Egypt cannot live by bread alone.

Record world prices for most staple foods have led to 18% food price inflation in China, 13% in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10% or more in Latin America, Russia and India, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). Wheat has doubled in price, maize is nearly 50% higher than a year ago and rice is 20% more expensive, says the UN. Next week the FAO is expected to say that global food reserves are at their lowest in 25 years and that prices will remain high for years.

India, Yemen, Mexico, Burkina Faso and several other countries have had, or been close to, food riots in the last year, something not seen in decades of low global food commodity prices. Meanwhile, there are shortages of beef, chicken and milk in Venezuela and other countries as governments try to keep a lid on food price inflation.

In particular, bread and cereal prices increased by 48.1 percent from March 2007 to March 2008, while cooking oils and fats rose by 45.2 percent, according to the official government authority for statistics.

President Hosni Mubarak's government has reacted quickly to ease the price burdens, ordering the military to increase its production of bread and to open makeshift distribution points for subsidized loaves.

Poor people receive 20 pieces of the bread, commonly known as country bread, for a pound ($0.19) instead of four pieces for the same price from a private seller.  But the help comes at a price: massive budget overruns that are threatening other government programs as well as social and economic reform.

Aid is now provided to about 55 million people, or 70 percent of the Egyptian populace, and food subsidies are expected to rise to 20 billion pounds ($3.72 billion) this year from 15 billion pounds ($2.79 billion).

In early April thousands of workers and residents in the northern town of Mahalla El-Kobra protested the government in a nationwide strike, spread by the help of groups on the social networking Web site Facebook. At least three people died during the riots.

[Egypt] has for decades dreamed of converting huge swaths of desert into lush farmland. The most ambitious of these projects is in Toshka, a Sahara Desert oasis in a scorched lunar landscape of sand and rock outcroppings.

When the Toshka farm was started in 1997, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, compared its ambitions to building the pyramids, involving roughly 500,000 acres of farmland and tens of thousands of residents. But no one has moved there, and only 30,000 acres or so have been planted.

The farm’s manager, Mohamed Nagi Mohamed, says the Sahara is perfect for farming, as long as there is plenty of fertilizer and water.

“You can grow anything on this land,” he said, showing off fields of alfalfa and rows of tomatoes and grapes, shielded from the sun by gauzy white netting. “It’s a very nice project, but it needs a lot of money.”

Egypt, at least, has the Nile. Under a 1959 treaty, the country is entitled to a disproportionate share of the river’s water, a point that rankles some of its neighbors. It has built canals to bring Nile water to the Sinai Desert, to desert lands between Cairo and Alexandria and to the vast emptiness of Toshka.