Food & Climate
Several climate phenomena, such as floods and severe storms, during the years 2020 and 2022, created difficulties for the Egyptian Go Green Company for Agricultural Investment and Development, which it succeeded in overcoming in several ways, according to the company’s managing director, Hossam Abdelkader.
Abdelkader told “Food & Climate” platform that Go Green launched a department in the company to deal with climate change due to the increasing severity of these phenomena. This came on the sidelines of a press conference held by the company at the headquarters of the Egyptian Stock Exchange in Cairo (the capital of Egypt), today, Sunday, February 9, 2025, on the occasion of the start of trading its shares on the main market.
The Egyptian Go Green cultivates jojoba and olive trees on an area of 12,000 acres and 2,000 acres, respectively, in the Almughra area, south of Elalamein, and plans to cultivate an additional 14,000 acres with jojoba trees during the next two years, so that the cultivated area reaches 21,000 acres within 4 years, according to the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Taha Abd Elmawla.
Go Green has allocated about 400 acres to produce marine fish such as shrimp and sea bass, of which 70 acres are currently used. Abdelkader said that the high cost of feed last year (2024) caused the fish farm to temporarily stop operating.
Egyptian Go Green has been working in the agricultural sector since its inception, and in its early years it focused on producing vegetable and fruit seedlings, “but our desire to work on a national project that would benefit our country made us switch to jojoba,” Abd Elmawla told Food & Climate.
The effects of climate change
The managing director of the Egyptian Go Green Company, Hossam Abddelkader, said that climate change affects the cost of production and export. The company exported 250 tons to the American company Cargill this year, as the weather conditions were favorable.
He added that climate change phenomena have severely affected crops, especially the hurricanes of 2020, and in 2022 there were floods that continued in the land for more than a week.
He said: “We conducted previous studies on this area, which revealed that it has not been exposed to any rain for thousands of years, but it seems that planting trees helped to attract rain, and floods hit the area, which is not normal, but we started to move water in the ground, and we also established artificial storm barriers, so production has been good during the last two years.”
The Egyptian Go Green Company relies on well water in agriculture, which is extracted using solar energy at a rate of 70% of current needs, and the company plans to reach 100% by 2025.
Abdelkader told the “Food & Climate” platform: “We only plant jojoba and olives because the water in the area where we plant is salty, and it suits these trees.”
Although the area is very suitable for planting olive trees, its share does not exceed 10% of the total cultivated area, but the company decided to plant intensive olives.
Abdelkader explained that intensive olives are a Spanish variety in which the oil percentage rises to 20%, compared to the varieties found in Egypt, in which the oil percentage ranges between 9 and 11%.
He added that Egypt’s climate is suitable for this type of olive trees, so its cultivation has begun to spread. Egypt ranks first in the production of olives for pickling, and the Egyptian Go Green has pushed the country to rank fifth in the production of jojoba globally.
Go Green expansions
Egyptian Go Green is expanding in the cultivation of jojoba in several Arab countries, starting in the Sultanate of Oman by cultivating 300 acres, and will soon sign a cooperation protocol with Saudi Arabia, in addition to Libya, Mauritania and Algeria.
The climate of Gulf countries such as the Sultanate of Oman and Saudi Arabia is characterized by hot weather, but Hossam Abdelkader said: “We carefully choose locations with a suitable climate in those countries to suit jojoba cultivation, and the climate of Salalah in the Sultanate and Riyadh in the Kingdom are suitable for cultivation, and our partners in the Sultanate are participating with our company in another project in Qatar.”
He added: “We focus in our expansions abroad on the cultivation of jojoba, because Go Green has 36 strains of these trees that have the highest oil production, and they are registered in the gene bank in America.”
The Egyptian Go Green has started the process of selling carbon certificates, as the large areas planted with jojoba and olive trees enable it to sell carbon certificates. The amount of carbon that can be sold to Europe is currently being calculated, and Abdelkader expects this to happen in 2027, and the annual return will reach two million dollars.
The shareholders in the Egyptian Go Green have launched a company to manufacture oils and cosmetics, and they are scheduled to merge together in 2025.