The Current Situation of Rice Production and Consumption in Egypt and The Role of Technical Efficiency of Production in Reducing The Food Gap الوضع الراهن لانتاج واستهلاک الأرز في مصر ودور الکفاءة الفنية للانتاج في الحد من الفجوة الغذائية

: The rice crop is one of the most important cereal crops because it is a strategic food crop as a main source of energy, in addition to being one of the main export crops in Egypt, in addition to being considered one of the geographically important crops that require cultivation in order to maintain soil fertility and protect agricultural lands from salinization. The government has adopted policies to limit the areas planted with the rice crop due to the water challenges facing Egypt, which led to a decrease in the cultivated area of it and then the total production and the emergence of a food gap that resulted in the transformation of foreign trade from export to import. In light of this, the research aimed to identify the production and consumer situation, technological efficiency, foreign trade, and then the food gap, in order to identify the most important factors through which self-sufficiency rates can be raised. It was found that the area and productivity, and then production, took a general declining trend during the period (2000-2020) with an annual decreasing rate estimated at about 1.5%, 0.33%, and 1.8%, respectively. It was also shown that rice cultivation is concentrated in 9 governorates the study period, as it rose from 1.9% during the period from 2010-2014 to about 3.9% during the period 2015-2019 period.