The first fertilizer stock to be supplied by the Future of Egypt for Sustainable Development Authority was distributed on Monday for sale through agricultural cooperatives across the country .
Fertilizer distribution adds yet another market to the fast-expanding portfolio in which the Future of Egypt authority has an arm.
The authority has signed open-ended supply agreements with the cooperatives, which are to distribute the fertilizer to farmers across governorates at prices below those on the open market.
Cooperatives are typically responsible for distributing government-subsidized fertilizer to farmers under a decades-old scheme backed by the Agriculture Ministry. But the ministry is not involved in the Future of Egypt distribution scheme for unsubsidized fertilizer, an official from the cooperatives told Mada Masr.
Instead, Future of Egypt procures fertilizer from manufacturers and supplies it to the cooperatives, which sell it to farmers on its behalf at prices the authority has set.
Under the agreement, Future of Egypt will undercut the standard market prices. A sack of unsubsidized urea will be sold for no more than LE1,000 and ammonium nitrate for LE975, compared with the current open-market rates of between LE1,400-1,600 per sack.
An initial 3,000 tons will be made available, matching the total volume of orders submitted by cooperatives so far, according to the official. The first phase will cover Aswan, Luxor, Beni Suef, Fayoum, Beheira and Suez, with additional governorates expected to join as their cooperatives place orders.
The agreement does not set a cap on supply volumes, the official added. It allows deliveries of unsubsidized fertilizer to continue in line with demand from cooperatives.
The move comes as farmers have increasingly turned to buying supplementary quantities of fertilizer on the open market after using up their allocation of the subsidized supply.
The Agriculture Ministry has canceled or cut its provision of subsidized fertilizer for a range of crops since September 2025, including citrus, strawberries, onions and potatoes, according to sources in the ministry and agricultural cooperatives.
In September, the government issued directives to redistribute fertilizer production, increasing the share allocated for export to as much as 53 percent of total output, up from 45 percent, consequently reducing the share for subsidized domestic distribution to 37 percent from 55 percent.
Sources also told Mada Masr earlier this year that the government was considering increasing fertilizer export quantities again, to smooth over factories’ concerns about their profit margins as the government hiked energy costs in response to the United States’ war on Iran.
According to several sources in the fertilizer production sector, last year’s increase to export quotas has cut the subsidized allocation to around 2.4 million tons, down from four million. Agriculture Minister Alaa Farouk nevertheless denied in October that the distribution of production between exports and the domestic market had changed.
The reduction in subsidized allocations has affected a range of crops, the cooperatives’ official said.
Allocations for staple crops including wheat, green beans, fava beans, sugar beet and cotton remain unchanged.
But citrus farmers are no longer eligible for subsidized fertilizer, while those growing strawberries, onions and potatoes have had their allocations cut by around half.
A source at the Agriculture Ministry told Mada Masr that one objective behind the deal with Future of Egypt to sell unsubsidized fertilizer through cooperatives is to put competitive pressure on the commercial fertilizer market. The aim, they said, is to reduce prices by at least 20 percent.
The source said that retail prices have stayed high even though factory input costs have dropped over recent months.
Pricing lists circulated to agricultural cooperatives show, however, that central cooperatives will sell both urea and nitrate fertilizers under the new Future of Egypt scheme at a profit, with central, joint and local cooperatives to take a share of the margin.
The cooperatives’ official agreed, though, that the system could help narrow the gap between subsidized and open-market prices, particularly as farmers increasingly rely on additional fertilizer purchases outside the subsidy system for a wide range of crops.
The authority began its life as a desert land reclamation project managed by Air Force pilot Colonel Bahaa al-Ghannam and has, with presidential backing, quickly expanded over the last decade to accumulate capacities and responsibilities spanning regulatory and productive sectors.
A law to turn the authority into an entity with a “special” legal nature, granting it an array of exceptional powers and capacities such as contracting with investors or managing state assets gained final approval from lawmakers in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.
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