Assessment of agricultural sustainability in some areas west of Nile Delta

Sustainable agriculture aims at improving the production besides the conservation of natural resources. Egypt has a lot of sustainability obstacles that faced agricultural development; some of them belong to soil characteristics such soil salinity, soil type and others belongs to environmental hazards and socio economic factors. The present study focuses on assessing sustainable agricultural status in west of Nile delta by integration of physical, social and economic factors using GIS. The present study focused on five pillars for evaluating sustainability levels for agricultural development under Egyptian conditions; soil productivity, security, protection, social acceptability and economic feasibility in the different mapping units. The results showed that, the study area is classified into three classes: II, III, and IV where, it’s occupied an area about 11.22, 64.92, and 12.08 % respectively. The results illustrate the current state of agricultural sustainability where, the values of sustainability varying between 0.1 and 0.36. About 48 percent of the total study area is characterized by a very low degree of sustainability < 0.1 as it classified as IV. This study proposed some recommendations to improve the current status of sustainable development such as increase the number of markets, schools and health care, loan facilitation, and educate farmers on modern methods of good management. The proposed recommendations will be improved the sustainability degree by 10% of the study area.