Date: 2/28/2000

IALP Class of 2000

Cairo, Egypt

We started our day as guests of Egypt's largest privately held farm that is part of the country's "Green Revolution".   The 15,000 acres of wheat, corn, alfalfa, clover and fruit crops are on reclaimed desert ground and has been in operation since 1987.

Jane Feagans, Rod Stoll and Tim Harris share their expertise in the dairy sciences with Dr. Iskender at one of the Dina Farms stations for dairy production.  Dina Farms has a Holstein herd of 10,000 cows that provides the only source of powdered milk to the Middle East.  In addition, the farm is vertically integrated and has its own production facilities for cheeses and powdered milk products.

This street scene depicts the difficult economic times and high density of traffic that is typical throughout much of the populated areas of Egypt.

Dr. Azmy Iskander, Assistant General Manager of Pioneer's Egyptian operations, hosted our class at his company's production facilities near Nasr City.  The state of the art facility is patterned after production facilities in the United States.  Pioneer is in the developmental phases of bringing insect and herbicide resistant corn hybrids to market so that they can increase their existing 15% market share in Egypt.

Pioneer personnel demonstrate the bagging of seed for IALP class members.  This production plant is the only one of its kind in the Middle East and handles corn, sunflower, sorghum, clover, alfalfa and other small grains.