FAO: Egypt Ranks Fifth in Tomato Production

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced that Egypt has ranked fifth in tomato production, after China, India, Turkey, and the United States of America.

Egypt ranked fifth with 6,731.22 million kilos of tomatoes cultivated on 170,862 hectares and an average yield of 3.94 kg/m².

Eygpt is one of the biggest tomato producers in the world, FAO reported. It's also the country with the best performance in the Arab world and Africa. Their production reaches 6 million tons at that time.

In the Egyptian view, tomato is one of the favorite vegetable crops because the tomato-growing area was almost 32% of the total vegetable-growing. The harvesting time is usually carried out between July- October, and November-February.

On the other hand, China is the biggest country on the list of tomato production today. Fresh tomatoes are produced in almost all China provinces. Based on production, Shandong, Xinjiang, Hebei, and Henan Provinces are the major provinces in tomatoes production. These four provinces account for more than half of China’s total fresh tomato production.

In China, most of the tomato cultivation are held in the greenhouse. Right away, greenhouse production accounts for more than 50 percent of total tomato production and supplies the domestic market, especially from October to June, when tomatoes in the open field are not available. Commonly, the peak season for fresh tomato consumption in China runs from July to September.

It's worth mentioning that tomatoes are one of the most popular vegetables in the world, which play an indispensable and major role in Egypt’s agriculture.