Many people in the Middle East and North Africa are finding themselves in the unenviable predicament of having to choose between feeding an ever expanding population and preserving an ever dwindling water supply. The population of the region as quadrupled since 1950, and is expected to reach 600 million in the next 40 years. Previously, it has been far more practical to import food rather than produce it given the high cost of food production in the dry, desert climate. But now with 90% mark-ups of some food staples, many countries are rethinking their strategy.

The countries of the region are caught between the hammer of rising food prices and the anvil of steadily declining water availability per capita, Alan R. Richards, a professor of economics and environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said via e-mail. There is no simple solution.

Oil-rich countries are looking at more fertile (but politically unstable) lands in countries like Pakistan and the Sudan to set up farms that will grow and export food to the Persian Gulf.

These countries have the land and the water, said Hassan S. Sharaf Al Hussaini, an official in Bahrain’s agriculture ministry. We have the money.

Many countries, including Egypt, must also struggle with the quandary of having to give up fertile farmlands along the Nile and in the Nile Delta to urbanization in order to meet the housing needs of their growing populations.

For farmers like Magdy Abdel-Rahman, the new buildings not only ruin the rural tranquillity of his ancient fields, with the constant hammering and commotion, but they also reduce his yields. The shade is not good for the plants, said Mr. Abdel-Rahman, who farms corn and clover on a half-acre lot 20 miles from downtown Cairo.

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Related:

UN sees urbanization the major cause of food insecurity in Africa
Urban Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa
Population Growth and Water Resources in the Middle East