYPT

The United Nations announced in 2016 was as international year for Legumes crops. As a part of sustainable food production, legumes are playing a vital role in Egypt for providing people with their needs from plant protein and amino acids. In general, Egypt suffers a gap between domestic production of legumes and consumption needs, particularly of Faba bean, and lentil. Thus, self sufficiency ratios reached 39% and 1.6% for both crops in 2014 respectively ([1]). Consequently, the imported amounts from both products were increasing during 1993 and 2014. So that the average of import value of Faba bean reached to LE 1.7 milliards alone, while lentil reached to LE 583.4 millions during 2010 and 2014, which represent about 66.2% and  22.3% respectively from  the average import value of legume crops.  Due to spread Balkiros injury in 2011, the cultivated area and domestic production of Faba bean has been significantly declined so that import value was increased. While, Faba bean domestic production represents about 78% of total legumes production, lentil represents only 1.3% as average of the period (1993-2014)([2]). The present paper aims to: (a) Identify the most important productivity and consumption indicators for leguminous crops in Egypt by using the equations of general time trend during the period (1993-2014). (b) Analyze statistical methods for predicting the most important economic indicators for legumes during the future period (2015-2024). ARIMA models were used to forecast production, consumption, and self-sufficiency after eliminating time series non-stationary and transferring it into stability or stationary series. This was done to be able to use PC-application econometric software package E-views 8 program. (c) Review, explain and interpret the results of ARIMA forecasting and the general time trend models as guidelines to draw agricultural production policy for legumes. ([1]) Ministry of Agriculture and land reclamation, economic affairs sector, the Central Administration of Agricultural Economics, Public Administration of agricultural economic resources, food balance sheets, various issues. ([2] ) Ministry of Agriculture and land reclamation, economic affairs sector, the Central Administration of Agricultural Economics, Foreign trade of agricultural exports and imports Bulletin, various issues.